Sundry excursions delayed us six days at Tanga. We failed to bag any hippopotamus, the animals being here very timid. A herd of six, commanded by a large black old male, gave us a few long shots; at first the beasts raised the whole head and part of the neck; afterwards nothing but the eyes were exposed. The people declare that they always charge a man who has left a pregnant wife at home. Our only result was the dropping of my big Beattie (2 barrelled, 24 lbs.) into the water. I had fired it when sitting in a mangrove tree, and ‘purchase’ being wanted, I narrowly escaped following it. The river, however, was only 2 fathoms deep, and we presently recovered it by diving: the Arabs usually claim half the value of things thus reclaimed. Our visit ended with a distribution of embroidered caps and Jamdani muslins, and we received farewell visits till dark. At 5 A.M. on Feb. 2nd, after a sultry night varied by bursts of rain, which sounded like buckets sluicing the poop, we drifted out to sea under the influence of the Barri or land-breeze. Five hours of lazy sailing ran us to an open road between Tanga and Panga-ni, called Mtangata, which, according to the guides, was derived from the people living on toasted grains during war or famine. It is evidently the Portuguese ‘Montagane,’ whose Shaykh, with 200 men, assisted in 1528 Nuno da Cunha against the Sultan of Mombasah. Exposed to the N. East wind, and imperfectly defended by two low and green-capped islets, Yambe (North) and Karangú (East), it is rendered by the surf and rollers of the Indian Ocean a place of trembling to the coast sailors. The country appears fertile, and a line of little villages, Kisizi, Marongo, Tamba-ni, and others, skirt the shore. Here we spent the day, in order to inspect some ruins, where we had been promised Persian inscriptions and other curios. After casting anchor, I entered a canoe and was paddled across a bay once solid ground, in whose encroaching waters, according to local tradition, a flourishing city, extending over the whole creek side, had been submerged. The submarine tombs were like those of the Dead Sea: apparent to the Wasawahili’s eyes, they eluded mine. The existing settlements are all modern, and none of them appear upon Capt. Owen’s charts. After an hour’s work we pushed up a narrow creek, grounding at every ten yards, and presently we reached an inlet, all mangrove above and mud below. Landing at a village called Tongo-ni, where the people stood to receive us, we followed the shore for a few paces, turned abruptly to the left, over broken ground, and sighted the ruins.