We arose early in the morning after making Panga-ni, and repaired to the terrace for the better enjoyment of the view. The river-vista, with cocoa avenues to the north, with yellow cliffs on the southern side, some 40 feet high, abrupt as those of the Indus, and green clad above; with a distance of plum-blue hill, upon which eye and mind both love to rest; the mobile swelling water bounded by strips of emerald verdure and golden sand, and the still and azure sea dotted with ‘diabolitos,’ little black rocks, not improperly called ‘devilings,’ wanted nothing but the finish and polish of art to bring out the infinite variety, the rude magnificence of nature. A few grey ruins upon the hills would enable it to compare with the most admired prospects of the Rhine, without looking as if it had been made picturesque by contrast, to attract tourists, and with half-a-dozen white Kiosks and Serais, minarets and latticed summer villas, it would almost rival that gem of creation, the Bosphorus. Panga-ni[31] ‘in the hole,’ or ‘between the highlands,’ as was said of the River Lee, and its smaller neighbour, Kumba, hug the left or northern bank of its river: the site is a flat Maremma bounded by the sea and by a hill range, ten or eleven miles distant. Opposite are Mbweni and Mzimo Mpia, small villages built under tall bluffs of yellow sandstone, precipitous and impenetrably covered with wild growth. The stream which separates these rival pairs of settlements may be 200 yards broad: the mouth has an ugly line of bar-breakers, awash at low tide; the only fairway course is a narrow channel to the south, and the entrance is intricate, with reef and shoal. This in Capt. Owen’s time was some 12 feet deep: now it it is reduced to seven or eight: although a report had been spread that the ‘Shah Allum’ had crossed it, nothing but country craft can safely enter, as some of our enterprising compatriots have discovered, to their cost. Panga-ni Bay is shown to the mariner by its ‘verdurous wall’ of palms and by its dotting of small dark rocks; by Maziwi Island, a green-capped gem in a bezel of golden sand, bearing S. East, and southwards by the yellow cliffs of Mbweni. Vessels lie snugly in the outer roads, but when making the inner harbour even Hamid, most niggardly of Suris, expended a dollar upon a pilot. At low water in the dry season the bed of this tidal stream is partly exposed, and its produce during the flow is briny as the main: the rains cause it to swell with the hill-freshets, and then it becomes almost potable. The wells produce heavy and brackish drink, but who, ask the people, will take the trouble to fetch sweeter? The climate is said to be tolerably healthy; throughout the long and severe rainy monsoon, however, the place is rich in dysenteries and in fatal bilious remittents.