showing only an old tomb—poor reward for 16 miles in the burning sun. Weary of negro importunities, we resolved to visit Chogwe, the nearest Baloch outpost upon the Rufu[33] (Lufu), or Upper Pangani river, and thence, aided by the Jemadar, who had preceded us, to push for Fuga, the capital village of Usumbara. We made our preparations silently, paid off the Riámi, rejected the Diwans who wished to accompany us as spies, left Said bin Salim and Caetano, the Goanese lad, in the house of the Wali Meriko, who presently accompanied his Muigni to Zanzibar; and under pretext of a short shooting excursion, we hired a long canoe and four men, loaded it with the luggage required for a fortnight, and started with the tide, at 11 A.M. on January 6, 1858. [Illustration: FUGA, CAPITAL OF USUMBARA.] First we grounded, then a puff of wind drove us on at railway speed, and then we scraped again: it was impossible to avoid being taken aback, so abrupt are the windings of the bed. At last we were successful in turning the first dangerous angle: here, where sea-breeze and tide meet the buffing stream, forming a ‘Lahr,’ as the Baloch call it, navigation becomes perilous to small craft. There is, as usual at and near the mouths of African rivers where the water acts as wind conductor, a little gale blowing upstream, a valuable aid to craft bound inland, but not without its risks; here many a boat has filled and sunk beneath the ridge of short chopping waves. After five miles, during which the turbulent river, streaked with lines of froth, gradually narrowed, we found it barely brackish, and somewhat farther it was sweet as the celebrated creek-water of Guiana. Often since that day, while writing amid the soughing blasts, the dashing rain, and the darkened air of a wet season in West Africa and the Brazil, have I remembered with yearning the bright and beautiful spectacle of those Zangian streams, whose charm, like the repose of the dead, seems heightened by proximity to decay. We had soon exchanged the amene and graceful, though somewhat tame scenery of the sandstone formation on the seaboard, for a view most novel and characteristic. Behemoth now reared his head from the foaming waters, gazed upon us, snorted at us, and sank back surlily and suspiciously into the depths of his home. Crocodiles, terrified by the splash of paddles, waddled down, as dowagers might, with their horrid claws dinting the slimy bank, and lay upon the water like yellow-brown tree-trunks, measuring us with small malignant green eyes, deep set under warty brows. Monkeys rustled the tall trees, here peeping with curiosity almost human, there darting away in fear amidst the wondrous frondage and foliage; now gambolling and frolicking up and down the corkscrew-like bush-ropes, nature’s cables, shrouds, and stays; then disappearing amidst the gloom of virgin forest. Below, their younger brethren, the jungle men and women—