220 ACEOSS AFRICA. [Ciiap. 



May, and eacli evening I spent some honrs reading " Suahili Tales " 

 i^*^*- to the Arabs — having shown the book to Syde Mezrui in a 

 thoughtless moment. A large audience always awaited me; 

 and as they enjoyed it thoroughly, I felt it repaid them some- 

 what for the kindness they had shown me, and I was therefore 

 pleased to do it, though it was very tiring work. 



On the 15th of May, some people — by way of amusement, or 

 more probably with the object of thieving in the confusion 

 caused — set fire to Bilal's house during the night. Worse still, 

 the door was fastened outside ; but, fortunately, the men who 

 usually slept in the house were not there on this occasion. I 

 was not able to discover the perpetrators of this outrage. 



The next day I held a sale of my Joho and large cloths, and 

 the commoner kinds went very well. To provide my men M'ith 

 some clothes, I then purchased fifteen pieces of other cloth of 

 nine doti each, at twenty -eight dollars apiece. And to pre- 

 vent the certainty of starving, and to pay Wajiji for bringing 

 back canoes from the other side, I bought twenty frasilah of 

 beads, at fifty dollars a frasilah — a large price — but it was a 

 case of " give it, or give up the work." 



If I had not been robbed, these purchases might have been 

 avoided ; but theft, and the non-arrival of stores left behind, 

 compelled me to make them. 



"When on the other side, I intended, metaphorically speaking, 

 to "burn my boats," so that there should be no retreating or 

 looking back. Several men pretended to be too ill to start, the 

 fact being that they were afraid ; so I gave these timid ones 

 their discharge. 



All my men seemed inclined to celebrate their last days at 

 Ujiji by a series of drunken orgies ; and Bombay, being an- 

 noyed, on returning home one night from some festivities, at 

 finding that Mrs. Boml)ay had only just arrived from a tea- 

 party, tried to " reorganize her," but with much the same result 

 as befell Artemus Ward. 



During the domestic struggle, they upset a box of singo- 

 mazzi beads — made of opal-glass, and the size of pigeons' eggs — 

 and rendered the greater portion of them worthless by cracks 

 and stars. 



Some other drunken rascals ripped all the calking out of 



