DISCOVEEY OF THE VICTORIA N'YANZA. 9 



to this point the villages, as is the case in all central 

 Unyamuezi, are built on the most luxurious principles. 

 They form a large hollow square, the walls of which 

 are their huts, ranged on all sides of it in a sort of 

 street consisting of two walls, the breadth of an 

 ordinary room, which is partitioned off to a con- 

 venient size by interior walls of the same earth- 

 construction as the exterior ones, or as our Sepoys' 

 lines are made in India. The roof is flat, and serves 

 as a store-place for keeping sticks to burn, drying 

 grain, pumpkins, mushrooms, or any vegetables they 

 may have. Most of these compartments contain the 

 families of the villagers, together with their poultry, 

 brewing utensils, cooking apparatus, stores of grain, 

 and anything they possess. The remainder contain 

 their flocks and herds, principally goats and cows, for 

 sheep do not breed well in the country, and their flesh 

 is not much approved of by the people. What few 

 sheep there are appear to be an offshoot from the 

 Persian stock. They have a very scraggy appear- 

 ance, and show but the slightest signs of the fat- 

 rumped proportions of their ancestors. The cows, 

 unlike the noble Tanganyika ones, are small and 

 short-horned, and are of a variety of colours. They 

 carry a hump like the Brahminy bull, but give very 

 little milk. In front of nearly every house you see 

 large slabs of granite, the stones on which the jowari 

 is ground by women, who, kneeling before them, rub 

 the grain down to flour with a smaller stone, which 



