74 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



cheaper here than in those more southern parts, still 

 I could not purchase them so well : indeed, a traveller 

 can never expect to buy at a reasonable rate in a land 

 where every man is a sultan, and his hut a castle ; 

 where no laws regulate the market, and every proprie- 

 tor is grasping. Bombay suggests that to buy cattle 

 cheap from the Washenzi (savages), you should give 

 them plenty of time to consider the advantages and 

 disadvantages of the transaction, for their minds are 

 not capable of arriving at a rapid conclusion; but 

 friend Bombay forgets that, whilst waiting to beat 

 them down a cloth or two, four or five are consumed 

 by the caravan in that waiting. The women, especi- 

 ally the younger ones, are miserably clad here : a fringe, 

 like the thong kilt of the Nubian maidens, made of 

 aloe fibres, with a single white bead at the end of each 

 string, is the general wear : it is suspended by a strap 

 tied round the waist. Hanging over the belly, it 

 covers about a foot of ground in breadth, but not 

 more than seven or eight inches in depth. The fibrous 

 strings, white by nature, soon turn black and look 

 like india-rubber, the effect of butter first rubbed in, 

 and then constant friction on the grimy person. The 

 dangling, waving motion of this strange appendage, as 

 the wearer moves along, reminded me of the common 

 fly-puzzler sometimes attached to horses' head-stalls. 

 Amongst a crowd of fifty or sixty people, not more 

 than two or three have a cloth of native make, and 

 rarely one of foreign manufacture is to be seen. Some 



