a 
MSUATA. 197 
always with us?” he replies inquiringly. Gobila answers 
several more questions and then begins to yawn, so we 
take the hint and leave hin, going off to make a round of 
visits in the village. 
A friend of ours, Makole, whose name is phonetically 
the same as our great English historian’s, sends word to 
say he is ill, will we come and see him? Approaching 
his residence, we see that something very special is taking 
place. The palisaded compound round Makolé’s huts is 
festooned with great palm branches, interlaced at times so 
as to form arches of greenery across the pathway. The 
entrance to the principal house, where the ceremony we 
have been invited to see is going on, is a veritable bower, 
so thickly do the upright palm fronds cluster about it. 
Thirty-nine people are crammed into the interior, which 
is about twenty feet by ten. They are all playing on 
drums, “marimbas,” and a rude sort of lyre, and singing 
at the top of their voices, their nearly naked bodies 
streaming with sweat, for in addition to the exhausting 
nature of their occupation there is a roasting fire burning 
in the centre of the hut, and its smoke mixes with the 
steam from the human bodies and produces a thick mist 
through which various details of the interior can but 
dimly be discerned. At one end of the hut, however, we 
can see Makolé, who is sick, seated under an overarching 
canopy of palm branches, with the soles of his feet turned 
towards the blaze. On one side of him a wife crouches 
over a dish of food that she is preparing. All this time 
her husband, a stout, well-made man in the prime of life, 
remains perfectly motionless and silent, the perspiration 
streaming down his body, and we are informed that it is 
an important condition of the cure that he should not 
give utterance to a sound while the charm is working. 
At length there is a pause for refreshments, and all the 
at Msuaita. Gampama-Gobila is also called “ Mbuma ” by the Ba-yansi, 
either because he lives near the Wa-biima people, or because he is 
originally of that race. “Gampama is Ki-buma for caf. ‘The real 
original Gobila still lives on in his ancient seat, “thinning” the few 
subjects that remain, and becoming a by-word for ferocity, and a 
bogey to frighten naughty black children. | 
