432 TOP OF THE FASHION. 



that graced the humbler parts. The hips displayed uncommon 

 skill, and were surpassed only by the eccentricities which were 

 traced along those posterior convexities which our refined con- 

 ventionality blushes to denominate — but African belles are not 

 ashamed of their buttocks. One of these beauties called at the 

 doctor's camp at the village of Nyamba, and presented a very 

 acceptable basket of soroko and a fowl, and as a specimen of the 

 native women of the section it may be mentioned that this lady 

 is described as " tall and well made, with fine limbs and feet." 

 Such language, too, from so sober an observer as Dr. Living- 

 stone, viewing people as he did with the eye of a scientist, means 

 more in Africa than it could mean in those nearer climes where 

 the arts of civilization have so greatly facilitated the disguise of 

 all deformities and imperfections ; there is no place for shams, 

 no possibility of padding in a land where a lady's attire consists 

 of a Yew strands of beads, and possibly a few inches of cloth. 



After leaving the end of the range, passing westward, the 

 "journal " mentions, among the noticeable natural changes, 

 " first of all, sandstone hardened by fire ; then masses of granite, 

 as if in that had been contained the igneous agency of partial 

 metamorphosis ; it had also lifted up the sandstone, so as to 

 cause a dip to the east. Then the syenite or granite seemed as 

 if it had been melted, for it was all in stria?, which strise, as 

 they do elsewhere, run east and west. With the change in geo- 

 logic structure there was a different vegetation. Instead of the 

 laurel-leaved trees of various kinds, African ebonies, acacias, 

 and mimosse appeared, the grass is shorte'r and more sparse, and 

 we can move along without wood-cutting." 



Between the Sepoys and the tsetse the animals were now 

 pretty well used up, and they were about entering a section 

 where a double misfortune had spread distressing desolation 

 among the people. Livingstone determined to leave the Sepoys 

 and the Nassick boys with the animals at Jponde, which stood 

 opposite a gigantic hill on the south side of the river called 

 Nakapuri. He thought it was wiser to depend on those behind 

 no further than was necessary, so he transferred all his goods to 

 carriers and set out, heartily glad to be relieved for a time at 

 least of the provoking incubus of eighteen or twenty lazy fel- 

 lows who were retarding his work almost insufferably. 



