18G9.] ALLIANCE OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE., 27 



mixing blood, which is simply making a small incision on 

 the forearm of each person, and then mixing the bloods, 

 and making declarations of friendship. Moenembagg said, 

 " Your people must not steal, we never do," which is true : 

 blood in a small quantity was then conveyed from one to 

 the other by a fig-leaf. " No stealing of fowls or of men," 

 said the chief: "Catch the thief and bring him to me, 

 one who steals a person is a pig," said Mohamad. Stealing, 

 however, began on our side, a slave purloining a fowl, so 

 they had good reason to enjoin honesty on us ! They think 

 that we have come to kill them : we light on them as if 

 from another world : no letters come to tell who we are, or 

 what we want. We cannot conceive their state of isolation 

 and helplessness, with nothing to trust to but their charms 

 and idols — both being bits of wood. I got a large beetle 

 hung up before an idol in the idol house of a deserted and 

 burned village; the guardian was there, but the village 

 destroyed. 



I presented the two brothers with two table cloths, four 

 bunches of beads, and one string of neck-beads ; they were 

 well satisfied. 



A wood here when burned emits a horrid fascal smell, and 

 one would think the camp polluted if one fire was made of 

 it. I had a house built for me because the village huts 

 are inconvenient, low in roof, and low doorways ; the men 

 build them, and help to cultivate the soil, but the women 

 have to keep them well filled with firewood and supplied 

 with water. They carry the wood, and almost everything 

 else in large baskets, hung to the shoulders, like the 

 Edinburgh fishwives. A man made a long loud prayer to 

 Mulungu last night after dark for rain. 



The sons of Moenekuss have but little of their father's 

 power, but they try to behave to strangers as he did. All 

 our people are in terror of the Manyema, or 3Ianyuema, man- 



