OUR WARES ARE REJECTED 167 



poor tobacco, as they can buy it good and cheap in the 

 immediate neighbourhood. Both sexes are very fond of 

 chewing it. Coffee is bought of the Aro through the inter- 

 mediary of the Kerre. The population of the whole of Eeshiat 

 is about 2,000 or 3,000. 



In spite of the variety and excellence of the goods we had 

 brought for barter we were not able to buy anything here but 

 dhurra, fish, milk, and a few trifles, not because the Eeshiat did 

 not care to part with their cattle, but because they did not 

 fancy anything we had to offer in exchange. Iron was worthless 

 and copper and brass were of little value, which rather suggested 

 that metals were to be found in the neighbourhood. 'Not were 

 stuffs much sought after either, and it was only in course of 

 time that our red and blue Masai beads became the fashion. 

 What they daily asked for, and what we might have bought 

 any amount of cattle and donkeys for, were first Mborro and 

 then Tcharra or Tchalla beads, of which they had but a few, 

 and those probably heirlooms, as they were very much the 

 worse for wear already. 



Mborro beads are about the size of a hazel-nut, of an 

 irregularly round shape, and are made out of transparent 

 quartz of a cornelian red colour. They are evidently of native 

 manufacture, though we could not ascertain by what means 

 the holes were bored in the balls of quartz. The Eeshiat did 

 not make them themselves, but got them in barter from the 

 Marie, a tribe living on the northern shore of Lake Stefanie. 

 Most of the Eeshiat women wore two or three of these beads, 

 each threaded by itself on a hair from the tail of a giraffe, 

 and only a few had more than this. None of our people had 

 ever seen any beads at all like these, and, in spite of all later 

 inquiries, we were never able to ascertain where they came 

 from originally. 



By Tcharra beads the Eeshiat understood long, opaque, 



