314 EETUEN FROM LAKE BARINGO TO THE COAST 



' Leibon, mundo liuyo ? ' 



' Yes, yes, mundo huyo,' we replied with assumed gravity. 

 Then the siege on our beads was opened with cries of ' Mads- 

 chunbe manene sana sana, haua ! ' (' Ah ! what great, what very 

 great, men they are ! ') repeated again and again in chorus. 

 Then one began a solo. ' Ah ! ' he said in a loud voice, ' they 

 are no madschunbe, they are gods ! Look at their white hands, 

 at their beautiful clothes ; their feet, too, are quite different from 

 ours,' and so on, the clouds of incense becoming thicker and 

 thicker, till at last our flatterers got the presents they had been 

 hankering after and went off in great delight. 



A further march past many villages brought us to the 

 district known as Zaovi, or the land of fine oxen. Caravans 

 often come up here to buy cattle, so that the influence of the 

 coast is very distinctly marked. The natives are better provided 

 with stuffs and beads, the a|)rons made of metal beads are of 

 rarer occurrence, and many of the women cover their breasts, 

 as do the bibi of Zanzibar, with lessos. Both sexes are very 

 fond of the blue murtinarok beads, and grand dandies often wear 

 six or eight rows of them round their waists. Stuff mantles, 

 smeared with reddish-brown grease and frayed out at the edges 

 into a fringe some eight or twelve inches long, are worn fastened 

 on the right shoulder. 



There is an uninhal^ited tract some thirty-seven miles 

 broad between Zaovi and Kikumbuliu which is rather flatter 

 than the more northerly districts, and is shut in on the west 

 by the low southerly spurs of the Ulu range. On the east 

 the land first sinks rapidly and then rises again to assume 

 once more, beyond the Azi river, something of the plateau 

 character. The country is fairly well wooded, the vegetation 

 consisting chiefly of knotty trees, now leafless and as rigid as if 

 cast in metal, with a few acacias and fan-palms marking the 

 beds of the streams, which were either dried up or contained 



