OUR WARES 



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8 yards long ; 100 pieces of stuff of a fine deep red colour, 

 called bender a assilia, 32 yards long; and besides these chief 

 pieces, various lengths of first- and second-rate qualities, the 

 former of Arab manufacture. We had a great quantity of 

 beads, especially of the so-called Masai beads, which are of 

 glass and from about the twelfth to the eighth of an inch 

 in diameter, of a red (samesame), blue (madschibahari), or 

 white (aschanga meupe) colour, altogether amounting to about 

 45 cwt. ; with some of the so-called ukuta, which are blue- 

 glass Paris beads about the size of a pea ; common white 

 beads, called sambaj ; green, blue or light brown glass rings, 

 called murtinarok, less than half an inch in diameter ; some 

 very fine tiny red and turquoise-blue beads for the people of 

 Kilimanjaro ; and, lastly, a great stock of large mixed beads, 

 known collectively as mboro. In addition to all these, we took 

 as an experiment some very fine pale brown, blue, and white 

 beads, which the house of Filonardi had just begun to introduce 

 under the name of Oriental beads. Our stock of iron wire 

 [senenge\ one-fifth of an inch thick, made more than 100 loads ; 

 that of strong brass and copper wire only fifteen loads. It is 

 not possible to take metal from the east coast in the form of 

 rods. But I have by no means exhausted the list of our goods. 

 We had nearly 8 cwt. of gunpowder, in small cases, each 

 containing about 11 lb., and many thousand caps for large 

 muzzle-loaders, besides tin, lead, fine wire (mikufu), cowries, 

 knives, scissors, looking-glasses, picture-books, jointed jump- 

 ing dolls, gilt-wire bracelets and rings, daggers, naval and 

 cavalry sabres, with many other miscellaneous trifles which 

 happened to take our fancy or come in our way, and which we 

 thought might be useful in our dealings with the black chief- 

 tains whose favour and co-operation it was so important for 

 us to secure. 



Jumbe Kimemeta, to whom the packing of the merchandise 



