TANG A BAY. 



115 



shape, Tanga, the sail, or kilt, is five miles deep 

 by four broad, and the entrance is partially bar- 

 red by a coralline bank, the site of the ancient 

 Arab settlement. Tanga Islet, a lump of green, 

 still contains a scatter of huts, and a small square 

 stone Gurayza (fort), whose single gun lies dis- 

 mounted : it is well wooded, but the water obtain- 

 ed by digging pits in the sand is scarcely pota- 

 ble. As a breakwater it is imperfect during the 

 N. East trades : when a high sea rolls up ships 

 must anchor under the mainland, and when the 

 S. West monsoon blows home it is almost impos- 

 sible to leave the harbour without accident. The 

 bay, embanked with abundant verdure and sur- 

 rounded by little settlements, receives the contents 

 of two fresh- water streamlets : westward (SIP) is 

 the Mtofu, and N. of it (355^) the Mto Mvo-ni ^ 

 or Kiboko-ni — Hippopotamus river. The latter 

 at several miles distant from its mouth must be 

 crossed in a ferry ; it alffords sweet water, but the 

 people of Tanga prefer scratching into their sand 



1 Mvo is the Mvubu of the Kafir tongues : here the gener- 

 ally used term for the Hippopotamus is Kiboko. I agree with 

 the Rev. Mr Wakefield (p. 307), that the diminutive forms, 

 Kiboko, plural Yiboko (Yiboko-ni, p. 316), are preferred to the 

 root-name Boko, plural Maboko. It may, however, be doubt- 

 ed if Boko, like Lima, be not the intensitive of Mboko and 

 Mlima, a hippopotamus and a mountain. 



