THE RUINS. 



125 



various excursions, and when we went out 

 shooting, our difficulty was to shirk an escort. 



Knowing that Arab and Persian colonies had 

 been planted at an early epoch in this part of 

 the Sawahil, I accepted with pleasure a guide 

 to one of the ancient cities. Setting out at 

 8 A.M. with a small body of spearmen, I walked 

 four or five miles S. West of Tanga on the Mtan- 

 gata road over a country dry as Arabian sand, 

 and strewed with the bodies of huge millepedes. 

 The hard red and yellow clays produced in 

 plenty holcus and sesamum, manioc and papaws ; 

 mangoes and pine-apples were rare, but the 

 Jamli, or Indian damson (in Arabic Zam and in 

 Kisawahili Mzambarani), the egg-plant, and the 

 toddy-tree grew wild. The baobabs were in new 

 leaf, the fields were burned in readiness for 

 rain, and the peasants dawdled about, patting 

 the clods with bits of wood. At last we tra- 

 versed a Khor, or lagoon drained by the receding 

 tide, and insulating the ruins : then, after a 

 walk of five miles over crab-mounds, we sighted 

 our destination. Erom afar it resembled an 

 ancient castle. Entering by a gap in the en- 

 ceinte, I found a parallelogram some 200 yards 

 long, of solid coralline or lime, in places rent 

 by the roots of sturdy trees, well bastioned and 



