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CHANG A NDUMI. 



loop-holed for bows and muskets. The site is 

 raised considerably above the mean level of the 

 country, attesting its antiquity : it is con- 

 cealed from the seaside by a screen of trees 

 and by the winding creek, that leaves the canoes 

 high during the ebb-tide; full water makes it 

 an island. In the centre, also split by huge 

 coiling creepers, and in the last stage of dilapi- 

 dation, are the remains of a Mosque showing 

 signs of a rude art. I was led with some pre- 

 tension to a writing, perpendicularly scratched 

 upon a stuccoed column: it proved to be the 

 name of a lettered Msawahili — Kimangd wd 

 Muamadi (Mohammed) Adi (Walad) Makamc 

 — and the character was more like Kufic than 

 anything that I had ever seen at Ilarar. The 

 ruins of houses are scattered over the enceinte, 

 and a masonry revetted and chumam'd well, sunk 

 8 feet deep in the coralline, yields a sufficiency 

 of water with an earthy taste. There are some 

 others of similar style, but bone-dry, upon the 

 creek-bank — they had probably been built from 

 above, as the Arabs and Indians still do, and 

 allowed to settle. The modern village of cajan- 

 thatched huts, palisaded with trees, and the 

 hovels of a few Wasegejgu savages, who use the 

 ruins as pens for their goats, and stunted high- 



