200 



THE MSIKI MGURU VILLAGE. 



were anxious to do business in female slaves, 

 honey, goats, and sheep. Some of the girls were 

 rather comely, despite the tattoo that looked hke 

 boils. None showed the least fear or bashf ulness ; 

 but when the Baloch chaffed them, and asked 

 how they would like the ' men in trowsers ' as 

 husbands, they simply replied, ' Not at all ! ' 



At sunrise on the next morning we resumed 

 our march, following the left bank of the Rufu, 

 which is here called Kirua. Por about three 

 miles it is a broad line of flat boulders, thicket, 

 grass, and sedge, with divers trickling streams 

 between. At the Maurwi village the several 

 branches anastomoze, forming a deep and strong 

 but navigable stream, about 30 yards broad, 

 and fenced with bulmno: masses of veoretation. 

 Thence we bent northward, over rolling ground 

 of red clay, here cultivated, there a thorny jungle, 

 trending to Tamota, another bluff in the hill- 

 curtain of TJsumbara. The paths were crowded 

 with a skin-clad and grass-kilted race, chiefly 

 women and small girls; the latter, by-the-by, 

 displaying very precocious developments, and 

 leading children, each with a button of hair left 

 upon its scraped crown. The adults, toiling under 

 loads of manioc, holcus and maize, pumpkins and 

 plantains, poultry, sugar-cane, and water-pots, in 



