FRESH DESERTIONS. 



39 



had disappeared. This difficulty was, of course, attri- 

 buted to the Wak'hutu porters ; probably the missing 

 things had been sold for food by the Goanese and 

 the son of Ramji: I could not therefore complain of 

 the excuse. 



From the Msawahili Fundi, — fattore, manciple or stew- 

 ard — -of a small caravan belonging to an Arab merchant, 

 Hamid bin Sulayyam, I purchased for thirty -five cloths, 

 about thrice its value, a little single-fold tent of thin 

 American domestics, through which sun and rain pene- 

 trated with equal facility. Like the cloth-houses of the 

 Arab travellers generally, it was gable-shaped, six or 

 seven feet high, about eight feet long by four broad, 

 and so light that with its bamboo-poles and its pegs it 

 scarcely formed a load for a man. On the 9th February, 

 we descended from the ridge upon which the kraal was 

 placed, and traversed a deep swamp of black mud, dotted 

 in the more elevated parts with old salt-pans and pits, 

 where broken pottery and blackened lumps of clay still 

 showed traces of human handiwork. Beyond this low- 

 land, the track, striking off from the river-valley and 

 turning to the right, entered toilsome ground. We 

 crossed deep and rocky ravines, with luxuriant vege- 

 tation above, and with rivulets at the bottom trickling 

 towards the Malagarazi, by scrambling down and swarm- 

 ing up the roughest steps of rock, boulder, and knotted 

 tree-root. Beyond these difficulties lay woody and 

 stony hills, whose steep and slippery inclines were 

 divided by half a dozen waters, all more or less trouble- 

 some to cross. The porters, who were in a place of 

 famine, insisted upon pushing on to the utmost of their 

 strength : after six hours' march, I persuaded them to 

 halt in the bush upon a rocky hill, where the neigh- 

 bouring descent supplied water. The Fundi visited 



D 4 



