THE WABWARI ISLANDERS. 



113 



of the old cock to the Arab, and the savoury " fumet " 

 of the aged he-goat to the Baloch. After a short halt, 

 we moved a little northwards to Mzimu, a strip of 

 low land dividing the waters from their background of 

 grassy rise, through which a swampy line winds from 

 the hills above. Here we found canoes drawn up, and 

 the islanders flocked from their hamlets to change their 

 ivory and slaves, goats and provisions, for salt and beads, 

 wire and cloth. The Wabwari are a peculiar, and by 

 no means a comely race. The men are habited in the 

 usual mbugu, tigered with black stripes, and tailed 

 like leopard-skins : a wisp of fine grass acts as fillet, and 

 their waists, wrists, and ankles, their knob-sticks, spears, 

 and daggers, are bound with rattan-bark, instead of the 

 usual wire. The women train their frizzly locks into 

 two side-bits resembling bear's ears ; they tie down the 

 bosom with a cord, apparently for the purpose of distort- 

 ing nature in a way that is most repulsive to European 

 eyes ; and they clothe themselves with the barbarous 

 goat-skin, or the scantiest kilts of bark-cloth. The 

 wives of the chiefs wear a load of brass and bead or- 

 naments; and, like the ladies of Wafanya, they walk 

 about with patriarchal staves five feet long, and knobbed 

 at the top. 



We halted for a day at Mzimu in Ubwari, where 

 Kannena demanded seventy khete of blue-porcelain 

 beads as his fee for safe conduct to the island. Sud- 

 denly, at 6 p.m., he informed me that he must move to 

 other quarters. We tumbled into the boats, and after 

 enjoying two hours of pleasant progress with a northerly 

 current, and a splendid moonshine, which set off a scene 

 at once wild and soft as any 



" That savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew," 



VOL. II. 



I 



