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THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



One of the inducements for an African to travel is to 

 afford himself more meat than at home. His fondness 

 for the article conquers at times even his habitual im- 

 providence. He preserves it by placing large lumps 

 upon a little platform of green reeds, erected upon 

 uprights about eighteen inches high, and by smoking it 

 with a slow fire. Thus prepared, and with the addition 

 of a little salt, the provision will last for several days, 

 and the porters will not object to increase their loads by 

 three or four pounds of the article, disposed upon a 

 long stick like gigantic kababs. They also jerk their 

 stores by exposing the meat upon a rope, or spread upon 

 a flat stone, for two or three days in the sun ; it loses 

 a considerable portion of nutriment, but it packs into 

 a conveniently small compass. This jerked meat, when 

 dried, broken into small pieces, and stored in gourds or 

 in pots full of clarified and melted butter, forms the 

 celebrated travelling provision in the East called kavur- 

 meh : it is eaten as a relish with rice and other boiled 

 grains. When meat is not attainable and good water 

 is scarce, the African severs one of the jugulars of a 

 bullock and fastens upon it like a leech. This custom 

 is common in Karagwah and the other northern king- 

 doms, and some tribes, like the Wanyika, near Mombasah, 

 churn the blood with milk. 



The daily food of the poor is grain, generally holcus, 

 maize, or bajri (panicum); wheat is confined to the 

 Arabs, and rice grows locally, as in the Indian penin- 

 sula. The inner Africans, like the semi-civilised Arabs 

 of Zanzibar, the Wasawahili, and the Wamrima, ignore 

 the simple art of leavening bread by acidulated whey, 

 sour bean-paste, and similar contrivances universally 

 practised in Oman. Even the rude Indian chapati or 

 scone is too artificial for them, and they have not 



