PIPES. 



315 



medicine- cases, and unguent-pots. The fruit of the 

 calabash-tree is also called buyu : split and dried it is 

 used as ladles, but it is too small to answer all the 

 purposes of the gourd. 



The East Africans excel in the manufacture of 

 mtemba or bori — pipe-heads. These are of two kinds. 

 One is made from a soft stone, probably steatite, found 

 in TJsonga, near Utumbara, and on the road to Karag- 

 wah : it is, however, rare, and about ten times the price 

 of the clay bowls, because less liable to break. The 

 other is made of a plastic or pipe-clay, too brittle to 

 serve for pots, and it invariably cracks at the shank, 

 unless bound with wire. Both are hand-made, and are 

 burned in the same rough way as the pottery. At 

 Msene, where the clay pipe is cheapest, the price of the 

 bowl is a khete, or double string of white or blue beads. 

 The pipe of Unyamwezi is of graceful shape, a cone 

 with the apex downwards ; this leaves but little of the 

 hot, oily, and high-smelling tobacco at the bottom, 

 whereas in Europe the contrary seems to be the rule. 

 In Ujiji the bowl is small, rounded, and shallow ; it is, 

 moreover, very brittle. The most artful " mtemba " is 

 made by the people of Uvira : black inside, like other 

 pottery, its exterior is coloured a greyish-white, and is 

 adorned with red by means of the Indian geru (Colco- 

 thar or Crocus Martis). Bhang is always, and tobacco 

 is sometimes, smoked in a water-pipe : the bowl is of 

 huge size, capable of containing at least half a pound, 

 and its upper half is made to incline towards the 

 smoker's face. The Lakist tribes have a graceful 

 variety, like the Indian " chillam," very different from 

 the awkward, unwieldy, and distorted article now 

 fashionable in Unyamwezi and the Eastern countries. 

 The usual pipe-stem is a tube of about 1*5 feet long, 



