DIFFICULTIES. 



19 



their heads to decorate tall poles at the entrance. The 

 Wazaramo tribe send, when there is no blood-feud, num- 

 bers to Kaole, where they are known by their peculiar 

 headdress, a single or a double line of pips or dilberries 

 of ochre and grease surrounding the head. They regard 

 the stranger with a wild and childish stare, and when- 

 ever I landed, they slunk away from me, for reasons 

 which will appear in the course of this narrative. The 

 list of floating population concludes with a few Banj^ans, 

 — there are about fifty in Kaole and its vicinity — a 

 race national as the English, who clo their best to im- 

 port into Eastern Africa the cows and curries, the 

 customs and the costumes, of Western India. 



The first visit to Kaole opened up a vista of unex- 

 pected difficulties. My escort had been allowed to leave 

 the Artemise, and their comrades in arms had talked 

 them half-crazy with fear. Zahri, a Baloch, who had 

 visited Unyamwezi, declared that nothing less than 100 

 guards, 150 guns, and several cannon could enable them 

 to fight a way through the perils of the interior. Tulsi, 

 the Banyan, warned them that for three days they must 

 pass amongst savages, who sit on trees and discharge 

 poisoned arrows into the air with such dexterity that 

 they never fail to fall upon the travellers' pate; he 

 strongly advised them therefore, under pain of death, to 

 avoid trees — no easy matter in a land all forest. Then 

 the principal Chomwi assured them that the chiefs of the 

 Wazaramo tribe had sent six several letters to the offi- 

 cials of the coast forbidding the white man to enter their 

 country. Laclha Damha also obscurely hinted that the 

 Wazaramo might make caches of their provisions in the 

 jungle, and that the human stomach cannot march without 

 feeding. Divers clangers of the way were incidentally 

 thrown in : 1 learned for the first time that the Kargadan 



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