THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



morning and at night-fall. They employ the cocoa-nut 

 extensively : like the Arabs of Zanzibar, they boil their 

 rice in the thick juice of the rasped albumen kneaded 

 with water, and they make cakes of the pulp mixed 

 with the flour of various grains. This immoderate use 

 of the fruit which, according to the people, is highly re- 

 frigerant, causes, it is said, rheumatic and other diseases. 

 A respectable man seen eating a bit of raw or undressed 

 cocoa-nut would be derided by his fellows. They chew 

 tobacco with lime, like the Arabs, who, under the influence 

 of Wahhabi tenets, look upon the pipe as impure, and 

 they rarely smoke it like the Washenzi. 



The Wamrima as well as the Wasawahili are distin- 

 guished by two national peculiarities of character. 

 The first is a cautiousness bordering upon cowardice, 

 derived from their wild African blood ; the second 

 is an unusual development of cunning and deceit- 

 fulness, which partially results from the grafting of 

 the semi-civilised Semite upon the Hamite. The 

 Arabs, who are fond of fanciful etymology, facetiously 

 derive the race-name " Msawahili " from " Sawwd 

 hilah,"* he played a trick, and the people boast of it, 



* Dr. Krapf, in the Preface to his " Outlines of the Kisuaheli Language," 

 deduces the national name from Siwa 'a hilah, which would mean exactly 

 the reverse of astute -^" without guile." He has made other curious lin- 

 guistic errors: he translates, for instance, the " Quilimancy " River — the 

 ancient name for the Ozi or Dana — "water from the mountain," after a 

 Germanic or Indo-European fashion, whereas, in the Zangian languages, the 

 compound word would, if admissible, signify " a mountain of water." It is 

 curious that the learned and accurate Mr. Cooley, who has charged Dr. 

 Krapf with " puerile etymologies," should have fallen into precisely the 

 same error. In the "Geography of N'yassi," p. 19, "Mazingia" is ren- 

 dered the " road or land along the water," but Maji Njia, if the elision of 

 the possessive affix ya be allowed in prose as in poetry — Maji Njfa for 

 Maji ya Njia — would mean only the "water of the road." As a specimen 

 of Dr. Krapf 's discoveries in philology the following may suffice. In his 



