THE WAZARAMO. 



Ill 



walls are of holcus canes, rudely puddled ; the- better 

 description are built of long and broad sheets of Myora- 

 bo and Mkora bark, propped against strong uprights 

 inside, and bound horizontally by split bamboos tied out- 

 side with fibrous cord. The heavy pent-shaped roof 

 often provided with a double thatch of grass and reeds, 

 projects eaves, which are high enough to admit a man 

 without stooping ; these are supported by a long cross 

 bar resting on perpendiculars, tree-trunks, barked and 

 smoothed, forked above, and firmly planted in the 

 ground. Along the outer marginal length of this 

 verandah lies a border of large logs polished by long 

 sittings. The interior is dark and windowless, and 

 party- walls of stiff grass- cane divide it into several com- 

 partments. The list of furniture comprises a dwarf 

 cartel about 4 feet long by 16 inches broad, upon which 

 even the married couple manages to make itself com- 

 fortable ; a stool cut out of a single block, a huge wooden 

 mortar, mtungi or black earthen pots, gourds, ladles of 

 cocoa-nut, cast- off clothes, whetstones, weapons, nets, and 

 in some places creels for fishing. Grain is ground upon 

 an inclined slab of fine-grained granite or syenite, some- 

 times loose, at other times fixed in the ground with a 

 mud plaster ; the classical Eastern handmill is unknown 

 in this part of Africa. The inner roof and its rafters, 

 shining with a greasy soot, in wet weather admit drench- 

 ing lines of leakage, and the only artifice applied to the 

 flooring is the tread of the proprietors. The door is a 

 close hurdle of parallel holcus- straw bound to five or 

 six cross-bars with strips of bark. In a village there 

 will be from four to twelve " bungalows the rest are 

 the normal haycock and beehive hut of Africa. Where 

 enemies are numerous the settlements are palisaded ; 

 each has, moreover, but a single entrance^ which is ap- 



