THE MUSTER. 



129 



making up the whole party to a total of 132 souls. They 

 were drafted into the men of Muinyi Wazira, whose open 

 indulgence in stingo had made his society at meals dis- 

 tasteful to Moslem sticklers for propriety. He was an 

 able interpreter, speaking five African dialects, which is 

 not, however, in these lands a remarkable feat, and 

 when sober, he did at first the work of three men. But 

 linguists are a dangerous race, as the annals of old India 

 prove : — I doubt a bilingual Eastern man, and if he 

 can speak three languages I do not doubt him at all. 

 Moreover, true to his semi-servile breed — his dam 

 was a Mzaramo slave, and his sire a half-caste Wawa- 

 hili — he began well and he finished badly. His deep un- 

 dying fondness for pombe or holcus beer, kept him in 

 alternate states of maudlin apathy or of violent pug- 

 nacity. He had incurred heavy debts upon the coast. 

 After his arrival at Unyamwezi, letters were sent urging 

 upon the Arabs his instant arrest, but fortunately for 

 him the bailiff and the jailor are not, as the venerable 

 saying declares the schoolmaster to be, abroad. Muinyi 

 "Wazira, however, did not sight the Sea of Ujiji in my 

 service, and his five messmates, who each received 15 

 dollars' worth of cloth for the journey thither and 

 back, were not more fortunate. 



Before marching from Zungomero into the mountains 

 I will order, for the reader's inspection, a muster of the 

 party, and enlist his sympathies in behalf of the un- 

 happy being who had to lead it. 



Said bin Salim may pass on : he has been described 

 in Blackwood (February, 1858) and he scarcely deserves 

 a second notice. He is followed by his four slaves, in- 

 cluding the boy Faraj, who will presently desert, and 

 without including his acting wife, the lady Halimah. That 

 young person's pug-dog countenance and bulky charms 



VOL. I. K 



