130 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



seem to engross every thought not appropriated to 

 himself. One day, however, my ears detect the loud 

 voice of wail proceeding from the lady Halimah, ac- 

 companying methinks the vigorous performance of a 

 stick ; the peccadillo was — but I eschew scandal and re- 

 quest the lady to advance. 



My companion's gun carrier, Seedy Mubarak Bombay, 

 a negro from Uhiao, has twice been sketched in Black- 

 wood (March, 1858 and September, 1859), he also 

 requires no further celebrity. My henchman, Muinyi 

 Mabruki, had been selected by his fellow-tribeman 

 Bombay at Zanzibar ; he was the slave of an Arab 

 Shaykh, who willingly let him for the sum of 5 dollars per 

 mensem. Mabruki is the type of the bull headed negro, 

 low-browed, pig- eyed, pug-nosed, and provided by nature 

 with that breadth and power, that massiveness and mus- 

 cularity of jaw, which characterise the most voracious 

 carnivors. He is at once the ugliest and the vainest 

 of the party : his attention to his toilette knows no limit. 

 His temper is execrable, ever in extremes, now wild 

 with spirits, then dogged, depressed, and surly, then 

 fierce and violent. He is the most unhandy of men, 

 he spoils everything entrusted to him, and pre- 

 sently he will be forbidden to engage in any pursuit 

 beyond ass-leading and tent-pitching. These worthies 

 commenced well. They excited our admiration by 

 braving noon-day suns, and by snoring heavily 

 through the rawest night with nothing to warm them 

 but a few smouldering embers. In an evil hour com- 

 passion-touched, I threw over their shoulders a pair 

 of English blankets, which in the shortest time com- 

 pletely demoralised them. They learned to lie a-bed o' 

 mornings, and when called up their shrugged shoul- 

 ders and shrinking forms were wrapped tightly round, 



