132 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFEICA. 



voracity which induced indigestion once a day; and, 

 finally, a habit of frequent phlebotomy which, deferred, 

 made them sick. They had also their merits. Valen- 

 tine was a good specimen of the neat-handed and 

 ready-witted Indian : in the shortest time he learned to 

 talk Kisawahili sufficiently for his own purposes, and 

 to read a chronometer and thermometer sufficiently for 

 ours: he had, however, one blemish, an addiction to 

 " fudging," which rendered the severest overseeing 

 necessary. A "Davy do a' things," he was as clever at 

 sewing a coat as at cooking a curry. Gaetano had a 

 curious kind of tenderness when acting nurse, and, 

 wonderful to relate, an utter disregard for danger : he 

 would return alone through a night-march of jungle to 

 fetch his forgotten keys, and would throw himself into 

 an excited mob of natives with a fearlessness which, 

 contrasted with his weakly body, never failed to turn 

 their wrath into merriment. He suffered severely from 

 the secondaries of fever, which, in his case, as in his 

 master's, assumed a cerebral form. At Msene he was 

 seized with fits resembling epilepsy; and as he seemed 

 every month to become more addle-headed and scatter- 

 brained, more dirty and untidy, more wasteful and 

 forgetful, more loath to work without compulsion, and 

 more prone to start and feed the fire with ghee when 

 it was the scarcest of luxuries, I could not but attri- 

 bute many of his delinquencies to disease. 



The Baloch are now to appear. My little party were 

 servants of His Highness the Sayyid Majid of Zanzi- 

 bar, who had detached them as an escort upon the usual 

 " deputation -allowance " of ten dollars per mensem. 

 They had received the command of their master to 

 accompany me wherever I might please to march, and 



