258 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



directed the slaves to seek it. Some difficulty was at 

 first made about restitution : the Arab law of " lakit," 

 or things trove, being variable, complicated, and alto- 

 gether opposed to our ideas. However, two cloths were 

 given to the man who had charge of it, and the 

 Jemadar and Said bin Salim were sent to recover it 

 by any or all means. The merchants were not offended. 

 They consented to sell for the sum of thirty-five dollars 

 a strong and serviceable but an old and obstinate 

 African ass, which after carrying my companion for 

 many a mile, at last broke its heart when toiling up 

 the steeps from whose summit the fair waters of the 

 Central Lake were first sighted. Moreover, they proposed 

 that for safety and economy the two caravans should 

 travel together under a single flag, and thus combine to 

 form a total of 190 men. These Coast-Arabs travelled 

 in comfort. The brother of Said Mohammed had mar- 

 ried the daughter of Fundikira, Sultan of Unyanyembe, 

 and thus the family had a double home, on the coast 

 and in the interior. . All the chiefs of the caravan car- 

 ried with them wives and female slaves, negroid beauties, 

 tall, bulky and " plenty of them," attired in tulip-hues, 

 cochineal and gamboge, who walked the whole way, and 

 who when we passed them displayed an exotic modesty 

 by drawing their head- cloths over cheeks which we were 

 little ambitious to profane. They had a multitude of 

 Fundi, or managing men, and male slaves, who bore their 

 personal bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage, drugs 

 and comforts, stores and provisions, and who were al- 

 ways early at the ground to pitch, to surround with a 

 " pai," or dwarf drain, and to bush for privacy, with 

 green boughs, their neat and light ridge-tents of Ameri- 

 can domestics. Their bedding was as heavy as ours, 

 and even their poultry travelled in wicker cages. This 



