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THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



There is, however, besides Arabs and Wasawahili, a 

 large floating population of the pastoral clan called 

 Watosi, and fugitives from Uhha. In 1858 the chief of 

 Msene was the Sultan Masanza. Both he and Funza, his 

 brother, were hospitable and friendly to travellers, espe- 

 cially to the Arabs, who but a few years ago beat off 

 with their armed slaves a large plundering party of the 

 ferocious Watuta. This chief has considerable power, and 

 the heads of many criminals elevated upon poles in front 

 of his several villages show that he rules with a firm 

 hand. He is never approached by a subject without 

 the clapping of hands and the kneeling which in these 

 lands are the honours paid to royalty. He was a large- 

 limbed, gaunt, and sinewy old man, dressed in a dirty 

 Subai or Arab check, over a coating of rancid butter, with 

 a broad brass disk, neatly arabesqued, round his neck, 

 with a multitude of little pigtails where his head was 

 not bald, and with some thirty sambo or flexible wire 

 rings deforming, as if by elephantiasis, his ankles. Like 

 the generality of sultans, he despises beads as an article 

 of decoration, preferring coils of brass or copper. He 

 called several times at the house occupied by the Expe- 

 dition, and on more than one occasion brought with him 

 a bevy of wives, whose deportment was, I regret to say, 

 rather naive than decorous. 



Msene, like Unyanyembe, is not a town, but a mass 

 of detached settlements, which are unconscious of a re- 

 gular street. To the northwards lie the villages of the 

 Sultan — Kwihangd and Yovu. These are surrounded 

 with a strong stockade, a deep moat, and a thick milk- 

 bush hedge, intended for defence. The interior is oc- 

 cupied by thatched circular huts, divided by open 

 squarelike spaces, and wynds and alleys are formed by 

 milk-bush hedges and palisades. There are distinct 



