Suahili-Land and the Wasuahili. 69 
occur. A woman has long besought her husband in 
vain for a new dress. Every other art having failed, 
she is found by and by to have been seized by the 
Pepo. The Mganga does his best to cast him out, but 
without success. At length it is discovered that the 
demon will not leave his abode till the coveted dress 
be laid at his feet, that is, at the feet of the woman ! 
Shallow as the trick may appear, it often succeeds. In 
treating cases of this kind, the Mganga has his patient 
entirely in his hands, and he often makes the affair 
very remunerative to himself. Many of the Wasuahili, 
however, have learned by experience the inefificacy of 
their own remedies. On the other hand, they have 
heard of the skill of Europeans in the healing art, 
and they believe in it. We have often been applied to 
for medicines, and we have sometimes prescribed for 
them. The most impossible cases have been brought 
to us — lepers, men blind from their birth, and we have 
even been asked for a dawa (medicine) to make the 
whiskers grow ! 
The language is called Kisuahili. It is in some 
respects exceedingly simple, but in others it is very 
complex. It is easy to acquire a vocabulary sufficient 
to make one's self understood, but to speak it as a 
native is a more difficult acquisition. There are but 
few foreigners who speak it at all well, while most 
deal out a miserably corrupt and ill-sounding jargon. 
The language varies slightly at the different places 
along the coast. The purest dialect is probably that 
spoken at Mombasa. Kisuahili is the key to the in- 
terior, as all the dialects spoken by the agricultural 
people of Eastern Africa are allied to it — all belong to 
one great family stock. The languages spoken by 
