UNYAMUEZI VILLAGES. 
65 
shoulders and elbows chocolate-coloured ; feathers of 
the crop forked ; and legs grey. The crested crane is 
a slaty black or blue colour, the size of a heron, with 
shorter hackles. His head is very handsome, the con- 
trasts of colour being beautiful. He has a black bill, 
a top of rich black feathers, behind it a straw-coloured 
bunch of four-inch-long fibres, having a few black 
featherlets near their roots ; a chalky-white bare skin 
on the cheeks, and a hanging scarlet wattle under- 
neath, with quantities of beautiful blue down on the 
rump ; his call at night when roosting is harsh and 
grating. Fish weighing three and four pounds were 
occasionally caught by our men in pools, but the na- 
tives would not eat them, as they had not come out 
of the sea. However, with the addition of eggs, we 
thought these mud-fish (Makambara) as good as any 
we had ever tasted. 
The villages of the country are fortified by high 
palisades ; many of them are of immense strength, hav- 
ing a broad dry ditch, a quickset hedge of euphorbia, 
a covered- way, and then a palisading. Sometimes a 
very good attempt at a bastion of mud is made, to 
give a flanking fire of arrows. Outside, opposite the 
only entry of one village, an old hoe was stuck on a 
mound, and protected by an awning of bark cloth : 
we were told this was to repel the evil eye. To 
give a general idea of these villages, I may mention 
that, on entering at the low doorway, you see before 
you an avenue of palisades ; to the right and left sets 
of houses are similarly railed off. Until lodging had 
been obtained inside the village, we rested with our kit 
at the " iwansa " or club-house. It was a long room, 12 
by 1 8 feet, with one door, a low flat roof, well blackened 
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