a blacksmith's shop. 
295 
was for sale in our camp, would bring their flour, to- 
bacco, or sweet potato to barter. In this way suffi- 
cient variety was generally to be had, and both parties 
were accommodated. We could obtain milk daily 
from our own cows, though they were but poor 
milkers. 
The intoxicating drink sent us pretty often by the 
king was called m'wenge, and made from the millet 
murwa. Kamarasi's officer, on presenting a jar of it, 
would say, he " had brought it with the king's compli- 
ments," and that " we should find it as pure as water," 
but it tasted like the dregs of a beer-cask, and I won- 
der how his highness could get tipsy upon such coarse 
spirit. The person who brought the jar always went 
through the form of tasting it, and the vessel was 
never required to be returned, as was the case in 
Uganda. Near the king s residence a market for 
this " grog," and for meat, fowls, firewood, &c, was 
held almost daily, our servants calling the place a 
bazaar ; but we were never allowed to cross over the 
Kuffo river to inspect it. 
A visit to the blacksmith's shop in any country al- 
ways repays one, and there the gossip is usually heard. 
In Africa it seems to be the same, and idlers always 
lounged about the Unyoro blacksmith's. The " shop" 
was a ten -feet -high awning made of the stalks of 
sorghum. One lad sat on the ground and blew a 
double-handled and double-nosed bellows, the air from 
which passed through a detached earthen tube upon 
the live charcoal. Two men squatted naked all but a 
leathern waist-cover, hammering, talking, and smoking 
all at the same time. Their anvil was a flat boulder, 
and the hammers bolts of iron, the shape of large 
