72 
JOURNEY FROM KATUNGA TO BOUSSA. 
people should sleep on one side the baggage, and mine on the other, 
at night ; and then, when every thing went safe, I could not but 
say Yarro was a good man. 
After the heat of the day was over, Yarro came, attended by all 
his train. The most extraordinary persons in it were himself and 
the bearers of his spears, which, as before, were six naked young girls, 
from fifteen to seventeen years of age. The only thing they wore 
was a white bandeau, or fillet of white cloth, round the forehead, 
about six inches of the ends flying behind, and a string of beads 
round their waists ; in their right hands they carried three light 
spears each. Their light form, the vivacity of their eyes, and the 
ease with which they appeared to fly over the ground, made them 
appear something more than mortal as they flew alongside of his 
horse, when he was galloping, and making his horse curvet and 
bound. A man with an immense bundle of spears remained behind 
at a little distance, apparently to serve as a magazine for the girls 
to be supplied from, when their master had expended those they 
carried in their hands. 
Yarro is a stout, good-looking man, with large eyes, a handsome 
Roman nose, a short grisly beard, sits well on horseback, and w as 
dressed in a high red Moorish cap, a tobe or large shirt, boots, and 
brass stirrup-irons. His horse’s neck was bedecked with small brass 
bells and charms, and was as fine a dark bay as I ever saw. The 
rest of his attendants were not worth mentioning : some on horse- 
back, some on foot ; and one only had an old musket, which missed 
fire every time they snapped it. The whole of the horse in at- 
tendance might be about fifty, who filed past my door, and then 
halted, when Yarro alighted and came in. 1 had tea prepared for 
him, which he professed to like very much ; but he would not drink 
milk with his tea, as it is forbidden by his fetish. The girls came 
into the house with him, but a cloth for the waist was first given 
them to put on. After tea he returned, and at his request I went 
