THE START-MOMBASA TO TAITA. 
45 
Next, tlie beads had to be considered. It was neces¬ 
sary to take with the expedition different kinds and 
colours, for in East Africa, as I remarked on the 
River Congo, there are most varied and capricious 
tastes to consult among the natives, and scarcely two 
villages concur in their canons of taste. Thus, you 
must take different sizes of blue bead, called by the 
Wa-swahili maji bahri , or “ sea-water/ 5 for although an 
entire tribe may affect one shade of blue in their bead 
necklaces, yet each individual will have special opinion 
as to the correct size of the bead. Then there are 
large ruby-red beads and white ones, and tiny pink 
and medium-sized black, and transparent blue. When 
the beads are bought in sacks from the traders, they 
are only threaded on rotten, worthless thread, and it 
is impossible to trade wdth them before they have been 
re-threaded securely. For this purpose you purchase 
on the coast a stout twine, made, I fancy, from the 
fibre of a Raphia palm, and then you set your men to 
work to re-thread all the beads. This task, of course, 
gives them immense opportunities for quiet pilfering, 
for the beads in their eyes are almost like coinage ; so 
not only must you keep a sharp eye on the little groups 
of four or five merry black men who are so blithely 
slipping bead after bead along the yellow strings of 
palm-fibre, but each man’s lot must be carefully 
weighed before and after its transference from the old 
thread to the new. Even with every precaution some 
loss always takes place during the process, and a day 
or two after this task is over you are surprised and 
grieved to see one of your most trusted followers 
reeling about the streets of the coast town, drunk on 
the proceeds of the misappropriated beads. 
If you are likely to travel through countries ranged 
