130 
THE KILIMA-HJAB 0 EXBEEITIOK. 
pay them the remainder of their wages and let them 
go. Or it may have been a message from Mandara, 
asking me to overlook their mutiny of the day before, 
and send them back to the coast with their money and 
food allowance, which decided me to this act of for¬ 
giveness, for such powerful advocacy was not to be 
slighted. Accordingly these creatures were summoned 
from Mandara 5 s village, ranged in line by my Zanzi¬ 
baris, and received their 44 chits, 55 or slips of paper, 
which they were to present for payment to the Consul 
on the coast. On each 44 chit 55 was written the 
amount of the man’s wages, minus fines for mis¬ 
behaviour, or plus a present for well-doing. Further, 
perhaps, was a line or two of writing to serve as a 
44 character, 55 good or bad, as the case may be, which 
Captain Gissing, when he payed them at Mombasa, 
would doubtless enlarge into a stern upbraiding or 
kindly commendation. I fear, however, from what I 
remember of these men, that he would have been more 
occupied in rebuking than commending, for a worse 
stamp of men than the Rabai porters I have rarely met 
with in Africa, and I think most other travellers 5 ex¬ 
perience is the same. Their first evangelist, Krapf, 
describes them in despair as a 44 crooked and indifferent 
generation of heathens, 55 and although the generation 
of which he wrote may have passed away, the one to 
which it has given place amply illustrates the principle 
of heredity by perpetuating with increased force the 
ancestral badness. 
It was with considerable relief that I dismissed 
them from my settlement in Caga and turned to my 
faithful Zanzibaris, who were setting to work with 
bright activity to make our little colony inhabitable. 
Twenty of these Zanzibaris were allowed to lie by and 
