A WONDERFUL ENGINEERING WORK. 
213 
a load of fancy cloth, besides little odds and ends 
and sixty gun-cartridges, which I think he prized most 
of all. 
Among the products of the country, that I have not 
mentioned, were sweet potatoes, a kind of tapioca, 
beans, and excellent clear honey; the stock consisted 
of sheep with fat curly tails, bullocks, and goats, and 
I should say the people represented a happy and pros¬ 
perous community, with very little work to do, and plenty 
of time to do it in. The huts in which the Wa-kiboso 
live are neatly made of banana-leaves, and shaped like 
beehives ; each is enclosed by a strong palisade, some 
two to three feet thick, of thin poles stacked together, 
and enclosing a rectangular space.* The main village 
is formed of a succession of these palisaded enclosures 
running into each other, the means of communication 
being a narrow gateway, across which can be drawn at 
will a sliding door consisting of a heavy slab of thick 
wood pierced with loopholes, so that the whole forms 
a real stronghold, almost impregnable against hostile 
natives; I should say it would prove a tough nut to 
crack even for a European force unprovided with a 
mountain battery. 
We paid Sina one or two visits inside his fortress, 
and examined the excavations he was making, at this 
time, which were really wonderful, and proved him to 
be no mean engineer. Ilis object was to undermine 
* A considerable portion of the stockades consist of green saplings, three 
inches in diameter, planted close together, the interstices being tilled in with 
dried ones. 
