closely interpreted) was good-tempered, respectful, and fairly brave, but could not always be trusted with property, as he felt now and then an irresistible temptation to appropriate a little of his master's cloth and beads. However, he made a good head-man, for if lenient to his own occasional dishonesty he watched well that no one else robbed me. The second in command was Abdallah, another old Congo traveller, and a learned Arab scribe. Excelling Kiongwe in politeness and suavity of demeanour, he also erred somewhat as regards strict honesty, but was on the whole a very good fellow. His manners and mode of life. were quite fastidiously gentlemanly, and his person was always, and under every circumstance, clean and sprucely apparelled. Without being in the least religious he had a gusto for prayers, and all his leisure moments were employed in the rapid and glib recital of the Koran. I once asked him what would be his ideal mode of life. "Kusoma Muungu, sikuzote""To be always praying to God," he replied, with the faintest hypocritical tone of self-satisfaction in his

voice.

Then in order of precedence came Mabruki and Athmani, two natural history collectors, men who, by accompanying several preceding African travellers, had acquired a rough knowledge of preparing specimens. The further history of these two gentlemen will be disclosed as this narrative proceeds. My two cooks deserve a word of mention. Faraji, the elder, was a busy old man of the Yao tribe, who had accompanied Cameron across Africa and further served a three-years' term on the Congo. He was the strongest man in the caravan, and his only fault was a somewhat large style of housekeeping, by which himself and his

colleagues were amply fed out of the remains of my dinner. Cephas, the junior cook, often called Cephassi by the soft-tongued Zanzibaris, was originally a freed Nyassa slave. Educated at the Nassick Mission,

near Bombay, he had been taught to cook in a way that generally procured him good situations. He had visited England and there acquired certain useful expletives which served him as augmentative, diminu

tive, intensifying, and modifying adverbs, and lent great expression to his simple English. Beneath the rank of the men already cited, whose wages were specially fixed, came a troop of Zanzibaris on their promotion, who received a uniform rate of five dollars a month. Among these, however, I had noticed already several as good servants or cheerful, conscientious men-Ibrahim and Kadu Stanley, especially. Ibrahim was nick-named "Mčekesaji," a word which you will find translated in Steere's dictionary “a merry, laughing body." Kadu Stanley was remarkable as having been an old servant of Stanley, to whom he had been given by Mtesa, King of Buganda. After the Zanzibaris came a herd of Rabai and Mombasa men, solely remarkable for their hopelessly bad disposition and for the quaint combination of Christian and heathen names they assumed. I had only engaged them to carry the bulk of my goods to Kilima-njaro, and when we had attained that goal I took leave of them without regret.

CHAPTER IV.

TAITA TO KILIMA-NJARO.

HAVING once more reassembled the men, rearranged the burdens, and left behind what we could not carry in the kind charge of a missionary who was temporarily residing on the summit of Ndara Hill, we started on a day's journey to Mwatate, passing through dense thorny bush, rocky defiles, and dried-up stream courses, and finally reaching, to my joy, the first channel of running water we had met with since leaving the vicinity of the coast. The ground along its banks had been cleared and cultivated; we crossed the stream on a rickety wooden bridge, and passed up through fields of maize and brakes of sugar-cane to our camping-place, under an umbrageous tree. Here pleasant-mannered natives greeted us; we paid the small present demanded as an indemnity for passing through their country and drinking "their" water, and then enjoyed a welcome rest amid surroundings of quiet beauty. The next day we were travelling through a Swiss-like country of mountain passes and richly fertile valleys, and at length came to Bura, a campingplace at the foot of the strangely peaked mountains of that name. Here we were nearly having a skirmish with the natives, who demanded an exorbitant pay