The Pig continued his tricks, and the travellers were heavily taxed and robbed at every step. The porters, too, refused to advance, declaring that they should be murdered, as the Watuta, their great enemies, were out on a foray: finally, they ran away and hid themselves. These Watuta, they said, were desperate fellows, who had invaded their country and killed their wives and children, and had despoiled them of everything they held dear. Baraka also showed the white feather. Speke, however, put on a bold front, and declared that he would return to Cazé and collect men who would not be afraid to accompany him to Usui. He carried his plan into execution, rejoined Grant, and obtained two fresh guides, Bui and Nasib, a steady old traveller. Still he was unable to obtain fresh porters to carry on his baggage, and he was once more obliged to part from Grant.

Having gone some way, Speke was taken seriously ill, while, again, his guides refused to proceed. This occurred while he was in the district of a chief, named Lumérési, who insisted on his coming to his village, feeling jealous that he had remained in that of another inferior chief. Lumérési was not in when Speke arrived, but on his return, at night, he beat all his drums to celebrate the event, and fired a musket; in reply to which Speke fired three shots. The chief, however, though he pretended to be very kind, soon began to beg for everything he saw. Speke, who felt that his best chance of recovering from his illness was change of air, ordered his men to prepare a hammock in which he might be conveyed. Although he had already given the chief a handsome hongo, or tribute, consisting of a red blanket, and a number of pretty common cloths for his children, no sooner did he begin to move than Lumérési placed himself in his way and declared that he could not bear the idea of his white visitor going to die in the jungle. His true object, however, was to obtain a robe, or deole, which Speke had determined

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not to give him. However, at length, rather than be detained, he presented the only one which he had preserved for the great chief, Rumanika, into whose territories he was about to proceed. Scarcely had the chief received it, than he insisted on a further hongo, exactly double what had previously been given him. Again Speke yielded, and presented a number of brass-wire bracelets, sixteen cloths, and a hundred necklaces of coral beads, which were to pay for Grant as well as himself.

When about to march, however, Bui and Nasib were not to be found. On this, Speke determined to send back Bombay to Cazé for fresh guides and interpreters, who were to join Grant on their return.

In the meantime, while lying in a fearfully weak condition, reduced almost to a skeleton, he was startled, at midnight, out of his sleep by hearing the hurried tramp of several men. They proved to be Grant's porters, who, in short excited sentences, told him that they had left Grant standing under

WEEZEE TUFTED BOW AND SPEAR.

a tree with nothing but a gun in his hand; that his Wanguana porters had been either killed or driven away, having been attacked by Myonga's men, who had fallen upon the caravan, and shot, speared, and plundered the whole of it.

CHAPTER XV.

SPEKE AND GRANT'S TRAVELS CONTINUED.

Captain Grant-His description of a Weezee village and the customs of the peopleSlavery Sets out, and is attacked by Myonga-Grant and Speke unite-Journey to Karagué-The country described-Rumanika receives them-The people and their customs-Wild animals-Speke sets out for Uganda.

WE

E must now return to Captain Grant, who had been left in the Unyamuezi country, about which, during his stay, he made numerous observations.

"In a Weezee village," he tells us, "there are few sounds to disturb the traveller's night rest. The horn of the newcomers, and the reply to it from a neighbouring village, an accidental alarm, the chirping of crickets, and the cry from a sick child occasionally, however, broke the stillness. At dawn the first sounds were the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cows, the bleating of calves, and the chirruping of sparrows (which might have reminded him of Europe). Soon after would be heard the pestle and mortar shelling corn, or the cooing of wild pigeons in the neighbouring palm-grove." The huts were shaped like corn-stacks, dark within as the hold of a ship. A few earthen jars, tattered skins, old bows and arrows, with some cups of grass, gourds, and perhaps a stool constitute the furniture.

Different tribes vary greatly in appearance. Grant describes some as very handsome. He mentions two Nyambo girls, who, in the bloom of youth, sat together with their arms affectionately twined round each other's neck, and, when

asked to separate that they might be sketched, their arms were dropped at once, exposing their necks and busts, models for Greek slaves. Their woolly hair was combed out, and raised up from the forehead and over their ears by a broad band from the skin of a milk-white cow, which contrasted strangely with their transparent, light-copper skins. The Waha women are like them, having tall, erect, graceful figures and intelligent features.

An Arab trader, whom they had met, had sixty wives, who lived together in a double-poled tent, with which he always travelled. One of them was a Watusi, a beautiful, tall girl, with large, dark eyes, and the smallest mouth and nose, with thin lips and small hands. Her noble race will never become slaves, preferring death to slavery.

The Wanyamuezi treat the Watusi with great respect. When two people of these tribes meet, the former presses his hands together, the Watusi uttering a few words in a low voice. If a Watusi man meets a woman of his own tribe, she lets her arms fall by her side, while he gently presses them below the shoulders, looking affectionately in her face.

The class of Arabs met with were a most degraded set: instead of improving the country, they brought ruin upon it by their imperiousness and cruelty. All traded in slaves and generally treated them most harshly. Several gangs were met with in chains. Each slave was dressed in a single goat's skin, and at night they kept themselves warm by lying near a fire. Never, by day or night, is the chain unfastened; should one of them require to move, the whole must accompany him. All ate together boiled sweet potato, or the leaves of the pumpkin plant, and were kept in poor condition to prevent their becoming troublesome.

Any meat or bones left from the travellers' dinners were therefore given them, and accepted thankfully. One gang was watched over by a small lad, whose ears had been cut