96 ''BEER'' IN BASKETS.

and when we arrived there must have been fully eighty to a hundred of them. They had fastened themselves to us in the hope of getting meat ; and we were obliged to explain to them, that having a very large party of our own to feed, although we hoped to obtain sufficient game to supply them as well, it was impossible for us to promise to do so. They replied, that, when they could get no meat, they would live on the fruit of the baobab-tree ; that they were quite accustomed to doing so, and frequently had no other food to depend upon.

On our way to Mai Daro, Lort Phillips and I came across a party of Base felling trees, clearing a space in which to plant dJmrra against the next rainy season. On first beholding us they were much frightened, probably never having seen white men before, and were going to run away ; but we both exclaimed MaicedaJi,'' a Base word which we generally found acted on them as a kind of talisman ; it seems to signify " How do you do V and 'We are friends," in one : its enunciation, at any rate, generally had a magical effect. On hearing Maicedah'' pronounced, the men in question insisted on our dismounting, and gave us some *'beer," made of dJuirra, which they were drinking. It was very sour and extremely nasty.

They had a great quantity of it, and evidently thought it very good, judging from the amount they consumed ; several of them were decidedly intoxicated. They carry all liquids in very neatly plaited baskets, made by the women out of the leaves of the dJioiim--dSm, — so finely plaited as to be completely waterproof. The women are the water-carriers generally, in fact nearly always. The water is a long way from the villages, as there is never any on the hills where they are built. We frequently saw the women, in the heat of the day, carrying these baskets, filled with water, back to their huts ; each woman carried two, fastened one at each end of a pole by means of