24 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

of our stay in the island, showed us the greatest kindness. Both rivers, however, proved useless as waterways, being excessively winding, and only to be navigated during the close of the rains, and then, owing to the force of the current, only by a powerful steam-launch.

When it became known in Zanzibar that our party was going up into the interior, we received visits and applications from various Arab and Hindu merchants who, knowing that we should require a considerable amount of barter goods, were anxious to secure our custom. We obtained tenders from these men for the goods we required, and chose that of a Hindu named Isa Sulimani. The piles of domestics, kaniki (a thin indigo-blue material from India), prints, coloured cottons and gorgeous gold fringed cloths from Muscat and the Persian Grulf, were brought to our house by a large body of coolies, and stacked in huge piles in the outhouses opening into the courtyard. Then ensued a busy scene. The packers, sent by the merchant, laying on the ground a piece of stout calico, which was to form a covering for the bale of cloth, placed on it a bolt of American sheeting, then pieces of kaniki, prints, etc., then more sheeting, and again kaniki and cloths, another bolt of merikani concluding the pile ; this when fastened up forming a bale of the regulation weight, viz., about seventy pounds, and of the size of a stout bolster. The outer cloth was then