BAGAMOYO TO MPWAPWA. 29 and clearer till the belt of feathery cocoamit palms which fringes the shore could be plainly distinguished, broken here and there with the sombre foliage of the mango, and relieved by the white walls and straggling streets of Bagamoyo.

The sun was low in the west when the dhow grounded on the coral shore of Africa, the run of over thirty miles having been accomplished in a little less than four hours.

The town of Bagamoyo consists of two or three irregular streets of low white stone houses running parallel to the beach, interpersed with cocoanut palms and mango trees, and here and there on the outskirts a large baobab (Adansonia digitata) with its gouty-looking limbs, now bare of leaves, but hung with large green bottle-shaped fruit. There is a dirty little bazaar with a few shops kept by Hindus, a few good stone houses belonging to Arab merchants, and some wretched little huts, hardly as large as an English pigstye, where whole families of negroes live, or rather exist.

In a tolerably good stone house in the centre of the town I found Lieutenant Smith busily engaged in hiring wapagazi or porters, assisted by an Arab interpreter and a dirty little Hindu, who, perpetually chewing betel nut and tobacco, was measuring out calico and other materials for the hire of Wanyamwezi porters, a crowd of whom were squatted at the lower end of the room watching