30 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

with interest the doings of the strange man with the pale face. In the courtyard at the back of the house some donkeys and a fine sheep were tethered, the latter being a present from the Wali or Governor of Bagainoyo ; a few Wanyamwezi porters were cooking their evening meal of beans or mtama (millet) in little earthenware pots, placed on three stones over a small fire of sticks, and others were tying up goods into the long sausage-shaped bundles which are the favourite form for loads. In front of the house a motley group of Arabs, "Wanyamwezi, coast Negroes (Wamerima), and a few dirty Beluch soldiers blocked up the narrow street.

After the day's work was over we strolled round the town, passing the neat grounds of the French mission, where a troop of boys returning home from their day's work passed us with a polite " Bon soir, messieurs." Then on to the beach, alive with burrowing crabs, and when the tide was out showing a large expanse of mud and sand strewn with shells and haunted by curlews, sandpipers, and other wading birds. Towards the mouth of the Kingani, a mile or two from the town, dense masses of mangrove shrubs are found growing in the water, while here and there a stranded dhow left by the receding tide lay high and dry out of water. Then, as the sun has set and the grey twilight is rapidly stealing over all, and the white line of breakers on the coral reefs out at sea grows