servations: even the latitude was
too poor to be much depended on. 12 deg. 53' S. may have been a few miles
from this.

The cattle, rather a small breed, black and white in patches, and
brown, with humps, give milk which is duly prized by these Waiyau. The
sheep are the large-tailed variety, and generally of a black colour.
Fowls and pigeons are the only other domestic animals we see, if we
except the wretched village dogs which our-poodle had immense delight
in chasing.

The Waiyau are far from a handsome race, but they are not the
prognathous beings one sees on the West Coast either. Their heads are
of a round shape; compact foreheads, but not particularly receding;
the alae nasi are flattened out; lips full, and with the women a small
lip-ring just turns them up to give additional thickness. Their style
of beauty is exactly that which was in fashion when the stone deities
were made in the caves of Elephanta and Kenora near Bombay. A
favourite mode of dressing the hair into little knobs, which was in
fashion there, is more common in some tribes than in this. The mouths
of the women would not be so hideous with a small lip-ring if they did
not file their teeth to points, but they seem strong and able for the
work which falls to their lot. The men are large, strong-boned
fellows, and capable of enduring great fatigue, they undergo a rite
which once distinguished the Jews about the age of puberty, and take a
new name on the occasion; this was not introduced by the Arabs, whose
advent is a recent event, and they speak of the time before they were
inundated with European manufactures in exchange for slaves, as quite
within their memory.

Young Mataka gave me a dish of peas, and usually brought something
every time he made a visit, he seems a nice boy, and his father, in
speaking of learning to read, said he and his companions could learn,
but he himself was too old. The soil seems very fertile, for the sweet
potatoes become very large, and we bought two loads of them for three
cubits and two needles; they quite exceeded 1 cwt. The maize becomes
very large too; one cob had 1600 seeds. The abundance of water, the
richness of soil, the available labour for building square houses, the
coolness of the climate, make this nearly as desirable a residence as
Magomero; but, alas! instead of three weeks' easy sail up the Zambesi
and Shire, we have spent four weary months in getting here: I shall
never cease bitterly to lament the