believe that cannon were taken up Kilimanjaro by
the first Arabs who came into the country, and there they lie. They
deny that Van der Decken did more than go round a portion of the base
of the mountain; he could not get on the mass of the mountain: all his
donkeys and some of his men died by the cold. Hamees seems to be
Cooley's great geographical oracle!

The information one can cull from the Arabs respecting the country on
the north-west is very indefinite. They magnify the difficulties in
the way by tales of the cannibal tribes, where anyone dying is bought
and no one ever buried, but this does not agree with the fact, which
also is asserted, that the cannibals have plenty of sheep and goats.
The Rua is about ten days west of Tanganyika, and five days beyond it
a lake or river ten miles broad is reached; it is said to be called
Logarawa. All the water flows northwards, but no reliance can be
placed on the statements. Kiombo is said to be chief of Rua country.

Another man asserts that Tanganyika flows northwards and forms a large
water beyond Uganda, but no dependence can be placed on the statements
of these half Arabs; they pay no attention to anything but ivory and
food.

_25th August, 1867._--Nsama requested the Arabs to give back his son
who was captured; some difficulty was made about this by his captor,
but Hamees succeeded in getting him and about nine others, and they
are sent off to-day. We wait only for the people, who are scattered
about the country. Hamees presented cakes, flour, a fowl and leg of
goat, with a piece of eland meat: this animal goes by the same name
here as at Kolobeng--"Pofu."[56]

A fig-tree here has large knobs on the bark, like some species of
acacia; and another looks like the Malolo of the Zambesi magnified. A
yellow wood gives an odour like incense when burned.

A large spider makes a nest inside the huts. It consists of a piece of
pure white paper, an inch and a half broad, stuck flat on the wall;
under this some forty or fifty eggs are placed, and then a quarter of
an inch of thinner paper is put round it, apparently to fasten the
first firmly. When making the paper the spider moves itself over the
surface in wavy lines; she then sits on it with her eight legs spread
over all for three weeks continuously, catching and eating any
insects, as cockroaches, that come near her nest. After three weeks
she leaves it to hunt for food, but always returns at night: the
natives do not