ogether, the Watusi
uttering a few words in a low voice. If a Watusi man meets a woman of
his own tribe, she lets her arms fall by her side, while he gently
presses them below the shoulders, looking affectionately in her face.

The class of Arabs met with were a most degraded set: instead of
improving the country, they brought ruin upon it by their imperiousness
and cruelty. All traded in slaves and generally treated them most
harshly. Several gangs were met with in chains. Each slave was dressed
in a single goat's skin, and at night they kept themselves warm by lying
near a fire. Never, by day or night, is the chain unfastened; should
one of them require to move, the whole must accompany him. All ate
together boiled sweet potato, or the leaves of the pumpkin plant, and
were kept in poor condition to prevent their becoming troublesome.

Any meat or bones left from the travellers' dinners were therefore given
them, and accepted thankfully. One gang was watched over by a small
lad, whose ears had been cut off, and who treated them with unfeeling
coarseness. A sick slave having recovered, it was the boy's duty to
chain him to his gang again, and it was grievous to see the rough way he
used the poor, emaciated creature.

They had not much work to do, the sole object of the owner being to keep
them alive and prevent their running away till sold at the coast. They
generally looked sullen and full of despair; but occasionally, at night,
they danced and became even riotous, till a word from the earless imp
restored them to order.

Among them was a poor fellow who had been five years in chains. The
travellers took compassion on him, and released him from bondage. His
chains were struck off with a hammer, and, once on his feet, a freedman,
he seemed scarcely to believe the fact; when, however, attired in a
clean calico shirt, he strutted about and soon came to make his new
master his best bow. On his body were numerous spear-wounds. He had
been captured by the Watuta, who had cut off several of his toes. This
man never deserted them during the journey, accompanying them to Cairo,
having gained the character of a faithful servant.

The Arab in Africa takes presents for everything he does, and it was
believed that the white men would do the same. If a bullet was
extracted, a gun repaired, an old sultan physicked, or the split lobe of
an ear mended, a cow or cows were at hand to be paid when the task was
finished