coast. Their country is a high plateau, three or
four thousand feet above the sea level, with
little out-cropping hills of granite, and many
fertilising springs in the valleys. They have a
rich iron ore in sandstone, they smelt it and work
it up expertly, make cotton clothes in looms of
their own, and keep many flocks and herds. But
the Men of the Moon, who are blacker than
their neighbours, want pluck, are desperate
smokers, and are much given to drink. The
road to their country Captains Speke and Grant
found to be held by a fine young brigand chief,
Manua Sera, who had been a lawful chief forcibly
deposed by the Arab traders because, on his
accession, he laid unaccustomed tolls upon them.
He was much liked for his generosity, by the
Wanyamuezi, who would have done anything
they could to restore him, and believed that he
had a charmed life; but the Arabs, upon whom
he was then, in revenge, levying black mail, were
resolved to hunt him down. Famine was also
among the Wanyamuezi, who were in all directions
lying about dead of starvation. But with
all this liability to famine, Captain Speke heard
of no cannibalism except among the Wabembe,
who will give a goat to their neighbours for a
sick or dying child, regarding such flesh as the
best of all.

With war as well as famine in the country,
his remaining men sick, and the necessary
force to secure independence of the natives
during the rest of the march northward not
procurable, Captain Speke, after a march forward,
returned to Kazé, where the Arabs
were living in fresh terror of the victorious
Manua Sera. Some negotiations for a peace
were set on foot, but nothing came of them.
Having secured a reinforcement of two-and-
twenty men, Captain Speke returned to his
comrade Grant, whom he had left sick at Meninga,
and found greatly recovered. They pushed on,
plagued everywhere with extortion, theft,
desertion, breach of faith, At the village of Mbisu
they found peace being ratified between a small
and a great chief, after a war which had lasted
two years, during all which time the lists of
those fallen in battle had amounted to three
killed on each side. A caravan leader named
Ungurue, or the Pig, was engaged here, and
there was again delay over the difficult or vain
search for porters. The natives were not to be
tempted even by three times the price usually
paid by Arab traders. Supplies were not
inexhaustible, and the travellers pushed on to
Nunda, where the chief, Ukulima, claimed of
Grant four yards of cloth for walking round a
dead lioness. It destroyed a charm, said Ukulima.
At Nunda was a caravan of Arabs, who
said they had never come that way before, and
never would again. They had lost five thousand
dollars' worth of beads by their porters running
away with the loads, and were at a stand-still
for want of men. Captain Speke himself,
abandoning all hope of getting a sufficient force
about him, left Grant behind with the most
honest man in the company for his attendant,
and pushed on, reaching on the ninth of June
the " palace" of M'yonga, the chief extortioner
in those parts, and making terms with him for
his own passage through the land, and for his
sick brother's passage afterwards, to join him
free of all further charge.

Through such experience, then, the explorer
made his way across the Country of the Moon,
and entered the next region of Uzinza, which is
ruled by two Wahuma chieftains descended from
the Abyssinian stock. The country here rises
in high rolls that swell as they approach the
Mountains of the Moon. Here, there was the
old weary story of petty extortion. " The Pig"
was offered ten necklaces a day in extra pay if
he would avoid the villages and march steadily
ten miles a day. Instead of doing so, he led
the traveller into every robbers' den, where the
chief must have his drums beaten in token that
the hongo had been, paid, before more progress
could be made. After being especially fleeced
in Sorombo by a chief named Makaka, the next
obstacle was the steady refusal of the whole
camp to advance into what was regarded as an
enemy's country. Speke then returned to Grant,
at Kazé, with a cough produced by the cold
easterly winds of the plateau, that daily grew
worse, so that he could not lie or sleep on either
side. More beads and clothes were written for,
with fifty armed men, which it would cost a
thousand pounds to get and bring up to the
scene of action. Then news came from Suwarora,
a great chief in the district yet unexplored,
that he had heard with displeasure of the
unfriendly reports that had prevented the white
man from advancing to visit him. A certain
Lumeresi, getting the traveller as guest in his
hut when he fell sick, made the most of his
opportunity to fleece. Nearly ten times the
pay given by an Arab, presently became the hire
of men, and as for the further hongo questions,
seeing how sick of them the reader becomes, we
may conceive how tedious they were to the
travellers.

But at last they forced their way to the beautiful
country of Karague, where King Rumanika
ordered that they should be fed in the villages at
his own cost, and where there is no taxation of
the traveller. His majesty is a well-made man, of
the best Abyssinian blood, with a fine oval face,
large eyes, and a high nose. It is his custom
to shake hands like an Englishman. But it was
a great wonder to him to see Captain Speke sit
on an iron camp-chair; he took it to be the white
man's throne, and cried thereat, " O, these
Wazungu! these Wazungu! they know and do
everything!" The wives of this king, and of
the princes of his family, are fattened carefully
up to the highest standard of court beauty.
They sit on the floor in the beehive-shaped hut,
with wooden pots of milk hanging on all the
poles that support it, and are expected to sip
at the milk incessantly, the father sometimes
standing over a daughter of sixteen with a stick
to keep her active at the unintermitted suckling.
Constant swallowing of milk, and the
complete avoidance of exercise, make the court
ladies so big, that the fat hangs in puddings