oral unfitness for travel,
it was the briskness assumed when they knew they were going back to
the coast. I felt inclined to force them on, but it would have been
acting from revenge, and to pay them out, so I forbore. I gave Mataka
forty-eight yards of calico, and to the sepoys eighteen yards, and
arranged that he should give them food till Suleiman, a respectable
trader, should arrive. He was expected every day, and we passed him
near the town. If they chose to go and get their luggage, it was of
course all safe for them behind. The havildar begged still to go on
with me, and I consented, though he is a drag on the party, but he
will count in any difficulty.

Abraham recognised his uncle among the crowds who came to see us. On
making himself known he found that his mother and two sisters had been
sold to the Arabs after he had been enslaved. The uncle pressed him to
remain, and Mataka urged, and so did another uncle, but in vain. I
added my voice, and could have given him goods to keep him afloat a
good while, but he invariably replied, "How can I stop where I have no
mother and no sister?" The affection seems to go to the maternal side.
I suggested that he might come after he had married a wife, but I fear
very much that unless some European would settle, none of these
Nassick boys will come to this country. It would be decidedly better
if they were taught agriculture in the simplest form, as the Indian.
Mataka would have liked to put his oxen to use, but Abraham could not
help him with that. He is a smith, or rather a nothing, for unless he
could smelt iron he would be entirely without materials to work with.

_14th-28th July, 1866._--One day, calling at Mataka's, I found as
usual a large crowd of idlers, who always respond with a laugh to
everything he utters as wit. He asked, if he went to Bombay what ought
he to take to secure some gold? I replied, "Ivory," he rejoined,
"Would slaves not be a good speculation?" I replied that, "if he took
slaves there for sale, they would put him in prison." The idea of the
great Mataka in "chokee" made him wince, and the laugh turned for once
against him. He said that as all the people from the coast crowd to
him, they ought to give him something handsome for being here to
supply their wants. I replied, if he would fill the fine well-watered
country we had passed over with people instead of sending them off to
Kilwa, he would confer a benefit on visitors, but we had been starve