f the
slave-dealer. "Two fathoms," mentioned as the price of the boy's
life--the more valuable of the two, means four yards of unbleached
calico, which is a universal article of barter throughout the greater
part of Africa: the mother was bought for two yards. The reader must
not think that there are no lower prices; in the famines which succeed
the slave-dealer's raids, boys and girls are at times to be purchased
by the dealer for a few handfuls of maize.]

_29th July, 1867._--Went 2 1/2 hours west to village of Ponda, where a
head Arab, called by the natives Tipo Tipo, lives; his name is Hamid
bin Mahamed bin Juma Borajib. He presented a goat, a piece of white
calico, and four big bunches of beads, also a bag of Holcus sorghum,
and apologised because it was so little. He had lost much by Nsama;
and received two arrow wounds there; they had only twenty guns at the
time, but some were in the stockade, and though the people of Nsama
were very numerous they beat them off, and they fled carrying the
bloated carcase of Nsama with them. Some reported that boxes were
found in the village, which belonged to parties who had perished
before, but Syde assured me that this was a mistake.

Moero is three days distant, and as Nsama's people go thither to
collect salt on its banks, it would have been impossible for me to
visit it from the south without being seen, and probably suffering
loss.

The people seem to have no family names. A man takes the name of his
mother, or should his father die he may assume that. Marriage is
forbidden to the first, second, and third degrees: they call first and
second cousins brothers and sisters.

A woman, after cupping her child's temples for sore eyes, threw the
blood over the roof of her hut as a charm.

[In the above process a goat's horn is used with a small hole in the
pointed end. The base is applied to the part from which the blood is
to be withdrawn, and the operator, with a small piece of chewed
india-rubber in his mouth, exhausts the air, and at the proper moment
plasters the small hole up with his tongue. When the cupping-horn is
removed, some cuts are made with a small knife, and it is again
applied. As a rough appliance, it is a very good one, and in great
repute everywhere.]

FOOTNOTES:

[50] It subsequently proved to be the southern extremity of this great
Lake.

[51] Elais, sp.(?).

[52] This is a common symptom--men will suddenly lose all power in the
lower extremitie