tic animals graciously smiled when in my best
Kenyamwezi I did my devoir to the sex; and the present of a little
tobacco always secured for me a seat in the undress circle."

Of the native races of West Africa Burton gave a graphic account when he
came to write the history of this expedition. [171] All, it seems, had
certain customs in common. Every man drank heavily, ate to repletion and
gambled. They would hazard first their property and then themselves.
A negro would stake his aged mother against a cow. As for morality,
neither the word nor the thing existed among them. Their idea of perfect
bliss was total intoxication. When ill, they applied to a medicine man,
who having received a fee used it for the purpose of getting drunk, but
upon his return to sobriety, he always, unless, of course, the patient
took upon himself to die, instead of waiting, attended conscientiously
to his duties. No self-respecting chief was ever sober after mid-day.
Women were fattened for marriage just as pigs are fattened for
market--beauty and obesity being interchangeable terms. The wearisome
proceedings in England necessary to a divorce, observes Burton, are
there unknown. You turn your wife out of doors, and the thing is done.

The chief trouble at Kazeh, as elsewhere, arose from the green scorpion,
but there were also lizards and gargantuan spiders. Vermin under an inch
in length, such as fleas, ants, and mosquitoes, were deemed unworthy
of notice. The march soon began again, but they had not proceeded many
miles before Burton fell with partial paralysis brought on my malaria;
and Speke, whom Burton always called "Jack," became partially blind.
Thoughts of the elmy fields and the bistre furrows of Elstree and the
tasselled coppices of Tours crowded Burton's brain; and he wrote:

"I hear the sound I used to hear,
The laugh of joy, the groan of pain,
The sounds of childhood sound again
Death must be near."

At last, on the 13th February they saw before them a long streak of
light. "Look, master, look," cried Burton's Arab guide, "behold the
great water!" They advanced a few yards, and then an enormous expanse
of blue burst into sight. There, in the lap of its steel-coloured
mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine, lay the great lake
Tanganyika. The goal had been reached; by his daring, shrewdness and
resolution he had overcome all difficulties. Like the soldiers in
Tacitus, in victory he found all things