placed her back to me for safety, came and sat down on my mat, decently made a nest of grass and leaves, and covered herself with the mat to sleep.  I cannot take her with me, though I fear that she will die before I return, from people plaguing her.  Her fine long black hair was beautiful when tended by her mother, who was killed.  I am mobbed enough alone; two sokos—­she and I—­would not have got breath.

“I have to submit to be a gazing-stock.  I don’t altogether relish it, here or elsewhere, but try to get over it good-naturedly, get into the most shady spot of the village, and leisurely look at all my admirers.  When the first crowd begins to go away, I go into my lodgings to take what food may be prepared, as coffee, when I have it, or roasted maize infusion when I have none.  The door is shut, all save a space to admit light.  It is made of the inner bark of a gigantic tree, not a quarter of an inch thick, and slides in a groove behind a post on each side of the doorway.  When partially open it is supported by only one of the posts.  Eager heads sometimes crowd the open space, and crash goes the thin door, landing a Manyuema beauty on the floor.  ‘It was not I,’ she gasps out, ’it was Bessie Bell and Jeanie Gray that shoved me in, and—­’ as she scrambles out of the lion’s den, ’see they’re laughing’; and; fairly out, she joins in the merry giggle too.  To avoid darkness or being half-smothered, I often eat in public, draw a line on the ground, then ’toe the line,’ and keep them out of the circle.  To see me eating with knife, fork, and spoon is wonderful.  ’See!—­they don’t touch their food!—­what oddities, to be sure.’...

“Many of the Manyuema women are very pretty; their hands, feet, limbs, and form are perfect.  The men are handsome.  Compared with them the Zanzibar slaves are like London door-knockers, which some atrocious iron-founder thought were like lions’ faces.  The way in which these same Zanzibar Mohammedans murder the men and seize the women and children makes me sick at heart.  It is not slave-trade.  It is murdering free people to make slaves.  It is perfectly indescribable.  Kirk has been working hard to get this murdersome system put a stop to.  Heaven prosper his noble efforts!  He says in one of his letters to me, ’It is monstrous injustice to compare the free people in the interior, living under their own chiefs and laws, with what slaves at Zanzibar afterward become by the abominable system which robs them of their manhood.  I think it is like comparing the anthropologists with their ancestral sokos.’...

     “I am grieved to hear of the departure of good Lady
     Murchison.  Had I known that she kindly remembered me in her
     prayers, it would have been great encouragement....