as if winnowing, and singing songs, and lullilooing, to encourage their husbands and friends who were fighting, each had a branch of the Ficus indica in her hand, which she waved, I suppose as a charm.  About ten of the Imbozhwa are said to have been killed, but dead and wounded were at once carried off by their countrymen.  They continued the assault from early dawn till 1 P.M., and showed great bravery, but they wounded only two with their arrows.  Their care to secure the wounded was admirable:  two or three at once seized the fallen man, and ran off with him, though pursued by a great crowd of Banyamwezi with spears, and fired at by the Suaheli—­Victoria-cross fellows truly many of them were!  Those who had a bunch of animals’ tails, with medicine, tied to their waists, came sidling and ambling up to near the unfinished stockade, and shot their arrows high up into the air, to fall among the Wanyamwezi, then picked up any arrows on the field, ran back, and returned again.  They thought that by the ambling gait they avoided the balls, and when these whistled past them they put down their heads, as if to allow them to pass over; they had never encountered guns before.  We did not then know it, but Muabo, Phuta, Ngurue, Sandaruko, and Chapi, were the assailants, for we found it out by the losses each of these five chiefs sustained.

It was quite evident to me that the Suaheli Arabs were quite taken aback by the attitude of the natives; they expected them to flee as soon as they heard a gun fired in anger, but instead of this we were very nearly being cut off, and should have been but for our Banyamwezi allies.  It is fortunate that the attacking party had no success in trying to get Mpweto and Karembwe to join them against us, or it would have been more serious still.

24th November, 1868.—­The Imbozhwa, or Babemba rather, came early this morning, and called on Mohamad to come out of his stockade if he were a man who could fight, but the fence is now finished, and no one seems willing to obey the taunting call:  I have nothing to do with it, but feel thankful that I was detained, and did not, with my few attendants, fall into the hands of the justly infuriated Babemba.  They kept up the attack to-day, and some went out to them, fighting till noon:  when a man was killed and not carried off, the Wanyamwezi brought his head and put it on a pole on the stockade—­six heads were thus placed.  A fine young man was caught and brought in by the Wanyamwezi, one stabbed him behind, another cut his forehead with an axe, I called in vain to them not to kill him.  As a last appeal, he said to the crowd that surrounded him, “Don’t kill me, and I shall take you to where the women are.”  “You lie,” said his enemies; “you intend to take us where we may be shot by your friends;” and they killed him.  It was horrible:  I protested loudly against any repetition of this wickedness, and the more sensible agreed that prisoners ought not to be killed, but the Banyamwezi are incensed against the Babemba because of the women killed on the 22nd.