now where they got so much ivory before.  Five men were killed at Rindi or Loinde, and one escaped:  the reason of this outbreak by men who have been so peaceable is not divulged, but anyone seeing the wholesale plunder to which the houses and gardens were subject can easily guess the rest.  Mamohela’s camp had several times been set on fire at night by the tribes which suffered assault, but did not effect all that was intended.  The Arabs say that the Manyuema now understand that every gunshot does not kill; the next thing they will learn will be to grapple in close quarters in the forest, where their spears will outmatch the guns in the hands of slaves, it will follow, too, that no one will be able to pass through this country; this is the usual course of Suaheli trading; it is murder and plunder, and each slave as he rises in his owner’s favour is eager to show himself a mighty man of valour, by cold-blooded killing of his countrymen:  if they can kill a fellow-nigger, their pride boils up.  The conscience is not enlightened enough to cause uneasiness, and Islam gives less than the light of nature.

I am grievously tired of living here.  Mohamad is as kind as he can be, but to sit idle or give up before I finish my work are both intolerable; I cannot bear either, yet I am forced to remain by want of people.

11th November, 1870.—­I wrote to Mohamad bin Saleh at Ujiji for letters and medicines to be sent in a box of China tea, which is half empty:  if he cannot get carriers for the long box itself, then he is to send these, the articles of which I stand in greatest need.

The relatives of a boy captured at Monanyembe brought three goats to redeem him:  he is sick and emaciated; one goat was rejected.  The boy shed tears when he saw his grandmother, and the father too, when his goat was rejected.  “So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun:  and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.”—­Eccles. iv. 1.  The relations were told either to bring the goat, or let the boy die; this was hard-hearted.  At Mamohela ten goats are demanded for a captive, and given too; here three are demanded.  “He that is higher than the highest regardeth, and there be higher than they.  Marvel not at the matter.”

I did not write to the coast, for I suspect that the Lewale Syde bin Salem Buraschid destroys my letters in order to quash the affair of robbery by his man Saloom, he kept the other thief, Kamaels, by him for the same purpose.  Mohamad writes to Bin Saleh to say that I am here and well; that I sent a large packet of letters in June 1869, with money, and received neither an answer, nor my box from Unyanyembe, and this is to be communicated to the Consul by a friend at Zanzibar.  If I wrote, it would only be to be burned; this is as far as I can see at present:  the friend who will communicate with the Consul is Mohamad bin Abdullah the Wuzeer, Seyd Suleiman is the Lewale of the Governor of Zanzibar, Suleiman bin Ali or Sheikh Suleiman the Secretary.