of cloth, from the inner bark of an undescribed tree, of the botanical group, Caesalpineae, is ever going on, from one end of the lake to the other; and both toil and time are required to procure the bark, and to prepare it by pounding and steeping it to render it soft and pliable.  The prodigious amount of the bark clothing worn indicates the destruction of an immense number of trees every year; yet the adjacent heights seem still well covered with timber.

The Lake people are by no means handsome:  the women are very plain; and really make themselves hideous by the means they adopt to render themselves attractive.  The pelele, or ornament for the upper lip, is universally worn by the ladies; the most valuable is of pure tin, hammered into the shape of a small dish; some are made of white quartz, and give the wearer the appearance of having an inch or more of one of Price’s patent candles thrust through the lip, and projecting beyond the tip of the nose.

In character, the Lake tribes are very much like other people; there are decent men among them, while a good many are no better than they should be.  They are open-handed enough:  if one of us, as was often the case, went to see a net drawn, a fish was always offered.  Sailing one day past a number of men, who had just dragged their nets ashore, at one of the fine fisheries at Pamalombe, we were hailed and asked to stop, and received a liberal donation of beautiful fish.  Arriving late one afternoon at a small village on the lake, a number of the inhabitants manned two canoes, took out their seine, dragged it, and made us a present of the entire haul.  The northern chief, Marenga, a tall handsome man, with a fine aquiline nose, whom we found living in his stockade in a forest about twenty miles north of the mountain Kowirwe, behaved like a gentleman to us.  His land extended from Dambo to the north of Makuza hill.  He was specially generous, and gave us bountiful presents of food and beer.  “Do they wear such things in your country?” he asked, pointing to his iron bracelet, which was studded with copper, and highly prized.  The Doctor said he had never seen such in his country, whereupon Marenga instantly took it off, and presented it to him, and his wife also did the same with hers.  On our return south from the mountains near the north end of the lake, we reached Marenga’s on the 7th October.  When he could not prevail upon us to forego the advantage of a fair wind for his invitation to “spend the whole day drinking his beer, which was,” he said, “quite ready,” he loaded us with provisions, all of which he sent for before we gave him any present.  In allusion to the boat’s sail, his people said that they had no Bazimo, or none worth having, seeing they had never invented the like for them.  The chief, Mankambira, likewise treated us with kindness; but wherever the slave-trade is carried on, the people are dishonest and uncivil; that invariably leaves a