two large kerchiefs (=.  Is. 6d.) and “Folingas,” finer sorts used for waist-cloths (=. 3s. 6d.); and gold by Beirames (alii Biramis):  Carli says the latter are coarse Indian cottons 5 ells long and each = 200 reis; others describe them as fine linen each piece worth 7s. 6d. to 8s.  The bank-note was the “Indian piece or Mulech, a young black about twenty years of age, worth 20 Mil Keys (dollars) each.” (Carli.) In the Barbots’ day each “coin-clout”) was equivalent to 2d.; some were unmarked, whilst others bore the Portuguese arms single or double.  The wilder Kru-men still keep up their “buyapart” (= 25 cents), a cloth 4 inches square and thickly sewn over with cowries.

The only liquor was palm wine in huge calabashes.  The smoking of Lyamba (Bhang or Cannabis sativa) seems to become more common as we advance.  I did not find the plant growing, as did Dr. Livingstone at Linyanti and amongst the Batoka ("First Expedition,” 198, 541).  The pipe is the gourd of a baobab, which here sometimes grows a foot and a half long; it is cleared, filled with water and provided with a wooden tube fixed in the upper part away from the mouth, and supporting a small “chillam” or bowl of badly baked clay.  The people when smoking affect the bunched shoulders, the deep inhalation, and the loud and body-shaking bark, which seems inseparable from the enjoyment of this stimulant.  I have used it for months together, and my conclusion is, that mostly the cough is an affectation.  Tobacco is smoked in the usual heavy clay pipes, with long mouthpieces of soft wood, quite as civilized as the best European.  “Progress” seems unknown to the pipe; the most advanced nations are somewhat behind the barbarians, and in the matter of snuff the Tupi or Brazilian savage has never been rivalled.

The greater part of the vendors seemed to be women, of the buyers men; there was more difference of appearance than in any European fair, and the population about Nkulu seemed to be a very mixed race.  Some were ultra-negro, of the dead dull-black type, prognathous and long-headed like apes; others were of the red variety, with hair and eyes of a brownish tinge, and a few had features which if whitewashed could hardly be distinguished from Europeans.  The tattoo was remarkable as amongst the tribes of the lower Zambeze.[FN#33] There were waistcoats, epaulettes, braces and cross-belts of huge welts, and raised polished lumps which must have cost not a little suffering; the skin is pinched up between the fingers and sawn across with a bluntish knife, the deeper the better; various plants are used as styptics, and the proper size of the cicatrice is maintained by constant pressure, which makes the flesh protrude from the wound.  The teeth were as barbarously mutilated as the skin; these had all the incisors sharp-tipped; those chipped a chevron-shaped hole in the two upper or lower frontals, and not a few seemed to attempt converting the whole denture into molars.  The legs were undeniably fine; even Hieland Mary’s would hardly be admired here.  Whilst the brown mothers smoked and carried their babies, the men bore guns adorned with brass tacks, or leaned upon their short, straight, conical “spuds” and hoes, long-handled bits of iron whose points, after African fashion, passed through the wood.  I nowhere saw the handsome carved spoons, the hafts and knife-sheaths figured by the Congo Expedition.