Everywhere also are the women, carrying themselves proudly erect, with a free swing of the hips.  They wear invariably a single sheet of cotton cloth printed in blue or black with the most astonishing borders and spotty designs.  This is drawn tight just above the breasts, leaving the shoulders and arms bare.  Their hair is divided into perhaps a dozen parts running lengthwise of the head from the forehead to the nape of the neck, after the manner of the stripes on a watermelon.  Each part then ends in a tiny twisted pigtail not over an inch long.  The lobes of their ears have been stretched until they hold thick round disks about three inches in diameter, ornamented by concentric circles of different colours, with a red bull’s eye for a centre.  The outer edges of the ears are then further decorated with gold clasps set closely together.  Many bracelets, necklaces, and armlets complete the get-up.  They are big women, with soft velvety skins and a proud and haughty carriage—­the counterparts of the men in the white robes and caps.

By the way, it may be a good place here to remark that these garments, and the patterned squares of cloth worn by the women, are invariably most spotlessly clean.

These, we learned, were the Swahilis, the ruling class, the descendants of the slave traders.  Beside them are all sorts and conditions.  Your true savage pleased his own fancy as to dress and personal adornment.  The bushmen generally shaved the edges of their wool to leave a nice close-fitting natural skull cap, wore a single blanket draped from one shoulder, and carried a war club.  The ear lobe seemed always to be stretched; sometimes sufficiently to have carried a pint bottle.  Indeed, white marmalade jars seemed to be very popular wear.  One ingenious person had acquired a dozen of the sort of safety pins used to fasten curtains to their rings.  These he had snapped into the lobes, six on a side.

We explored for some time.  One of the Swahilis attached himself to us so unobtrusively that before we knew it we had accepted him as guide.  In that capacity he realized an ideal, for he never addressed a word to us, nor did he even stay in sight.  We wandered along at our sweet will, dawdling as slowly as we pleased.  The guide had apparently quite disappeared.  Look where we would we could in no manner discover him.  At the next corner we would pause, undecided as to what to do; there, in the middle distance, would stand our friend, smiling.  When he was sure we had seen him, and were about to take the turn properly, he would disappear again.  Convoyed in this pleasant fashion we wound and twisted up and down and round and about through the most appalling maze.  We saw the native markets with their vociferating sellers seated cross-legged on tables behind piles of fruit or vegetables, while an equally vociferating crowd surged up and down the aisles.  Gray parrots and little monkeys perched everywhere about.  Billy gave one of the monkeys a banana.  He peeled