few days off from the middle of the Lake, and has abundance of
provisions.

_26th June, 1866._--My last mule died. In coming along in the morning
we were loudly accosted by a well-dressed woman who had just had a
very heavy slave-taming stick put on her neck; she called in such an
authoritative tone to us to witness the flagrant injustice of which
she was the victim that all the men stood still and went to hear the
case. She was a near relative of Chirikaloma, and was going up the
river to her husband, when the old man (at whose house she was now a
prisoner) caught her, took her servant away from her, and kept her in
the degraded state we saw. The withes with which she was bound were
green and sappy. The old man said in justification that she was
running away from Chirikaloma, and he would be offended with him if he
did not secure her.

I asked the officious old gentleman in a friendly tone what he
expected to receive from Chirikaloma, and he said, "Nothing." Several
slaver-looking fellows came about, and I felt sure that the woman had
been seized in order to sell her to them, so I gave the captor a cloth
to pay to Chirikaloma if he were offended, and told him to say that
I, feeling ashamed to see one of his relatives in a slave-stick, had
released her, and would, take her on to her husband.

She is evidently a lady among them, having many fine beads and some
strung on elephant's hair: she has a good deal of spirit too, for on
being liberated she went into the old man's house and took her basket
and calabash. A virago of a wife shut the door and tried to prevent
her, as well as to cut off the beads from her person, but she resisted
like a good one, and my men thrust the door open and let her out, but