27° 10' Long.

Chief village of Moenékuss.

Observations show a little lower altitude than Tanganyika.

_22nd September, 1869._--Moenékuss died lately, and left his two sons to
fill his place. Moenembagg is the elder of the two, and the most
sensible, and the spokesman on all important occasions, but his younger
brother, Moenemgoi, is the chief, the centre of authority. They showed
symptoms of suspicion, and Mohamad performed the ceremony of mixing
blood, which is simply making a small incision on the forearm of each
person, and then mixing the bloods, and making declarations of
friendship. Moenembagg said, "Your people must not steal, we never do,"
which is true: blood in a small quantity was then conveyed from one to
the other by a fig-leaf. "No stealing of fowls or of men," said the
chief: "Catch the thief and bring him to me, one who steals a person is
a pig," said Mohamad. Stealing, however, began on our side, a slave
purloining a fowl, so they had good reason to enjoin honesty on us! They
think that we have come to kill them: we light on them as if from
another world: no letters come to tell who we are, or what we want. We
cannot conceive their state of isolation and helplessness, with nothing
to trust to but their charms and idols--both being bits of wood. I got a
large beetle hung up before an idol in the idol house of a deserted and
burned village; the guardian was there, but the village destroyed.

I presented the two brothers with two table cloths, four bunches of
beads, and one string of neck-beads; they were well satisfied.

A wood here when burned emits a horrid fæcal smell, and one would think