INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH REPORTS 23 bowl of Nsawkaw should be sent abroad for preservative treatment, and should then be placed under some form of shelter. (b) Nsawkaw 2-ended whistles Rev. Howard asked one of his pupil teachers to enquire at Nsawkaw about the unusual type of whistle.found there - a tobacco pipe stem, with a slit cut across it, played like a flute with the ends sealed by the thumbs. He was told that children still use such whistles, and are remarkably clever at cutting the slit at the right spot, to give a particular tone. Nothing was known about the history of this instrument. (c) Structures near Hani Rev. Howard has been shown in the 'Muslim' quarter of Bi u, near Hani, a collapsed wall, alleged to have been part of the town walls. Only a very small part was seen: this was a wide, low bank, crowned by the lower part of a wall. (d) Hani cave Rev. Howard, when he asked to see the caves from which the Hani people came out of the ground, was shewn holes which were obviously no more than fairly-recent animal burrows. Paul Ozanne PORTUGUESE ARCHIVES During October, 1964, I was able to spend a week in Lisbon in drder to ascertain what Arabic material relevant to the history of Africa south of the Sahara might be found there. I visited the Torre do Tombo (Portuguese National Archives), Instituto Historico Ultramarino (Institute for Overseas History) and the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library). Shortage of time prevented me from visiting the important Biblioteca de Ajuda, which contains more than 30,000 diplomatic manuscripts. The Torre de Tombo contains very few Arabic manuscripts, but two letters 0 ** 0 * 24 INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH REPORTS written from Kilwa, on the coast of Tanzania, in the early sixteenth Century, were found and microfilmed, together with some of the letters published in Joao de Sousa, Documentos Arabicos para a Historia Portugueza, Lisbon, 1790. A copy of this very rare work was obtained, and a xeroxed copy is being made for the Balme Library. There are no copies of it either in the British Museum or in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. These letters contribute details of extreme interest in regard to local reactions at the time that the Portuguese seized the East African coast. No Arabic documents were found in the Instituto Historico Ultramarine In the Biblioteca Nacional no Arabic documents were found earlier than the 19th Century, which is represented by a very large collection of correspondence with the King of Angazija, Comoro Islands, c. 1820-1830. It is often forgotten that these islands, which lie off the north-western tip of Madagascar, have a long and extremely interesting history, at least from the 10th Century A . D. There is no substantial work on the Comoro Islands in print, and the really scholarly work was that of A. Gevrey in 1870. The language currently spoken is Swahili, and a history of the islands in this language is in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Intending visitors to Portuguese archives are warned that they are among the worst organized in the world - if not the worst organized. The public are required to present themselves with a letter from their Embassy, and, in the case of the Biblioteca Nacional, with two photographs. Cn admission to what are amongst fhe richest archives in the world they will find that there is no catalogue. It is believed that there are some lists in the Torre de Tombo, but one is not permitted to see them. A handwritten index is in the possession of the manuscripts room of the Biblioteca Nacional, but this may only be searched by the officials of the library, and not by the reader himself. one can only make enquiries of the officials; if there are handlists, there are none available to readers. The majority of the officials are women, and it must be said that they do their best to be he I pful. But they themselves are hamstrung, as is the reader himself, by the absence of any normal organization such as is • found in other countries. It is greatly to be hoped that some learned foundation, such as the Gulbenkian Foundation, may see its way to providing the necessary funds so that first general catalogues may be made and, later, detailed ones. In the Instituto Historico Ultramarino At the present time the Portuguese Centro de Estudos Historicos Ultramarinos has just published the first of twenty volumes of documents in Portuguese, with an English translation, concerning East and Central Africa. It is intended to cover the whole period between A . D. 1497 and A . D. 1840. The first volume * * f f • * *- INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH REPORTS 25 covers the years 1497-1503, and is an admirably presented work of scholarship. It is hoped that the series may be completed by 1984. These volumes will not, however, include the Congo nor any part of western Africa, and the publication of documents on the largest scale concerning these areas is certainly greatly to be desired. G. S. P. Freeman-Grenvilie ARCHIVES DE FRANCE (FRENCH NATIONAL ARCHIVES) In 1962 I found thirty-five unpublished documents in the French National Archives which complete the information given on East Africa c. A . D. 1773- 1779 in the Morice manuscript in Rhodes House, Oxford, and tTie De Curt manuscript in the Rare Books Library, University of Chicago. From these it has been possible to build up a picture of the negotiations of a French trader, Morice, to set up a slave-trading centre at Kilwa Kisiwani in 1776- 1777, and at the same time to obtain a clear picture of the state of Kilwa (on the coast of Tanzania) at this period. The documents have been arranged so that they tell the story almost in diary form. They are accompanied by an introduction, describing the history of the documents, which include a treaty in Arabic and French, and three essays: an account of French activities on the East African coast in the 18th Century, a detailed discussion of the genealogy and history of the royal house of Kilwa from c. 1700 to its eclipse c. 1840, and a narrative account of the history of Kilwa during the same period, including a discussion of its extent, constitution, politics, trade and social organization. This work is now in the press, and will shortly be published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, as The French at Kilwa' Island. In July, 1964, I was able to spend a further month in the French National Archives and in the archives of the French Ministry of !the Navy which, until late in the ,19th Century, was concerned with French colonial affairs. A search through the sections of the archives concerning lie de France (now Mauritius) ha> brought to light more than fifty documents concerning French relations with the East African coast in the 18th Century, whilst a search in the documents of the French East India Company has yielded more information