Three
Wanyamuezi, Also, Who Heard We Were Given To Shooting Wild
Animals Continually, Came With Him To Offer Their Services As
Porters.
As nearly all the men had now returned, Grant and I spent New
Year's Day with the first detachment
At Jiwa la Mkoa, or Round
Rock - a single tembe village occupied by a few Wakimbu settlers,
who, by their presence and domestic habits, made us feel as
though we were well out of the wood. So indeed we found it; for
although this wilderness was formerly an entire forest of trees
and wild animals, numerous Wakimbu, who formerly occupied the
banks of the Ruaha to the southward, had been driven to migrate
here, wherever they could find springs of water, by the
boisterous naked pastorals the Warori.
At night three slaves belonging to Sheikh Salem bin Saif stole
into our camp, and said they had been sent by their master to
seek for porters at Kaze, as all the Wanyamuezi porters of four
large caravans had deserted in Ugogo, and they could not move. I
was rather pleased by this news, and thought it served the
merchants right, knowing, as I well did, that the Wanyamuezi,
being naturally honest, had they not been defrauded by foreigners
on the down march to the coast, would have been honest still.
Some provisions were now obtained by sending men out to distant
villages; but we still supplied the camp with our guns, killing
rhinoceros, wild boar, antelope, and zebras. The last of our
property did not come up till the 5th, when another thief being
caught, got fifty lashes, under the superintendence of Baraka, to
show that punishment was only inflicted to prevent further crime.
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