Here The Little Grass-Hut Villages Were
Not Fenced By A Boma, But Were Hidden In Large Fields Of
Plantains.
Cattle were numerous, kept by the Wahuma, who could
not sell their milk to us because we ate fowls and a bean called
maharague.
Happily no one tried to pillage us here, so on we went to
Vikora's, another officer, living at N'yakasenye, under a
sandstone hill, faced with a dyke of white quartz, over which
leaped a small stream of water - a seventy-feet drop - which, it is
said, Suwarora sometimes paid homage to when the land was
oppressed by drought. Vikora's father it was whom Sirboko of
Mininga shot. Usually he was very severe with merchants in
consequence of that act; but he did not molest us, as the
messenger who went on to Suwarora returned here just as we
arrived, to say we must come on at once, as Suwarora was anxious
to see us, and had ordered his Wakungu not to molest us. Thieves
that night entered our ringfence of thorns, and stole a cloth
from off one of my men while he was sleeping.
We set down Suwarora, after this very polite message, "a regular
trump," and walked up the hill of N'yakasenye with considerable
mirth, singing his praises; but we no sooner planted ourselves on
the summit than we sang a very different tune. We were ordered
to stop by a huge body of men, and to pay toll.
Suwarora, on second thoughts, had changed his mind, or else he
had been overruled by two of his officers - Kariwami, who lived
here, and Virembo, who lived two stages back, but were then with
their chief. There was no help for it, so I ordered the camp to
be formed, and sent Nasib and the mace-bearers at once off to the
palace to express to his highness how insulted I felt as his
guest, being stopped in this manner, even when I had his
Kaquenzingiriri with me as his authority that I was invited there
as a guest. I was not a merchant who carried merchandise, but a
prince like himself, come on a friendly mission to see him and
Rumanika. I was waiting at night for the return of the
messengers, and sitting out with my sextant observing the stars,
to fix my position, when some daring thieves, in the dark bushes
close by, accosted two of the women of the camp, pretending a
desire to know what I was doing. They were no sooner told by the
unsuspecting women, than they whipped off their cloths and ran
away with them, allowing their victims to pass me in a state of
absolute nudity. I could stand this thieving no longer. My
goats and other things had been taken away without causing me
much distress of mind, but now, after this shocking event, I
ordered my men to shoot at any thieves that came near them.
This night one was shot, without any mistake about it; for the
next morning we tracked him by his blood, and afterwards heard he
had died of his wound.
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