However, On The 18th, After Breakfasting At Ruhe's, We Walked
Into Mihambo, And Took All The Camp By Surprise.
I found the
Union Jack hoisted upon a flag-staff, high above all the trees,
in the boma.
Baraka said he had done this to show the Watuta that
the place was occupied by men with guns - a necessary precaution,
as all the villages in the neighbourhood had, since my departure,
been visited and plundered by them. Lumeresi, the chief of the
district, who lived ten miles to the eastward, had been
constantly pressing him to leave this post and come to his
palace, as he felt greatly affronted at our having shunned him
and put up with Ruhe. He did not want property, he said, but he
could not bear that the strangers had lived with his mtoto, or
child, which Ruhe was, and yet would not live with him. He
thought Baraka's determined obstinacy on this could only be
caused by the influence of the head man of the village, and
threatened that if Baraka did not come to visit him at once, he
would have the head man beheaded. Then, shifting round a bit, he
thought of ordering his subjects to starve the visitors into
submission, and said he must have a hongo equal to Ruhe's. To
all this Baraka replied, that he was merely a servant, and as he
had orders to stop where he was, he could not leave it until I
came; but to show there was no ill-feeling towards him, he sent
the chief a cloth.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 189 of 767
Words from 51486 to 51748
of 210958
