This Was
Agreed To; But In The Night We Were Robbed Of Three Goats, Which
He Said He Could Not Allow To Be Passed Over, Lest Suwarora Might
Hear Of It, And He Would Get Into A Scrape.
He pressed us
strongly to stop another day whilst he sought for them, but I
told him I would not, as his magic powder was weak, else he would
have found the scabbard we lost long before this.
At last we got under way, and, after winding through a long
forest, we emerged on the first of the populous parts of Usui, a
most convulsed-looking country, of well-rounded hills composed of
sandstone. In all the parts not under cultivation they were
covered with brushwood. 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.
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