They
Both Rebutted The Insinuation; And, To Change The Subject,
Commenced Levying The Remaining Dues To The Princes, Which Ended
By My Giving Thirty-Four Wires And Six Pretty Cloths In A Lump.
Early in the morning we were on foot again, only too thankful to
have got off so cheaply.
Then men were appointed as guides and
protectors, to look after us as far as the border. What an
honour! We had come into the country drawn there by a combination
of pride and avarice and now we were leaving it in hot haste
under the guidance of an escort of officers, who were in reality
appointed to watch us as dangerous wizards and objects of terror.
It was all the same to us, as we now only thought of the prospect
of relief before us, and laughed at what we had gone through.
Rising out of the Uthungu valley, we walked over rolling ground,
drained in the dips by miry rush rivulets. The population was
thinly scattered in small groups of grass huts, where the scrub
jungle had been cleared away. On the road we passed cairns, to
which every passer-by contributed a stone. Of the origin of the
cairns I could not gain any information, though it struck me as
curious I should find them in the first country we had entered
governed by the Wahuma, as I formerly saw the same thing in the
Somali country, which doubtless, in earlier days, was governed by
a branch of the Abyssinians.
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