Rumanika, On Hearing That It Was Our Custom To Celebrate The
Birth Of Our Saviour With A Good Feast Of Beef, Sent Us An Ox.
I
immediately paid him a visit to offer the compliments of the
season, and at the same time regretted,
Much to his amusement,
that he, as one of the old stock of Abyssinians, who are the
oldest Christians on record, should have forgotten this rite; but
I hoped the time would come when, by making it known that his
tribe had lapsed into a state of heathenism, white teachers would
be induced to set it all to rights again. At this time some
Wahaiya traders (who had been invited at my request by Rumanika)
arrived. Like the Waziwa, they had traded with Kidi, and they
not only confirmed what the Waziwa had said, but added that, when
trading in those distant parts, they heard of Wanguana coming in
vessels to trade to the north of Unyoro; but the natives there
were so savage, they only fought with these foreign traders. A
man of Ruanda now informed us that the cowrie-shells, so
plentiful in that country, come there from the other or western
side, but he could not tell whence they were originally obtained.
Rumanika then told me Suwarora had been so frightened by the
Watuta, and their boastful threats to demolish Usui bit by bit,
reserving him only as a tit-bit for the end, that he wanted a
plot of ground in Karague to preserve his property in.
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