Further, I Need Be Under No
Apprehension If I Did Not Find Men At Once To Go On The Three
Respective journeys; it should be all done in good time, for he
loved me much, and desired to show us
So much respect that his
name should be celebrated for it in songs of praise until he was
bowed down by years, and even after death it should be
remembered.
I ascertained then that the salt, which was very white and pure,
came from an island on the Little Luta Nzige, about sixty miles
west from the Chaguzi palace, where the lake is said to be forty
or fifty miles wide. It is the same piece of water we heard of
in Karague as the Little Luta Nzige, beyond Utumbi; and the same
story of Unyoro being an island circumscribed by it and the
Victoria N'yanza connected by the Nile, is related here, showing
that both the Karague and Unyoro people, as indeed all negroes
and Arabs, have the common defect in their language, of using the
same word for a peninsula and an island. The Waijasi - of whom we
saw a specimen in the shape of an old woman, with her upper lip
edged with a row of small holes, at Karague - occupy a large
island on this lake named Gasi, and sometimes come to visit
Kamrasi. Ugungu, a dependency of Kamrasi's, occupies this side,
the lake, and on the opposite side is Ulegga; beyond which, in
about 2§ N. lat. And 28§ E. long., is the country of Namachi; and
further west still about 2§, the Wilyanwantu, or cannibals, who,
according to the report both here and at Karague, "bury cows but
eat men." These distant people pay their homage to Kamrasi,
though they have six degrees of longitude to travel over. They
are, I believe, a portion of the N'yam N'yams - another name for
cannibal - whose country Petherick said he entered in 1857-58.
Among the other wild legends about this people, it was said that
the Wilyanwantu, in making brotherhood, exchanged their blood by
drinking at one another's veins; and, in lieu of butter with
their porridge, they smear it with the fat of fried human flesh.
20th. - I had intended for to-day an expedition to the lake; but
Kamrasi, harbouring a wicked design that we should help in an
attack on his brothers, said there was plenty of time to think of
that; we would only find that all the waters united go to Gani,
and he wished us to be his guests for three or four months at
least. Fifty Gani men had just arrived to inform him that Rionga
had lately sent ten slaves and ten ivory tusks to Petherick's
post, to purchase a gun; but the answer was, that a thousand
times as much would not purchase a weapon that might be used
against us; for our arrival with Kamrasi had been heard of, and
nothing would be done to jeopardise our road.
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