For Hours He And His Servants Sought For The Stray Donkeys, Returning Towards Evening Utterly Unsuccessful, Hamed Bewailing, As Only

An Oriental can do, when hard fate visits him with its inflictions, the loss of a hundred do dollars worth

Of Muscat donkeys. Sheikh Thani, older, more experienced, and wiser, suggested to him that he should notify the Sultan of his loss. Acting upon the sagacious advice, Hamed sent an embassy of two slaves, and the information they brought back was, that Pembera Pereh's servants had found the two donkeys eating the unripened matama, and that unless the Arab who owned them would pay nine doti of first-class cloths, he, Pembera Pereh, would surely keep them to remunerate him for the matama they had eaten. Hamed was in despair. Nine doti of first-class cloths, worth $25 in Unyanyembe, for half a chukka's worth of grain, was, as he thought, an absurd demand; but then if he did not pay it, what would become of the hundred dollars' worth of donkeys? He proceeded to the Sultan to show him the absurdity of the damage claim, and to endeavour to make him accept one chukka, which would be more than double the worth of what grain the donkeys had consumed. But the Sultan was sitting on pombe; he was drunk, which I believe to be his normal state - too drunk to attend to business, consequently his deputy, a renegade Mnyamwezi, gave ear to the business. With most of the Wagogo chiefs lives a Mnyamwezi, as their right-hand man, prime minister, counsellor, executioner, ready man at all things save the general good; a sort of harlequin Unyamwezi, who is such an intriguing, restless, unsatisfied person, that as soon as one hears that this kind of man forms one of and the chief of a Mgogo sultan's council, one feels very much tempted to do damage to his person.

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