They Spoke The Kinyamwezi Language, And My Interpreter Maganga Was Requested To Inform The Chief Of The Great Delight I Felt In Seeing Them. After A Short Period Expended In Interchanging Compliments, And A Competitive Excellence At Laughing At One Another, Their Chief Desired Me To Show Him My Guns.

The "sixteen-shooter," the Winchester rifle, elicited a thousand flattering observations from the excited man; and the tiny deadly

Revolvers, whose beauty and workmanship they thought were superhuman, evoked such gratified eloquence that I was fain to try something else. The double-barrelled guns fired with heavy charges of power, caused them to jump up in affected alarm, and then to subside into their seats convulsed with laughter. As the enthusiasm of my guests increased, they seized each other's index fingers, screwed them, and pulled at them until I feared they would end in their dislocation. After having explained to them the difference between white men and Arabs, I pulled out my medicine chest, which evoked another burst of rapturous sighs at the cunning neatness of the array of vials. He asked what they meant.

"Dowa," I replied sententiously, a word which may be interpreted - medicine.

"Oh-h, oh-h," they murmured admiringly. I succeeded, before long, in winning unqualified admiration, and my superiority, compared to the best of the Arabs they had seen, was but too evident. "Dowa, dowa," they added.

"Here," said I, uncorking a vial of medicinal brandy, "is the Kisungu pombe " (white man's beer); "take a spoonful and try it," at the same time handing it.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 277 of 595
Words from 75323 to 75582 of 163520