The Task Of Preparing The First Caravan For The Unyanyembe Road Informed Me Upon Several Things That Have Escaped The

Notice of my predecessors in East Africa, a timely knowledge of which would have been of infinite service to me

At Zanzibar, in the purchase and selection of sufficient and proper cloth.

The setting out of the first caravan enlightened me also on the subject of honga, or tribute. Tribute had to be packed by itself, all of choice cloth; for the chiefs, besides being avaricious, are also very fastidious. They will not accept the flimsy cloth of the pagazi, but a royal and exceedingly high-priced dabwani, Ismahili, Rehani, or a Sohari, or dotis of crimson broad cloth. The tribute for the first caravan cost $25. Having more than one hundred and forty pagazis to despatch, this tribute money would finally amount to $330 in gold, with a minimum of 25c. on each dollar. Ponder on this, O traveller! I lay bare these facts for your special instruction.

But before my first caravan was destined to part company with me, Soor Hadji Palloo - worthy young man - and I were to come to a definite understanding about money matters. The morning appointed for departure Soor Hadji Palloo came to my hut and presented his bill, with all the gravity of innocence, for supplying the pagazis with twenty-five doti each as their hire to Unyanyembe, begging immediate payment in money. Words fail to express the astonishment I naturally felt, that this sharp-looking young man should so soon have forgotten the verbal contract entered into between him and myself the morning previous, which was to the effect that out of the three thousand doti stored in my tent, and bought expressly for pagazi hire, each and every man hired for me as carriers from Bagamoyo to Unyanyembe, should be paid out of the store there in my tent. when I asked if he remembered the contract, he replied in the affirmative: his reasons for breaking it so soon were, that he wished to sell his cloths, not mine, and for his cloths he should want money, not an exchange. But I gave him to comprehend that as he was procuring pagazis for me, he was to pay my pagazis with my cloths; that all the money I expected to pay him, should be just such a sum I thought adequate for his trouble as my agent, and that only on those terms should he act for me in this or any other matter, and that the "Musungu" was not accustomed to eat his words.

The preceding paragraph embodies many more words than are contained in it. It embodies a dialogue of an hour, an angry altercation of half-an-hour's duration, a vow taken on the part of Soor Hadji Palloo, that if I did not take his cloths he should not touch my business, many tears, entreaties, woeful penitence, and much else, all of which were responded to with, "Do as I want you to do, or do nothing.

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