This Distressed Him Exceedingly; He Said, That
The "King Was Really So Great A Man That He, His Own Brother,
Dared not
sit on a stool in his presence, and that he had only kept in retirement
as a matter
Of precaution, as Debono's people had allied themselves with
his enemy Rionga in the preceding year, and he dreaded treachery." I
laughed contemptuously at M'Gambi, telling him that if a woman like my
wife dared to trust herself far from her own country among such savages
as Kamrasi's people, their king must be weaker than a woman if he dare
not show himself in his own territory. I concluded by saying, that I
should not go to see Kamrasi, but that he should come to visit me.
M'Gambi promised to send a good cow on the following morning, as we had
not tasted milk for some months, and we were in great want of
strengthening food. He took his leave, having received a small present
of minute beads of various colours.
I could not help wondering at the curious combination of pride and
abject cowardice that had been displayed by the redoubted Kamrasi ever
since our first entrance to his territory. Speke when at Gondokoro had
told me how he had been kept waiting for fifteen days before the king
had condescended to see him. I now understood that this delay had been
occasioned more by fear than pride, and that, in his cowardice, the king
fell back upon his dignity as an excuse for absenting himself.
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