Every Now And Then A Cry
Of Fire In The Middle Of The Night Enlivened The Ennui Of Our Existence;
The Huts Were Littered Deep With Straw, And The Inmates, Intoxicated,
Frequently Fell Asleep With Their Huge Pipes Alight, Which, Falling In
The Dry Straw, At Once Occasioned A Conflagration.
In such cases the
flames spread from hut to hut with immense rapidity, and frequently four
or five hundred huts in Kamrasi's large camp were destroyed by fire, and
rebuilt in a few days.
I was anxious concerning my powder, as, in the
event of fire, the blaze of the straw hut was so instantaneous that
nothing could be saved: should my powder explode, I should be entirely
defenceless. Accordingly, after a conflagration in my neighbourhood, I
insisted upon removing all huts within a circuit of thirty yards of my
dwelling: the natives demurring, I at once ordered my men to pull down
the houses, and thereby relieved myself from drunken and dangerous
neighbours.
Although we had been regularly supplied with beef by the king, we now
found it most difficult to procure fowls; the war with Fowooka had
occasioned the destruction of nearly all the poultry in the
neighbourhood of Kisoona, as Kamrasi and his kojoors (magicians) were
occupied with daily sacrifices, deducing prognostications of coming
events from the appearances of the entrails of the birds slain. The king
was surrounded by sorcerers, both men and women; these people were
distinguished from others by witch-like chaplets of various dried roots
worn upon the head; some of them had dried lizards, crocodiles' teeth,
lions' claws, minute tortoise-shells, &c. added to their collection of
charms.
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