Their Lips Are Two Fingers Thick, Their Foreheads
Very Large, And They Have Great Teeth As White As Snow.
They are
exceedingly timorous and fearful of armed men; wherefore six of us, well
armed with muskets, and accompanied by a black slave who knew the
country, went a considerable way inland to view the country.
When we had
gone forwards a days journey, we came to many herds of elephants, and
our guide recommended to us to carry burning firebrands in our hands, as
these beasts are afraid of fire above all things; but we chanced to fall
in with three female elephants that had lately calved, and they could
not be scared by our fire, but followed us so far that we were obliged
to save ourselves by scrambling up a steep mountain.
[Footnote 118: Perhaps this expression ought to have been black-a-moors,
the old name for negroes. - E.]
When we were about ten miles inland, we came to a cave on the side of a
mountain inhabited by some of the black natives, whose manner of speech
was so strange and chattering, like so many apes, that I am unable to
express the manner of their language, which comes near the strange
jargon used by the muleteers of Sicily, when they drive their
mules[119]. Our pilot asked us if we were inclined to purchase any
cattle from these people, saying that we might have them at a very low
price; but suspecting that he either mocked us, or meant, in concert
with the natives, to impose upon us, we said that we had no money.
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