The bale of choice cloths was opened again next morning, and four royal cloths were this time selected, and two dotis of Merikani, and Bombay was again despatched, burdened with compliments, and polite words.

It was necessary to be very politic with a man who was so surly, and too powerful to make an enemy of.  What if he made up his mind to imitate the redoubtable Mirambo, King of Uyoweh!  The effect of my munificent liberality was soon seen in the abundance of provender which came to my camp.  Before an hour went by, there came boxes full of choroko, beans, rice, matama or dourra, and Indian corn, carried on the heads of a dozen villagers, and shortly after the Mtemi himself came, followed by about thirty musketeers and twenty spearmen, to visit the first white man ever seen on this road.  Behind these warriors came a liberal gift, fully equal in value to that sent to him, of several large gourds of honey, fowls, goats, and enough vetches and beans to supply my men with four days’ food.

I met the chief at the gate of my camp, and bowing profoundly, invited him to my tent, which I had arranged as well as my circumstances would permit, for this reception.  My Persian carpet and bear skin were spread out, and a broad piece of bran-new crimson cloth covered my kitanda, or bedstead.

The chief, a tall robust man, and his chieftains, were invited to seat themselves.  They cast a look of such gratified surprise at myself, at my face, my clothes, and guns, as is almost impossible to describe.  They looked at me intently for a few seconds, and then at each other, which ended in an uncontrollable burst of laughter, and repeated snappings of the fingers.  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.