“For, he remarked, “it is much better and cheaper to send many small caravans than one large one.  Large caravans invite attack, or are delayed by avaricious chiefs upon the most trivial pretexts, while small ones pass by without notice.”

The bales and the beads were duly carried to Soor Hadji Palloo’s house, and the day passed with me in mentally congratulating myself upon my good fortune, in complimenting the young Hindi’s talents for business, the greatness and influence of Tarya Topan, and the goodness of Mr. Webb in thus hastening my departure from Bagamoyo.  I mentally vowed a handsome present, and a great puff in my book, to Soor Hadji Palloo, and it was with a glad heart that I prepared these soldiers for their march to Unyayembe.

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.