In A Great Fit Of Indignation He Said, "I Once Killed A
Hundred Wakungu In A Single Day, And Now,
If they won't feed my
guests, I will kill a hundred more; for I know the physic for
bumptiousness." Then,
Sending his brothers away, he asked me to
follow him into the back part of the palace, as he loved me so
much he must show me everything. We walked along under the
umbrella, first looking down one street of huts, then up another,
and, finally, passing the sleeping-chamber, stopped at one
adjoining it. "That hut," said the king, "is the one I sleep in;
no one of my wives dare venture within it unless I call her." He
let me feel immediately that for the distinction conferred on me
in showing me this sacred hut a return was expected. Could I
after that refuse him such a mere trifle as a compass? I told
him he might as well put my eyes out and ask me to walk home, as
take away that little instrument, which could be of no use to
him, as he could not read or understand it. But this only
excited his cupidity; he watched it twirling round and pointing
to the north, and looked and begged again, until, tired of his
importunities, I told him I must wait until the Usoga road was
open before I could part with it, and then the compass would be
nothing to what I would give him. Hearing this, "That is all on
my shoulders; as sure as I live it shall be done; for that
country has no king, and I have long been desirous of taking it."
I declined, however, to give him the instrument on the security
of his promise, and he went to breakfast.
I walked off to Usungu to see what I could do for him in his
misery. I found that he had a complication of evils entirely
beyond my healing power, and among them inveterate forms of the
diseases which are generally associated with civilisation and its
social evils. I could do nothing to cure him, but promised to do
whatever was in my power to alleviate his sufferings.
24th. - Before breakfast I called on poor Usungu, prescribing hot
coffee to be drunk with milk every morning, which astonished him
not a little, as the negroes only use coffee for chewing. He
gave my men pombe and plantains. On my return I met a page sent
to invite me to the palace. I found the king sitting with a
number of women. He was dressed in European clothes, part of them
being a pair of trousers he begged for yesterday, that he might
appear like Bana. This was his first appearance in trousers, and
his whole attire, contrasting strangely with his native
habiliments, was in his opinion very becoming, though to me a
little ridiculous; for the legs of the trousers, as well as the
sleeves of the waistcoat, were much too short, so that his black
feet and hands stuck out at the extremities as an organ-player's
monkey's do, whilst the cockscomb on his head prevented a fez
cap, which was part of his special costume for the occasion, from
sitting properly.
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