In The Evening The Queen Stumped Out Of
Her Chambers And Walked To The Other End Of Her Palace, Where The
Head Or Queen Of The Wichwezi Women Lived, To Whom Everybody Paid
The Profoundest Respect.
On the way I joined her, she saying, in
a state of high anger, "You won't call on me, now I have given
you such a charming damsel:
You have quite forgotten us in your
love of home." Of course Meri's misdemeanour had to be explained,
when she said, "As that is the case, I will give you another; but
you must take Meri out of the country, else she will bring
trouble on us; for, you know, I never gave girls who lived in the
palace to any one in my life before, because they would tell
domestic affairs not proper for common people to know." I then
said my reason for not seeing her before was, that the four times
I had sent messengers to make an appointment for the following
day, they had been repulsed from her doors. This she would not
believe, but called me a story-teller in very coarse language,
until the men who had been sent were pointed out to her, and they
corroborated me.
The Wichwezi queen met her majesty with her head held very high,
and instead of permitting me to sit on my box of grass, threw out
a bundle of grass for that purpose. All conversation was kept
between the two queens; but her Wichwezi majesty had a platter of
clay-stone brought, which she ate with great relish, making a
noise of satisfaction like a happy guinea-pig. She threw me a
bit, which to the surprise of everybody, I caught and threw it
into my mouth, thinking it was some confection; but the harsh
taste soon made me spit it out again, to the amusement of the
company. On returning home I found the king had requested me to
call on him as soon as possible with the medicine-chest.
8th. - Without a morsel to eat for dinner last night, or anything
this morning, we proceeded early to the palace, in great
expectation that the medicines in request would bring us
something; but after waiting all day till 4 p.m., as the king did
not appear, leaving Bombay behind, I walked away to shoot a
guinea-fowl within earshot of the palace. The scheme was
successful, for the report of the gun which killed the bird
reached the king's ear, and induced him to say that if Bana was
present he would be glad to see him. This gave Bombay an
opportunity of telling all the facts of the case; which were no
sooner heard than the king gave his starving guests a number of
plantains, and vanished at once, taking my page Lugoi with him,
to instruct him in Kisuahili (Zanzibar language).
9th. - As the fruit of last night's scheme, the king sent us four
goats and two cows.
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