With A Constant Reiteration Of These Scenes - The
Saluting At One Time, The Music At Another - Interrupted Only Once
By A Number Of Girls Dancing Something Like A Good Rough Highland
Fling Whilst The Little Band Played, The Day's Ceremonies Ended.
6th and 7th.
- During the next two days, as my men had all worn
out their clothes, I gave them each thirty necklaces of beads to
purchase a suit of the bark cloth called mbugu, already
described. Finding the flour of the country too bitter to eat by
itself, we sweetened it with ripe plantains, and made a good cake
of it. The king now, finding me disinclined to fight his brother
Rogero, either with guns or magic horns, asked me to give him a
"doctor" or charm to create longevity and to promote the increase
of his family, as his was not large enough to maintain the
dignity of so great a man as himself. I gave him a blister, and,
changing the subject, told him the history of the creation of
man. After listening to it attentively, he asked what thing in
creation I considered the greatest of all things in the world;
for whilst a man at most could only live one hundred years, a
tree lived many; but the earth ought to be biggest, for it never
died.
I then told him again I wished one of his sons would accompany me
to England, that he might learn the history of Moses, wherein he
would find that men had souls which live for ever, but that the
earth would come to an end in the fullness of time.
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