My Game Was Now Advancing, For I
Found Through Her I Should Get The Key To An Influence That Might
Bear on the king, and was much pleased to hear her express
herself delighted with me for everything I had
Done except
stopping her grog, which, naturally enough in this great pombe-
drinking country, she said would be a very trying abstinence.
The doctoring over, her majesty expressed herself ready to
inspect the honorarium I had brought for her, and the articles
were no sooner presented by Bombay and Nasib, with the usual
formalities of stroking to insure their purity, than she, boiling
with pleasure, showed them all to her officers, who declared,
with a voice of most exquisite triumph, that she was indeed the
most favoured of queens. Then, in excellent good taste, after
saying that nobody had ever given her such treasures, she gave
me, in return, a beautifully- worked pombe sucking-pipe, which
was acknowledged by every one to be the greatest honour she could
pay me.
Not satisfied with this, she made me select, though against my
desire, a number of sambo, called here gundu, rings of giraffe
hair wound round with thin iron or copper wire, and worn as
anklets; and crowned with all sundry pots of pombe, a cow, and a
bundle of dried fish, of the description given in the woodcut,
called by my men Samaki Kambari. This business over, she begged
me to show her my picture-books, and was so amused with them that
she ordered her sorceresses and all the other women in again to
inspect them with her.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 390 of 767
Words from 107220 to 107488
of 210958
