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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