"What!" I Replied, "Brought His Body, The Entire
Ox, To Me?" "The Entire Ox As He Died Is Delivered At Your Door,"
Answered The Headman; "I Could Not Allow Any Of Your Property To Be Lost
Upon The Road.
Had the body of the ox not been delivered to you, we
might have been suspected of having stolen it." I went to the entrance
of the courtyard, and amidst a crowd of natives I found the entire ox
exactly as he had died.
They had carried him about eight miles on a
litter, which they had constructed of two immensely long posts with
cross-pieces of bamboo, upon which they had laid the body. They would
not eat the flesh, and seemed quite disgusted at the idea, as they
replied that "it had died."
It is a curious distinction of the Unyoro people, that they are
peculiarly clean feeders, and will not touch either the flesh of animals
that have died, neither of those that are sick; nor will they eat the
crocodile. They asked for no remuneration for bringing their heavy load
so great a distance; and they departed in good humour as a matter of
course.
Never were such contradictory people as these creatures; they had
troubled us dreadfully during the journey, as they would suddenly
exclaim against the weight of their loads, and throw them down, and bolt
into the high grass; yet now they had of their own free will delivered
to me a whole dead ox from a distance of eight miles, precisely as
though it had been an object of the greatest value.
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