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Mabuki and Bilal returned with Budja and his ten children from Unyoro, attended by a deputation of four men sent by Kamrasi, who were headed by Kidgwiga. Mtesa, it now transpired, had followed my advice of making friendship with Kamrasi by sending two brass wires as a hongo instead of an army, and Kamrasi in return, sent him two elephant-tusks.

Long elephant-tusks leaned in corners, smoking and liqueur-tables made up from the mammoths' legs and feet stood about, and crossed from ceiling to floor; on the walls were the skins of enormous snakes such as Frank had never seen or imagined.

At first, all that the somewhat faint light given by the lamp revealed was a room hewn out of the living rock, and apparently not more than ten feet square. Next there came into sight, stored one on the other to the arch of the roof, a splendid collection of elephant-tusks.

It was a Nile as blue as turquoise; and after the low island of Tuli had been left behind it was strange to see the junction of the Blue and the White Niles, in a quarrelsome swirl of sharply divided colours. Landing on the shore at Omdurman, we met carts loaded with elephant-tusks, and wagons piled with hides. Giant men, like ebony statues, walked beside pacing camels white as milk.

Of the latter one was sheathed in leopard-skin and rubbed, not struck, with two curved sticks. A second was hourglass-shaped; the sticks were bent to right angles, and the drummer carried, by way of cymbal, a small round iron plate adjusted to the fingers with little rings loosely set in the edge. The horns were scrivelloes, elephant-tusks of small size.