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All the fortunate youths had to use their tongues until the wee hours of next morning had arrived, relating all the wonders they had seen near the Great Sea, and in the "Unguja," the island of Zanzibar; of how they saw great white men's ships, and numbers of white men, of their perils and trials during their journey through the land of the fierce Wagogo, and divers other facts, with which the reader and I are by this time well acquainted.
A report was now spread that a lion had killed one of the chief's cows; and the Wagogo, suspecting that our being here was the cause of this ill luck, threatened to attack us.
Some broad-leafed plantain plants were also seen in the neighbourhood of the villages, which as we advanced became very numerous. The villages of the Wakimbu are like those of the Wagogo, square, flat-roofed, enclosing an open area, which is sometimes divided into three or four parts by fences or matama stalks.
The journey is for to-morrow! The road is crooked and bad, bad! The jungle is there, and many Wagogo lie hidden within it! The Wagogo have been to our camp, they have seen your bales; to-night they seek the jungle: to-morrow watch well, O Wanyamwezi! Keep close together, lag not behind! Kirangozis walk slow, that the weak, the sick, and the young may keep up with the strong!
The guns, fifty in number, were also furnished out of the stores of the English Expedition by him; and so were the ammunition, the honga cloth, for the tribute to the Wagogo, and the cloth for provisioning the force. Mr. Livingstone worked hard in the interests of his father and assisted me to the utmost of his ability.
But I hastened to allay his fears by telling Bombay, in his presence, that I had foreseen such demands on the part of the Wagogo, and that having set aside one hundred and twenty doti of honga cloths, I should not consider myself a sufferer if the Sultan demanded and I paid forty cloths to him; that he must therefore open the honga bale, and permit Sheikh Thani to extract such cloths as the Sultan might like.
To resume the thread of the journey: we found, on arrival in Ugogo, very little more food than in Usagara for the Wagogo were mixing their small stores of grain with the monkey-bread seeds of the gouty-limbed tree.
This commenced a row, which brought out a large body of men, who demanded a bullock at the point of their spears. Mohinna hearing this, also came to the well, and said he would not listen to their demand, but would drink as he wished, for the water was the gift of God. Words then changed to blows. All Mohinna's pagazis bolted, and his merchandise fell into the hands of the Wagogo.
We were still in great want of men; but rather than stop a day, as all delays only lead to more difficulties, I pushed on to Magomba's palace with the assistance of some Wagogo carrying our baggage, each taking one cloth as his hire.
We had all now to hurry back to the carcass before the Wagogo could find it; but though this precaution was quickly taken, still, before the tough skin of the beast could be cut through, the Wagogo began assembling like vultures, and fighting with my men. A more savage, filthy, disgusting, but at the same time grotesque, scene than that which followed cannot be conceived.
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