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On the 18th the three caravans, Hamed's, Hassan's, and my own, left Tura by a road which zig-zagged towards all points through the tall matama fields. In an hour's time we had passed Tura Perro, or Western Tura, and had entered the forest again, whence the Wakimbu of Tura obtain their honey, and where they excavate deep traps for the elephants with which the forest is said to abound.
The country to the east and north-east of this village is said to be thinly peopled, but, as usual, the clans are much intermixed, the two principal being Wakimbu and Wasagari.
At central Tura, where we encamped, we had evidence enough of the rascality of the Wakimbu of Tura.
As nearly all the men had now returned, Grant and I spent New Year's Day with the first detachment at Jiwa la Mkoa, or Round Rock a single tembe village occupied by a few Wakimbu settlers, who, by their presence and domestic habits, made us feel as though we were well out of the wood.
Hamed's camp was next visited; but here also the restlessness of the owner frustrated their attempts, for he was pacing backwards and forwards through his camp, with a loaded gun in his hand; and the thieves were obliged to relinquish the chance of stealing any of his bales. Such were our experiences of the Wakimbu of Tura.
The Wakimbu, emigrants from Ukimbu, near Urori, are a quiet race, preferring the peaceful arts of agriculture to war; of tending their flocks to conquest. At the least rumor of war they remove their property and family, and emigrate to the distant wilderness, where they begin to clear the land, and to hunt the elephant for his ivory.
To make the best of a bad job, I now sent Bombay with two other men off to Musa to see what he could do, and ordered my other men to hire Wakimbu from village to village. On the 7th, a nervous excitement was produced in the camp by some of my men running in and calling all to arm, as the fugitive chief Manua Sera was coming, with thirty armed followers carrying muskets.
So indeed we found it; for although this wilderness was formerly an entire forest of trees and wild animals, numerous Wakimbu, who formerly occupied the banks of the Ruaha to the southward, had been driven to migrate here, wherever they could find springs of water, by the boisterous naked pastorals the Warori.
Milk and honey were plentiful, and three frasilah of sweet potatoes were bought for a shukka, equal to about 40 cents of our money. The 13th June brought us to the last village of Magunda Mkali, in the district of Jiweh la Singa, after a short march of eight miles and three-quarters. Kusuri so called by the Arabs is called Konsuli by the Wakimbu who inhabit it.
I was assure that he was not a cannibal; for the whole tribe of Wabembe, when they cannot get human flesh otherwise, give a goat to their neighbours for a sick or dying child, regarding such flesh as the best of all. No other cannibals, however, were known of; but the Masai, and their cognates, the Wahumba, Wataturu, Wakasange, Wanyaramba, and even the Wagogo and Wakimbu, circumcise.
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