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About a year ago, as he was making his way down to the coast with his ivory merchandise, on arrival at Khoko, and before his camp was fortified with a ring-fence of thorns, some of his men went to drink at a well, where they no sooner arrived than the natives began to bean them with sticks, claiming the well as their property.
The tobacco was to gratify my men, who said of all things they most wanted to cheer them was something to smoke. At the same time I sent back some other men to Khoko, with cloth to buy grain for present consumption, as some of my porters were already reduced to living on wild herbs and white ants.
At first the Arabs achieved two brilliant successes, having succeeded in killing Hori Hori of Khoko, when they recovered their ivory, made slaves of all they could find, and took a vast number of cattle; then attacking Usekhe they reduced that place to submission by forcing a ransom out of its people.
They would therefore not rest satisfied until they had reduced Khoko and Usekhe both, by actual force, to acknowledge their superiority, "feeding on them" until the Ramazan, when they would return with all the merchants detained in Ugogo, and, again combining their forces, they would fall on Usui, to reduce that country also. When these men had gone, a lunatic set the whole place in commotion.
With one more march from this we reached the last district in Ugogo, Khoko. Here the whole of the inhabitants turned out to oppose us, imagining we had come there to revenge the Arab, Mohinna, because the Wagogo attacked him a year ago, plundered his camp, and drove him back to Kaze, for having shot their old chief "Short-legs."
My men who went back to Khoko for grain having returned with next to nothing though, of course, they had spent all the cloths I sent back another batch with pretty cloths, as it was confidently stated that grain was so scarce there, nothing but the best fabrics would but it.
But this was not all their misfortunes; for the slaves who brought in this information had met the first detachment, sent with the Khoko loot, at Kigua, where, they said, the detachment had been surprised by Manua Sera, who, having fortified a village with four hundred men, expecting this sort of thing, rushed out upon them, and cut them all up.
Of this matter, however, more in Karague. 31st. To-day, Jafu, who had lost many ivories at Khoko when Mohinna was attacked there, prepared 100 slaves, with Said bin Osman, Mohinna's brother, with a view to follow down Snay, and, combining forces, attack Hori Hori, hoping to recover their losses; for it appeared to them the time had now come when their only hope left in carrying their trade to a successful issue, lay in force of arms.
Mohinna now gave us a very graphic description of his fight with Short-legs, the late chief of Khoko.
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