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Updated: June 3, 2025
Hamed, in a hurry to arrive at Unyanyembe in order to dispose of his cloth before other caravans appeared in the market, replied at first that he would not, that he could not, stop for the Musungu.
The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, that the chief's head had grown big since he heard that the Musungu had come, and that its "bigness" could not be reduced unless he could extract ten doti as tribute.
The slaves were absent a full hour, but having wasted their powers of pleading, in vain, they returned with the demand for more, which Sheikh Thani communicated to me in this wise: "Auf! this Sultan is a very bad man a very bad man indeed; he says, the Musungu is a great man, I call him a sultan; the Musungu is very rich, for he has several caravans already gone past; the Musungu must pay forty doti, and the Arabs must pay twelve doti each, for they have rich caravans.
The words "Musungu kuba" had as much charm for these people as the music of the Pied Piper had for the rats of Hamelin, since they served to draw from within the walls across their stream so large a portion of the population; and when I continued the journey to the Ungerengeri, distant four miles, I feared that the Hamelin catastrophe might have to be repeated before I could rid myself of them.
For the third time the slaves departed for the Sultan's tembe, carrying with them six doti Merikani and a fundo of bubu from myself, and ten doti from the Arabs. Again they returned to us with the Sultan's words, "That, as the doti of the Musungu were short measure, and the cloths of the Arabs of miserable quality, the Musungu must send three doti full measure, and the Arabs five doti of Kaniki."
From such a slight cause ensued a tremendous uproar from Kingaru chief of the village who, with his brother-chiefs of neighbouring villages, numbering in the aggregate two dozen wattled huts, had taken counsel upon the best means of mulcting the Musungu of a full doti or two of Merikani, and finally had arrived at the conviction that the act of burying a dead horse in their soil without "By your leave, sir," was a grievous and fineable fault.
As we passed the numerous villages, and perceived the entire face of the land to be one vast field of grain, and counted the people halted by scores on the roadside to feast their eyes with a greedy stare on the Musungu, I no longer wondered at the extortionate demands of the Wagogo.
They paced backwards and forwards, asking themselves, "Are the Wagoga to be beaten like slaves by this Musungu? But whenever I made motion, flourishing my whip, towards them, these mighty braggarts found it convenient to move to respectable distances from the irritated Musungu.
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