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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.
In sending cloths great care should be taken that every piece be of the same length, and always evenly divisible by cubits, or eighteen-inch measure. The only reason for the negro taking a large goat-skin in preference to a shukka, is because it is stronger.
Said he, with another leer of his wrinkled visage, "Kingaru is poor, there is no matama in the village." To which I replied that since there was no matama in the village I would pay him half a shukka, or a yard of cloth, which would be exactly equivalent to his present; that if he preferred to call his small basketful a present, I should be content to call my yard of cloth a present.
All last night, until nine A.M. this morning, my soldiers danced and sang to the names of their dead comrades, whose bones now bleach in the forests of Wilyankuru. Two or three huge pots of pombe failed to satisfy the raging thirst which the vigorous exercise they were engaged in, created. So, early this morning, I was called upon to contribute a shukka for another potful of the potent liquor.
I thought his demand an imposition, for he had just been given a cloth. His wages were originally fixed at five dollars a-month, to accumulate at Zanzibar until our return there; but he was to receive daily rations the same as all the other men, with an occasional loin-cloth covering whenever his shukka might wear out.
As no further information about the lake could be gained, I bade Mahaya and the Sheikh adieu, leaving as a token of recollection one shukka merikani for the former, one dhoti kiniki for his wife, and a fundo of beads for the poor Arab, and retraced my steps by a double march back to Ukumbi. Whilst passing alongside the archipelago, I shot two geese and a crested crane.
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