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Then at home the Wanyamuezi porters received their tusks of ivory, weighing from 16 to 50 lb. each, and took a note besides on Rumanika each for twenty fundo of beads, barring one Bogue man, who, having lent a cloth to the expedition some months previously, thought it would not be paid him, and therefore seized a sword as security; the consequence was, his tusk was seized until the sword was returned, and he was dismissed minus his beads, for having so misconducted himself.
We slept under a tree, and this morning found a comfortable residence under the eaves of a capacious hut. The Wanyamuezi porters next came in at their own time, and proved to us how little worth are orders in a land where every man, in his own opinion, is a lord, and no laws prevail.
The Wanyamuezi, however, are not a very well-favoured people in physical appearance, and are much darker than either the Wazaramo or the Wagogo, though many of their men are handsome and their women pretty; neither are they well dressed or well armed, being wanting in pluck and gallantry. Their women, generally, are better dressed than the men.
Some Wanyamuezi porters, who had been left sick here by former caravans, now wished to take service with me as far as Kaze; but the Wagogo, hearing of their desire, frightened them off it.
Order there was none: the men hated this "double work;" all the Wanyamuezi but three deserted, with the connivance of the coast-men, carrying off their loads with them, under a mutual understanding, as I found out afterwards, that the coast-men were to go shares in the plunder as soon as we reached Unyamuezi.
The Wanyamuezi porters even thought they had found a paradise, and forthwith threw down their loads as the villagers came to offer them grain for sale; so that, had I not had the Wanguana a little under control, we should not have completed our distance that day, and so reached Manyonge, which reminded me, by its ugliness, of the sterile Somali land.
As may be supposed they were thankful when Ugogo was passed, and they entered Unyanyembe. As the caravan resumed its march after halting at noon, the Wanyamuezi cheered, shouted, and sang, the soldiers and pagazis shouting in return, and the kirangoza blew his horn much more merrily than he had been wont to do in Ugogo.
These Wanyamuezi, it then transpired, were soldiers of Manua Sera, the "Tippler," who was at war with the Arabs. He had been defeated at Mguru, a district in Unyamuezi, by the Arabs, and had sent these men to cut off the caravan route, as the best way of retaliation that lay in his power. We had already been here too long.
On the east, beyond Kidi, he only knew of one clan of Wahuma, a people who subsist entirely on meat and milk. The sportsmen of this country, like the Wanyamuezi, plant a convolvulus of extraordinary size by the side of their huts, and pile the jaw-bones and horns of their spoils before, as a means of bringing good-luck.
An Arab trader, whom they had met, had sixty wives, who lived together in a double-poled tent, with which he always travelled. One of them was a Watusi, a beautiful, tall girl, with large, dark eyes, and the smallest mouth and nose, with thin lips and small hands. Her noble race will never become slaves, preferring death to slavery. The Wanyamuezi treat the Watusi with great respect.
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