arora, all of the most inviting nature;
but nothing else worth mentioning occurred until we reached the border
of Msalala, where an officer of M'yonga's, who said he was a bigger man
than his chief, demanded a tax, which I refused, and the dispute ended
in his snatching Nasib's gun out of his hands. I thought little of this
affair myself, beyond regretting the delay which it might occasion, as
M'yonga, I knew, would not permit such usage, if I chose to go round by
his palace and make a complaint. Both Bui and Nasib, however, were so
greatly alarmed, that before I could say a word they got the gun back
again by paying four yards merikani. We had continued bickering again,
for Bui had taken such fright at this kind of rough handling, and the
"push-ahead" manner in which I persisted "riding over the lords of the
soil," that I could hardly drag the party along.

However, on the 18th, after breakfasting at Ruhe's, we walked into
Mihambo, and took all the camp by surprise. I found the Union Jack
hoisted upon a flag-staff, high above all the trees, in the boma. Baraka
said he had done this to show the Watuta that the place was occupied
by men with guns--a necessary precaution, as all the villages in the
neighbourhood had, since my departure, been visited and plundered by
them. Lumeresi, the chief of the district, who lived ten miles to the
eastward, had been constantly pressing him to leave this post and come
to his palace, as he felt greatly affronted at our having shunned him
and put up with Ruhe. He did not want property, he said, but he could
not bear that the strangers had lived with his mtoto, or child,
which Ruhe was, and yet would not live with him. He thought Baraka's
determined obstinacy on this could only be caused by the influence of
the head man of the village, and threatened that if Baraka did not
come to visit him at once, he would have the head man beheaded. Then,
shifting round a bit, he thought of ordering his subjects to starve the
visitors into submission, and said he must have a hongo equal to Ruhe's.
To all this Baraka replied, that he was merely a servant, and as he had
orders to stop where he was, he could not leave it until I came; but to
show there was no ill-feeling towards him, he sent the chief a cloth.

These first explanations over, I entered my tent, in which Baraka had
been living, and there I found a lot of my brass wires on the ground,
lying scattered about. I did not like the look of this, s