ely brave, terrible in battle, but more terrible after.

Kulumbini, the village and city of the tribe, was no more than an
outlier of a fairly important tribe which occupied forest land
stretching back to the Ochori boundary. Their territory knew no frontier
save the frontiers of caprice and desire. They had neither nationality
nor national ambition, and would sell their spears for a bunch of fish,
as the saying goes. Their one consuming passion and one great wish was
that they should not be overlooked, and, so long as the tribes respected
this eccentricity, the Kulumbini distressed no man.

How this desire for isolation arose, none know. It is certain that once
upon a time they possessed a king who so shared their views that he
never came amongst them, but lived in a forest place which is called to
this day S'furi-S'foosi, "The trees (or glade) of the distant king."
They had demurred at Government inspection, and Sanders, coming up the
little river on the first of his visits, was greeted by a shower of
arrows, and his landing opposed by locked shields.

There are many ways of disposing of opposition, not the least important
of which is to be found in two big brass-barrelled guns which have their
abiding place at each end of the _Zaire's_ bridge. There is also a
method known as peaceful suasion. Sanders had compromised by going
ashore for a peace palaver with a revolver in each hand.

He had a whole fund of Bomongo stories, most of which are unfit for
printing, but which, nevertheless, find favour amongst the primitive
humorists of the Great River. By parable and story, by nonsense tale and
romance, by drawing upon his imagination to supply himself with facts,
by invoking ju-jus, ghosts, devils, and all the armoury of native
superstition, he had, in those far-off times, prevailed upon the people
of Kulumbini not only to allow him a peaceful entrance to their country,
but--wonder of wonders!--to contribute, when the moon and tide were in
certain relative positions, which in English means once every six
months, a certain tithe or tax, which might consist of rubber, ivory,
fish, or manioc, according to the circumstances of the people.

More than this, he stamped a solemn treaty--he wrote it in a tattered
laundry-book which had come into the chief's possession by some
mysterious means--and he hung about the neck of Gulabala, the titular
lord of these strange people, the medal and chain of chieftainship.

Not to be outd