I had suspected that the voices I heard boded no good to us, and I had accordingly prepared my weapons and cartridges.  Verily, what a fine chance for adventure this was!  One spear flung at us, or one shot fired into this minatory mob of savages, and the opposing’ bands had been plunged into a fatal conflict!  There would have been no order of battle, no pomp of war, but a murderous strife, a quick firing of breech-loaders, and volleys from flint-lock muskets, mixed with the flying of spears and twanging of bows, the cowardly running away at once, pursued by yelping savages; and who knows how it all would have terminated?  Forty spears against forty guns—­but how many guns would not have decamped?  Perhaps all, and I should have been left with my boy gunbearers to have my jugular deliberately severed, or to be decapitated, leaving my head to adorn a tall pole in the centre of a Kigogo village, like poor Monsieur Maizan’s at Dege la Mhora, in Uzaramo.  Happy end of an Expedition!  And the Doctor’s Journal lost for ever—­the fruits of six years’ labor!

But in this land it will not do to fight unless driven to the very last extremity.  No belligerent Mungo Park can be successful in Ugogo unless he has a sufficient force of men with him.  With five hundred Europeans one could traverse Africa from north to south, by tact, and the moral effect that such a force would inspire.  Very little fighting would be required.

Without rising from the bale on which I was seated, I requested the kirangozi to demand an explanation of their furious hubbub and threatening aspect; if they were come to rob us.

“No,” said the chief; “we do not want to stop the road, or to rob you; but we want the tribute.”

“But don’t you see us halted, and the bale opened to send it to you?  We have come so far from your village that after the tribute is settled we can proceed on our way, as the day is yet young.”

The chief burst into a loud laugh, and was joined by ourselves.  He evidently felt ashamed of his conduct for he voluntarily offered the explanation, that as he and his men were cutting wood to make a new fence for his village, a lad came up to him, and said that a caravan of Wangwana were about passing through the country without stopping to explain who they were.  We were soon very good friends.  He begged of me to make rain for him, as his crops were suffering, and no rain had fallen for months.  I told him that though white people were very great and clever people, much superior to the Arabs, yet we could not make rain.  Though very much disappointed, he did not doubt my statement, and after receiving his honga, which was very light, he permitted us to go on our way, and even accompanied us some distance to show us the road.