He carried with him a small
gourd bottle, carefully stopped; this he broke, and extracted from the
inside two pieces of printed paper, that Kamrasi had sent to me in
reply.
On examining the papers, I found them to be portions of the English
Church Service translated into (I think) the Kiswahili language, by Dr.
Krapf! There were many notes in pencil on the margin, written in
English, as translations of words in the text. It quickly occurred to me
that Speke must have given this book to Kamrasi on his arrival from
Zanzibar, and that he now extracted the leaves, and sent them to me as
the token I had demanded to show that my message had been delivered to
him. Rabonga made a lame excuse for his previous desertion; he delivered
a thin ox that Kamrasi had sent me, and he declared that his orders
were, that he should take my whole party immediately to Kamrasi, as he
was anxious that we should attack Fowooka without loss of time; we were
positively to start on the following morning! My bait had taken! and we
should escape from this frightful spot, Shooa Moru.
On the following morning we were carried in our litters by a number of
men. The ox had been killed, the whole party had revelled in good food,
and a supply sufficient for the journey was taken by my men.
Without inflicting the tedium of the journey upon the reader, it will be
sufficient to say that the country was the same as usual, being a vast
park overgrown with immense grass.
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