I concluded by saying, that I
should not go to see Kamrasi, but that he should come to visit me.
M'Gambi promised to send a good cow on the following morning, as we had
not tasted milk for some months, and we were in great want of
strengthening food. He took his leave, having received a small present
of minute beads of various colours.
I could not help wondering at the curious combination of pride and
abject cowardice that had been displayed by the redoubted Kamrasi ever
since our first entrance to his territory. Speke when at Gondokoro had
told me how he had been kept waiting for fifteen days before the king
had condescended to see him. I now understood that this delay had been
occasioned more by fear than pride, and that, in his cowardice, the king
fell back upon his dignity as an excuse for absenting himself.
With the addition of the Turks' party we were now twenty-four armed men.
Although they had not seen the real king Kamrasi, they had been well
treated since Ibrahim's departure, having received each a present of a
young slave girl as a wife, while, as a distinguishing mark of royal
favour, the vakeel Eddrees had received two wives instead of one; they
had also received regular supplies of flour and beef--the latter in
the shape of a fat ox presented every seventh day, together with a
liberal supply of plantain cider.
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