A BRAVE GERMAN AMONG THE CANNIBALS 389 



rations were made and a start accomplished, on January 7, 1870, for 

 the Niam-Niam campaign, the journey through the land of the can- 

 nibals. Loathsome as was their habit of eating human flesh, the 

 traveler found them friendly for the most part, possessed of consider- 

 able knowledge of several of the arts of life, such as those of pottery 

 and working metals, and physically a very fine race. He thus describes 

 a Niam-Niam warior : 



''With his lance in one hand, his woven shield and trumbash in 

 the other — with his scimitar in his girdle, and his loins encircled by 

 a skin, to which are attached the tails of several animals — adorned on 

 his breast and on his forehead by strings of teeth, the trophies of war, 

 or of the chase — his long hair floating freely over his neck and shoul- 

 ders — his large keen eyes gleaming from beneath his heavy brow — • 

 his white and pointed teeth shining from between his parted lips — he 

 advances with a firm and defiant bearing, so that the stranger as he 

 gazes upon him may well behold, in this true son of the African 

 wilderness, every attribute of the wildest savagery that may be con- 

 jured up by the boldest flight of fancy. It is therefore by no means 

 difficult to account for the deep impression made by the Niam-Niam 

 on the fantastic imagination of the Sudan Arabs. I have seen the wild 

 Bishareen and other Bedouins of the Nubian deserts; I have gazed 

 with admiration upon the stately war-dress of the Abyssinians ; I have 

 been riveted with surprise at the supple forms of the mounted Bag- 

 gara ; but nowhere, in any part of Africa, have I ever come across a 

 people that in every attitude and every motion exhibited so thorough a 

 mastery over all the circumstances of war or of the chase as these 

 Niam-Niam. Other nations in comparison seemed to me to fall short 

 In the perfect ease — I might almost say, in the dramatic grace — that 

 characterized their every movement." 



But strong as they were, they were terribly frightened by Euro- 

 pean firearms; and on one occasion, when a quarrel was imminent, 

 Aboo Sammatt lighted a luclfer-match and, applying it to the roof of 

 a hut, showed he could "make fire," and they submitted at once. And 

 when afterwards Schweinfurth gave them matches to strike for them- 

 selves, no English display of fireworks was ever more admired, or 

 more brilliantly successful — their own method of striking a light being 

 the primitive mode of rubbing two dry pieces of wood together. 



