390 A BRAVE GERMAN AMONG THE CANNIBALS 



On the 19th of March, the Welle, a grand river flowing to the 

 west, and 800 feet in breadth, was reached ; and at this point ambas- 

 sadors from Munza, king of the Monbuttoo, came to greet the travelers 

 on their entrance into his kingdom. Nearly all the people of this part 

 of Africa are cannibals; and though some prefer to conceal from the 

 traveler their indulgence in human flesh, the Niam-Niam make no 

 secret of it at all. They string the teeth of their victims round their 

 necks, and have stakes erected round their buildings adorned with the 

 skulls of the men they have eaten. The Nubians who accompanied 

 Schweinfurth had all the time the greatest dread of the natives, for 

 they knew, if one of them lagged behind, what would be his certain 

 fate; and they asserted that even the bodies of the dead were often 

 found to have been disinterred and carried off by the Niam-Niams for 

 their horrible ban(|uets. 



The people of Monbuttoo, ruled over by King Munza, are very 

 like the Niam-Niam, and they, too, are undoubted cannibals. A grand 

 reception was awaiting the traveler in the king's palace. Immense 

 crowds of natives had flocked thither to gaze on the white man, and 

 officials with sticks marched about among the mob in the open space, 

 vigorously knocking the little boys on the head', for all the world like 

 parish beadles in England. Behind the king's seat hundreds of orna- 

 mental lances and spears, all of pure copper, were ranged closely 

 together, and in the glare of the noonday sun these shone like a line of 

 flashing torches. After a delay of more than an hour, during which 

 the king was being adorned in his harem, the trumpeters began to blow 

 their enormous ivory horns, the drums made a deafening noise, and a 

 luumber of officials with heavy iron bells added to the din. Then, 

 looking neither to right nor left, with a long, firm stride, came the 

 king, Munza, and flung himself down on his chair of state. His arms, 

 leg, neck, and breast were all covered with copper rings and chains, 

 and a large copper crescent was placed on the top of an enormous sort 

 of chignon about a foot and a half high, forming part of a crown made 

 of closely plaited reeds covered with three layers of parrots' feathers, 

 and crowned with a plume of the same. His whole body was smeared 

 with the unguent of powdered cam-wood, and his single garment was 

 a large piece of fig-bark, which, falling round his body, served as waist- 



