Chap. XII. ISHOGO VILLAGES. 243 



custom in all these villages to offer a present of food 

 to a stranger if the inhabitants wish him to stay with 

 them ; and the acceptance of the present by the 

 stranger is a token of his intention to remain in the 

 place for a time. They offered also ivory, and slaves, , 

 and the more I refused the offers, the more pertina- 

 cious they became. Their sole wish, of course, in 

 asking me to stay, was to get as much as they could 

 of the coveted goods I brought with me. It was 

 droll to see, when I stopped in my walk, how they 

 fled in alarm to a distance, and then stood still to 

 gaze at me. Two of the chiefs followed us for 

 miles, with their proffered present of a goat each 

 trotting along by their sides. They finally gave in 

 and went back, saying to Mayolo and Nchiengain 

 that it was their fault that I did not stop. Our 

 Apono companions mourned over the goats that I 

 might have had : they thought only of their share of 

 the meat, as the animals, when killed, would have 

 been cut up and distributed amongst them. 



About mid-day we halted in a beautiful wooded 

 hollow, through which ran a picturesque rivulet. 

 There we stopped about an hour and breakfasted. 

 The direct easterly path from here led to a number 

 of Apono villages ; these we wished to avoid in 

 order to escape a similar annoyance to that which we 

 had undergone in the morning from the Ishogos, and 

 so struck a little more southerly, or S.S.E. by compass. 

 Our road lay for three hours over undulating prairie 

 land, with occasional woods ; one of the open spaces 

 was a prairie called Matimbie irimba (the prairie of 

 stones) stretching S.E. and N.W. 



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