CHAPTER XXXIII 



THREE SLAVE GIRLS 



WHEN hunting on the Rovuma River, some years 

 ago, I had an experience which is interesting as an 

 illustration of the way in which slave women are 

 bartered throughout German and Portuguese East 

 Africa. 



I had just finished lunch, and was enjoying a cigar 

 in my tent, when my private boy came and told me 

 that the Sultan Mperembe, a big Wyao chief, whose 

 people inhabit the country about the Lujenda River, 

 had sent a couple of his men with three slave girls 

 as a present for me, asking, in exchange, a barrel of 

 gunpowder, some percussion caps, and some 

 medicine for killing elephants. 



With regard to the last item, let me explain that 

 the native mind is firmly imbued with the idea that 

 it is not due to the precision and power of a modern 

 rifle that a white man kills an elephant, buffalo or 

 rhinoceros, as the case may be ; but that his success 



in the chase is won by the potency of some secret 



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