CHAP, vn.] PROSPECTS. 219 



and I victimised John Allen, who had to strip very 

 frequently to satisfy the inquisitiveness of our hosts. 

 Nangoro positively refused to believe in the existence 

 of any country which was inhabited by whites alone. 

 He seemed to consider them as rare migratory animals 

 of unaccountable manners but considerable intelli- 

 gence, who were found here and there, but who existed 

 in no place as lords of the land. 



In all the inquiries that I made I had much trouble 

 in worming out my information, for Nangoro was not 

 at all communicative ; and Chik, from some cause or 

 other, became daily more distant and reserved. The 

 subject of the oxen was always a sore one. Nangoro 

 would not give me the use of his stubble-fields, or the 

 right of watering my oxen at the wells before his own 

 had drunk ; the consequence was that they remained 

 hanging about till noon, and then were driven oif two 

 or three miles to a piece of ground as barren as 

 Greenwich Park in summer-time. They came home 

 every evening thinner than they were the day before, 

 and were now in a wretched state : the poor things 

 were becoming very weak indeed, and we were per- 

 petually talking over the chances of their breaking 

 down on the return journey. It was exactly eighty 

 houi-s actual travelling from Okamabuti, or allowing 

 two miles and three quarters an hour, two hundred 

 and twenty miles ; of this, nearly sixty miles, jDartly 

 choked with thorns, partly as bleak as Salisbury 

 Plain, had to be travelled without water. This, of 

 course, would be nothing to animals in good condition, 

 and in a European climate ; but it was a very different 



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