190 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



frequent, a score being often slain at a time : when 

 remonstrated with concerning this barbarity, Suna 

 declared that he had no other secret for keeping his 

 subjects in awe of him, and for preventing conspiracies. 

 Sometimes the king would accompany his army to a 

 battue of game, when the warriors were expected to 

 distinguish themselves by attacking the most ferocious 

 beasts without weapons: even the elephant, borne 

 down by numbers, yielded to the grasp of man. When 

 passing a village he used to raise a shout, which was 

 responded to by a loud flourish of horns, reed-pipes, 

 iron whistles, and similar instruments. At times lie 

 decreed a grand muster of his soldiery: he presented 

 himself sitting before his gate, with a spear in the right 

 hand, and holding in the left the leash of a large and 

 favourite dog resembling an Arab suluki or greyhound. 

 The master of the hounds was an important personage. 

 Suna took great pleasure in witnessing trials of strength, 

 the combatants contending with a mixture of slapping 

 and pushing till one fell to the ground. He had a 

 large menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar 

 beasts of disport, to whom he would sometimes give a 

 criminal as a 'curee: 7 he also kept for amusement 

 fifteen or sixteen albinos; and so greedy was he of 

 novelty that even a cock of peculiar or uniform colour 

 would have been forwarded by its owner to feed his 

 eyes." 



Suna when last visited by the Arabs was a 11 red 

 man," aged about forty-five, tall, robust, and powerful 

 of limb, with a right kingly presence and a warrior 

 carriage. His head was so shaven as to leave what the 

 Omani calls " el Kishshah," a narrow crest of hair like 

 a cock's comb, from nape to brow ; nodding and falling 

 over his face under its weight of strung beads, it gave 



