7G 



THE LAKE EEGIONS OP CENTEAL AFEICA. 



cried to his master to run and touch her, in which case 

 he would have been under her protection ; but the 

 traveller had probably lost presence of mind, and the 

 woman was removed. The unfortunate man's arms 

 were then tightly bound to a pole lashed crosswise upon 

 another, to which his legs and head were secured by a 

 rope tied across the brow. In this state he was carried 

 out of the village to a calabash-tree, pointed out to me, 

 about fifty yards on the opposite side of the road. The 

 inhuman Mazungera first severed all his articulations, 

 whilst the war-song and the drum sounded notes of 

 triumph. Finding the sime, or double-edged knife, 

 somewhat blunt, he stopped, when in the act of cutting 

 his victim's throat, to whet the edge, and, having finished 

 the bloody deed, he concluded with wrenching the head 

 from the body. 



Thus perished an amiable, talented, and highly edu- 

 cated man, whose only fault was rashness — too often the 

 word for enterprise when Fortune withholds her smile. 

 The savage Mazungera was disappointed in his guest's 

 death. The object of the torture was to discover, as the 

 Mganga had advised, the place of his treasures, whereas 

 the wretched man only groaned and implored forgive- 

 ness of his sins, and called upon the names of those 

 friends whose advice he had neglected. The P'hazi then 

 attempted to decoy from Bagamoyo the forty musketeers 

 left with the outfit, but in this he failed. He then pro- 

 ceeded to make capital of his foul deed. When Snay bin 

 Amir, a Ma skat merchant, — of whom I shall have much 

 to say, — appeared with a large caravan at Dege la Mhora, 

 Mazungera demanded a new tribute for free passage ; 

 and, as a threat, he displayed the knife with which he 

 had committed the murder. But Snay proved himself 

 a man not to be trifled with. 



