210 
OUR ENCAMPMENT SURROUNDED. 
of meal; scorning the meat he had accepted, he demanded 
either a man, an ox, a gun, powder, cloth, or a shell ; ana, 
in the event of refusal to comply with his demand, he inti- 
mated his intention to prevent our farther progress. We 
replied, wo should have thought ourselves fools if we had 
scorned his small present and demanded other food instead; 
and, even supposing we had possessed the articles named, 
no black man ought to impose a tribute on a party that did 
not trade in slaves. The servants who brought the mes- 
sage said that, when sent to the Mambari, they had always 
got a quantity of cloth from them for their master, and now 
expected the same, or something else as an equivalent, 
from me. 
Wo heard some of the Chiboque remark, “They have 
only fivo guns;” and about mid-day Njambi collected all his 
people and surrounded our encampment. Their object was 
evidently to plunder us of every thing. My men seized 
their javelins, and stood on the defensive, while the young 
Chiboque had drawn their swords and brandished them 
with great fury. Some even pointed their guns at me, and 
nodded to each other, as much as to say, “ This is the way 
we shall do with him.” I sat on my camp-stool, with my 
double-barrelled gun across my knees, and invited the chief 
to be seated also. When he and his counsellors had sat 
down on the ground in front of me, I asked what erime 
wo had committed that he had come armed in that way. 
Ho replied that one of my men, Pitsano, while sitting at 
the fire that morning, had, in spitting, allowed a small 
quantity of the saliva to fall on the leg of one of his men, 
and this “guilt” he wanted to bo settled by the fine of a 
man, ox, or gun. Pitsano admitted the fact of a little 
saliva having fallen on the Chiboque, and, in proof of its 
being a pure accident, mentioned that ho had given the 
man a piece of meat, by way of making friends, just before 
it happened, and wiped it off with his hand as soon as it 
fell. In reference to a man being given, I declared that we 
w«ro all ready to die rather than give up one of our nun> 
