AN IVORY SPECULATION. 
56T 
About midway back to Bambarre we came to villages 
where I bad formerly seen the young men compelled to 
carry a trader’s ivory. When 1 came on the scene, the 
young men had laid down the tusks and said, “Now we 
have helped you so far without pay, let the men of other 
villages do as much.” “No, no! take up the ivory;” and 
take it up they did, only to go a little way and cast it into 
the dense vegetation on each side of the path we after- 
wards knew so well. When the trader reached his next 
stage, he sent hack his men to demand the “ stolen ” ivory, 
and when the elders denied the theft they were tired upon, 
and five were killed, eleven women and children captured, 
and also twenty-five goats. The remaining elders then 
talked the matter over, and the young men pointed out 
the ivory, and carried it twenty-two miles after the trader, 
lie chose to say that three of the tusks were missing, and 
carried away all the souls and goats he had captured. 
They now turned to the only resource they knew, and when 
Dugumbe passed, waylaid and killed one of his people. 
On our return, we passed another camp of Ujijian traders, 
and they begged me to allow their men to join my party. 
These included seventeen men of Manyema, who had volun- 
teered to carry ivory to tJjiji and goods back again. These 
were the very first of the Manyema who had, in modern 
times, gone fifty miles from their birthplaces. As all the 
Arabs had been enjoined by Sayed Majid, the late Sultan, 
to show me all the kindness in their power, I could not de- 
cline their request. My party was increased to eighty, and 
a long line of men bearing elephants’ tusks gave us all the 
appearance of traders. The only cloth I had lelt some 
months before consisted of two red blankets, which were 
converted into a glaring dress, unbecoming enough, but 
there were no Europeans to see it. The maltreated men, 
now burning for revenge, remembered the dress, and very 
naturally tried to kill the man who had murdered their 
relations. They would hold no parley. Wo had to pass 
through five hours of forest, with vegetation so dense, that 
