CHAPTER XXXIII 
THREE SLAVE GIRLS 
When hunting on the Rovuma River, some years 
ago, I had an experience which is interesting as an 
illustration of the way in which slave women are 
bartered throughout German and Portuguese East 
Africa. 
I had just finished lunch, and was enjoying a cigar 
in my tent, when my private boy came and told me 
that the Sultan Mperembe, a big Wyao chief, whose 
people inhabit the country about the Lujenda River, 
had sent a couple of his men with three slave girls 
as a present for me, asking, in exchange, a barrel of 
gunpowder, some percussion caps, and some 
medicine for killing elephants. 
With regard to the last item, let me explain that 
the native mind is firmly imbued with the idea that 
it is not due to the precision and power of a modern 
rifle that a white man kills an elephant, buffalo or 
rhinoceros, as the case may be ; but that his success 
in the chase is won by the potency of some secret 
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