A BRAVE GERMAN AMONG THE CANNIBALS 389 
rations were made and a start accomplished, on January 7, 1870, for 
the Niam-Niam campaign, the journey through the land of the can¬ 
nibals. Loathsome as was their habit of eating human flesh, the 
traveler found them friendly for the most part, possessed of consider¬ 
able knowledge of several of the arts of life, such as those of pottery 
and working metals, and physically a very fine race. He thus describes 
a Niam-Niam warior: 
“With his lance in one hand, his woven shield and trumbash in 
the other—with his scimitar in his girdle, and his loins encircled by 
a skin, to which are attached the tails of several animals—adorned on 
his breast and on his forehead by strings of teeth, the trophies of war, 
or of the chase—his long hair floating freely over his neck and shoul¬ 
ders—his large keen eyes gleaming from beneath his heavy brow— 
his white and pointed teeth shining from between his parted lips—he 
advances with a firm and defiant bearing, so that the stranger as he 
gazes upon him may well behold, in this true son of the African 
wilderness, every attribute of the wildest savagery that may be con¬ 
jured up by the boldest flight of fancy. It is therefore by no means 
difficult to account for the deep impression made by the Niam-Niam 
on the fantastic imagination of the Sudan Arabs. I have seen the wild 
Bishareen and other Bedouins of the Nubian deserts; I have gazed 
with admiration upon the stately war-dress of the Ahyssinians; I have 
been riveted with surprise at the supple forms of the mounted Bag- 
gara; but nowhere, in any part of Africa, have I ever come across a 
people that in every attitude and every motion exhibited so thorough a 
mastery over all the circumstances of war or of the chase as these 
Niam-Niam. Other nations in comparison seemed to me to fall short 
in the perfect ease—I might almost say, in the dramatic grace—that 
characterized their every movement.” 
But strong as they were, they were terribly frightened by Euro¬ 
pean firearms; and on one occasion, when a quarrel was imminent, 
Aboo Sammatt lighted a lucifer-match and, applying it to the roof of 
a hut, showed he could “make fire,” and they submitted at once. And 
when afterwards Schweinfurth gave them matches to strike for them¬ 
selves, no English display of fireworks was ever more admired, or 
more brilliantly successful-—their own method of striking a light being 
the primitive mode of rubbing two dry pieces of wood together. 
