ARRIVAL AT MANDARA 1 8 COURT. 
101 
Decken—still remembered as the “ Baroni 55 —came 
thither when the chief of Mo si was a youth and under 
the tutelage of his mother. Mandara received the 
missionary New on his first journey to the mountain, 
and enabled him to make his two partial ascents, in 
one of which he just reached the snow-line. 
On his second visit to Kilima-njaro in 1878, Mr. 
New was robbed of all his valuables by Mandara, and 
retired broken-hearted to the coast. Mr. Joseph 
Thomson fell into his clutches in 1883, on his journey 
to Masai-land, and though he was forced to make a 
much more generous present than he at first intended, 
yet he frequently admits that Mandara afterwards 
treated him and his caravan with really royal hospi¬ 
tality. Before I arrived in his country he had made 
friends with Sir John Kirk, and I took with me im¬ 
portant letters from our Consul-General at Zanzibar, 
officially recommending me to Mandara’s good offices, 
and though in after-times you will see that I had very 
strained relations with our variable friend, yet such 
was the respect he bore for the wide-stretching English 
power, that, though he had me utterly defenceless in 
his clutches, without the strength to resist or the 
means to run away, and in spite of eager covetous¬ 
ness of my valuable property, he never robbed me of 
a pennyworth by force, nor ever allowed his people to 
do so. 
Before coming to Kilima-njaro, I had read every¬ 
thing that was written about Mandara, and my 
curiosity as to his appearance, and my anxiety as to 
the impression I should create in his imagination, were 
excited to the utmost. My vagrant habits have some¬ 
times led to my being presented to personages that 
the world holds distinguished, but in no case did I 
