A QUARRELSOME COOK-BOY. 
103 
The evening was enlivened by one of our cook-boys, 
Kitembo, falling out with Iviboko, perhaps the strongest 
of all the men, the result being that Master Kitembo 
was nearly throttled before they were separated. Fights 
amongst the men were of frequent occurrence, but 
they never seemed to result in much damage to either 
party. Having no idea of using their full strength or 
of the science of hitting, the main object of the com¬ 
batants always seemed to be to strangle one another. 
Kitembo had been one of Stanley’s men on the Congo, 
and as he was a noisy quarrelsome fellow and very lazy, 
we determined to send him back to the coast, for up 
to the present he had only been a nuisance. 
The next day we left Taveta for Moci, to pay 
Mandara a visit; we travelled by the Caga track, the 
worst and hardest to follow of any of the paths lead¬ 
ing out of the forest, and I could easily understand how 
I had lost my way in the dark on the former occasion ; 
several awkward rivers have to be crossed by means 
of the most primitive bridges, made out of tree-trunks 
placed across the stream, with hand-rails of fragile palm- 
branches. As the story goes about these bridges, it 
appears that “once upon a time” the elders of Taveta 
were cudgelling their brains for some means of crossing 
the streams, without arriving at any result, when one 
smarter than the rest offered to solve the problem for 
the consideration of two bullocks. His request being 
acceded to, he soon settled the difficulty, to every one’s 
satisfaction, by cutting down a few good-sized trees, 
so that they fell across the streams, and then fixing 
