The Arab’s inability to comprehend the meaning of a legal contract, his litigious and wavering spirit, his settled forgetfulness of words spoken, his facility for breaking promises, and tampering with agreements, his general inveracity, insincerity and dissimulation, as well as his gift of pouring a stream of compliments amid a rain of Mashallahs and Inshallahs, were never better displayed than at this interview. Salim said that Tippu-Tib had sent him to ask what we should do. This, after six letters, one in English and five in Arabic and Swahili, on the 17th! “Now Salim,” said I, “listen. If I thought you or Tippu-Tib were in any way implicated in the murder of my friend, you would never leave this camp alive. You have only seen hitherto one side of me. But I know and believe from my soul that it was neither you nor Tippu-Tib who caused the death of the Major. Therefore we can speak together as formerly without anger. Tippu-Tib has not injured me beyond what the consul and the Seyyid of Zanzibar can settle easily between them. Into their hands I will commit the case. Tell your uncle that the passage of himself and his ninety-six followers from Zanzibar to Stanley Falls must be paid, that the loss of goods, rifles, powder, and ammunition, the loss of time of this entire expedition will have to be made good. Tell him to do what he likes, but in the end I shall win. He cannot hurt me, but I can hurt him. Tell him to consider these things, and then say whether it would not be better to prove at the last that he was sorry, and that in future he would try to do better. If he would like to try, say, that if he gathers his men, and overtakes me before I cross the expedition over the Ituri in about fifty days hence, he shall have a chance of retrieving my good opinion, and quashing all legal proceedings.” “Very well, I hear all you say. I shall return to-night to Banalya; Ugarrowwa will lend me canoes. I shall be with Tippu-Tib in eight days, and on the 17th day I shall be back here, on your track. I shall overhaul you before forty days.” “Good, then,” I said, “we had better utter our last farewells, for we shall not meet again unless we meet at Zanzibar, about eighteen months hence.” “Why?” “Because neither you nor Tippu-Tib have the least intention of keeping your word. Your business here has been to order the Manyuema who are with me back to Stanley Falls. But it is perfectly immaterial. Take them back, for once more I say, it is not in your power to hurt me.” “Inshallah, Inshallah, let your heart rest in peace, we meet in less than forty days, I swear to you.” Poor Salim! he proceeded straight from my presence to the quarters of the Manyuema headmen, and tempted them to return with him, which, singular to relate, they obstinately declined to do. Salim waxing wrathful, employed menaces, upon hearing which they came to me demanding protection.