The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, And Explorations of the Nile SourcesBaker, Samuel White, Sir
History
The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, And Explorations of the Nile Sources
Baker, Samuel White, Sir
Albert, Lake (Congo and Uganda); Nile River; Sudan
On arrival at a village, our guide started about fifty men for this
purpose, while we continued our journey. That evening we reached a
village belonging to a headman, and very superior to most that we had
passed on the route from M'rooli: large sugarcanes of the blue variety
were growing in the fields, and I had seen coffee growing wild in the
forest in the vicinity. I was sitting at the door of the hut about two
hours after sunset, smoking a pipe of excellent tobacco, when I suddenly
heard a great singing in chorus advancing rapidly from a distance
towards the entrance of the courtyard. At first I imagined that the
natives intended dancing, which was an infliction that I wished to
avoid, as I was tired and feverish; but in a few minutes the boy Saat
introduced a headman, who told me that the riding ox had died in the
swamp where he had stuck fast in the morning, and that the natives had
brought his body to me. "What!" I replied, "brought his body, the entire
ox, to me?" "The entire ox as he died is delivered at your door,"
answered the headman; "I could not allow any of your property to be lost
upon the road. Had the body of the ox not been delivered to you, we
might have been suspected of having stolen it." I went to the entrance
of the courtyard, and amidst a crowd of natives I found the entire ox
exactly as he had died. They had carried him about eight miles on a
litter, which they had constructed of two immensely long posts with
cross-pieces of bamboo, upon which they had laid the body. They would
not eat the flesh, and seemed quite disgusted at the idea, as they
replied that "it had died."
It is a curious distinction of the Unyoro people, that they are
peculiarly clean feeders, and will not touch either the flesh of animals
that have died, neither of those that are sick; nor will they eat the
crocodile. They asked for no remuneration for bringing their heavy load
so great a distance; and they departed in good humour as a matter of
course.
Never were such contradictory people as these creatures; they had
troubled us dreadfully during the journey, as they would suddenly
exclaim against the weight of their loads, and throw them down, and bolt
into the high grass; yet now they had of their own free will delivered
to me a whole dead ox from a distance of eight miles, precisely as
though it had been an object of the greatest value.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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