As soon as Bruce had encamped, he sent to Gimbaro, the chief of the Sancaha, to demand provisions for his party and their camels. A very impertinent answer was returned; when Bruce immediately armed himself with a fusil and a pair of pistols, and took with him two of his servants, each carrying pistols and a ship's blunderbuss. After mounting a hill with so much difficulty that they were several times obliged to pull each other up by the hands, they reached the residence of the chief, and entered a large room of about fifty feet in length. The walls were all covered with elephants' heads and trunks, and with the skeleton heads of rhinoceroses, enormous hippopotami, and giraffes; lions' skins were on the floor, and at the end of the room, naked and upright, stood Gimbaro, "the largest man," says Bruce, "I ever remember to have seen, perfectly black, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, and woolly-headed, a picture of those cannibal giants which we read of as inhabiting enchanted castles in the fairy tales." Gimbaro scarcely noticed our traveller when first he entered the room; but, finding that no obeisance was offered to himself, he at last stepped awkwardly forward, bowed, and attempted to kiss his hand. "I apprehend, sir," said Bruce, with great firmness, and at the same time drawing away his hand, "you do not know me?" Gimbaro bowed, and said he did, but that he was not at first aware who it was that had encamped at the brook: he added, that the message he had sent was only in sport! "And was it sport, sir," said Bruce, "when you said you would send me the flesh of elephants to eat? Did you ever know a Christian eat any sort of flesh that a Mohammedan killed?" "No," replied Gimbaro; and, begging Bruce's pardon, he promised to send him bread, honey, camels, etc. Bruce, having thus gained his object, returned to his tent, and the next morning continued his march. The second day they were preceded on their journey by a lion, which generally kept about a gunshot before them; but, whenever it came to an open or bare spot, the creature crouched down and growled, as if it had made up its mind to dispute the way. "Our beasts," says Bruce, "trembled, and were all covered with sweat, and could scarcely be kept on the road. As there seemed to be but one remedy for this difficulty, I took a long Turkish rifle gun, and, crawling under a bank as near as possible, shot it in the body, so that it fell from the bank on the road before us quite dead, and even without muscular motion."