“We had reserved one banana and a piece of cassava. We had our mouths and our stomachs with us. An appropriate gesture with the banana to the mouth, and a gentle fondling with a puckered stomach, would, we thought, be a manner of expressing extreme want, eloquent enough to penetrate the armoured body of a crocodile. We came opposite the village at 30 yards’ distance, and dropped our stone anchor, and I stood up with my ragged old helmet pushed back far, that they might scrutinise my face, and the lines of suasion be properly seen. With the banana in one hand, and a gleaming armlet of copper and beads of various colours in the other, I began the pantomime. I once knew an idiot in Brusa, Asia Minor, who entreated me for a para in much the same dumb strain that I implored the assembled, hundreds of Rubunga to relax that sullen sternness, that uncompromising aspect, that savage front, and yield to the captivating influence of fair and honest barter. I clashed the copper bracelets together, lovingly handled the bright gold-brown of the shining armlet, exposed with all my best grace of manner long necklaces of bright and clean _Cypræa moneta_, and allured their attention with beads of the brightest colours. Nor were the polished folds of yellow brass wire omitted; and again the banana was lifted to my open mouth. Then what suspense, what patience, what a saint-like air of resignation! Ah, yes! but I think I may be pardoned for all that degrading pantomime. I had a number of hungry, half-wild children; and through a cannibal world we had ploughed to reach these unsophisticated children of nature. “We waited, and at length an old chief came down the high bank to the lower landing near some rocks. Other elders of the people in head- dresses of leopard and civet skin joined him soon, and then all sat down. The old chief nodded with his head. We raised our anchor, and with two strokes of the oars had run our boat ashore, and, snatching a string or two of cowries, I sprang on land, followed by the coxswain Uledi, and in a second I had seized the skinny hand of the old chief, and was pressing it hard for joy. Warm-hearted Uledi, who the moment before was breathing furious hate of all savages, and of the procrastinating old chief in particular, embraced him with a filial warmth. Young Saywa, and Murabo, and Shumari, prompt as tinder upon all occasions, grasped the lesser chiefs’ hands, and devoted themselves with smiles and jovial frank bearing to conquer the last remnants of savage sullenness, and succeeded so well that in an incredibly short time the blood-brotherhood ceremony between the suddenly formed friends was solemnly entered into, and the irrevocable pact of peace and goodwill had been accomplished!