[Illustration: THE KING OF CHUMBIRI.] _Feb. 28._—About 9 A.M. of the 28th the king of Chumbiri appeared with _éclat_. Five canoes filled with musketeers escorted him. Though the sketch above is an admirable likeness of him, it may be well also to append a verbal description. A small-eyed man of about fifty or thereabout, with a well-formed nose, but wide nostrils and thin lips, clean-shaved, or rather clean-plucked, with a quiet yet sociable demeanour, ceremonious, and mild-voiced, with the instincts of a greedy trader cropping out of him at all points, and cunning beyond measure. The type of his curious hat may be seen on the head of any Armenian priest. It was formed out of close-plaited hyphene-palm fibre, sufficiently durable to outlast his life, though he might live a century. From his left shoulder, across his chest, was suspended the sword of the bill-hook pattern, already described in the passages about Ikengo. Above his shoulder stood upright the bristles of an elephant’s tail. His hand was armed with a buffalo’s tail, made into a fly-flapper, to whisk mosquitoes and gnats off the royal face. To his wrist were attached the odds and ends which the laws of superstition had enjoined upon him, such as charm-gourds, charm-powders in bits of red and black flannel, and a collection of wooden antiquities, besides a snuff-gourd and a parcel of tobacco-leaves. [Illustration: GREAT PIPE OF KING OF CHUMBIRI.] The king’s people were apparently very loyal and devoted to him, and his sons showed remarkable submissiveness. The little snuff-gourd was in constant requisition, and he took immoderate quantities, inhaling a quarter of a tea-spoonful at a time from the palm of his hand, to which he pressed his poor nose until it seemed to be forced into his forehead. Immediately after, one of his filially-affectionate children would fill his long chibouque, which was 6 feet in length, decorated with brass tacks and tassels of braided cloth. The bowl was of iron, and large enough to contain half an ounce of tobacco. He would then take two or three long-drawn whiffs, until his cheeks were distended like two hemispheres, and fumigate his charms thoroughly with the smoke. His sons then relieved him of the pipe, at which he snapped his fingers—and distended their cheeks into hemispherical protuberances in like manner, and also in the same way fumigated their little charms; and so the chibouque of peace and sociability went the round of the circle, as though it was a council of Sioux about to hold a pow-wow, and as the pipe passed round there was an interchange of finger-snaps in a decorous, grave, and ceremonious style.