quartering, and boiled it in a large pot. Another man
in my own service had been a witness to a horrible act
of cannibalism at Gondokoro.
The traders had arrived with their ivory from the
West, together with a great number of slaves ; the
porters who carried the ivory being Makkarikas. One
of the slave girls attempted to escape, and her
proprietor immediately fired at her with his musket,
and she fell wounded; the ball had struck her in the
side.' The girl was remarkably fat, and from the
wound, a large lump of yellow fat exuded. No sooner
had she fallen, than the Makkarikas rushed upon her
in a crowd, and seizing the fat, they tore it from the
wound in handfuls, the girl being still alive, while the
crowd were quarrelling for the disgusting prize. Others
killed her with a lance, and at once divided her by
cutting off the head, and splitting the body with their
lances, used as knives, cutting longitudinally from
between the legs along the spine to the neck.
Many slave women and their children who witnessed
this scene, rushed panic-stricken from the spot and
took refuge in the trees. The Makkarikas seeing them
in flight, were excited to give chase, and p ulling the
children from their refuge among the branches, they
killed several, and in a short time a great feast was
prepared for the whole party. My man, Mahommed,
who was an eye-witness, declared that he could not eat
his dinner for three days, so great was his disgust at
this horrible feast.
Although my camp was entirely separate from that
of Ibrahim, I was dreadfully pestered by his people,
who, knowing that I was well supplied with many
articles of which they were in need, came begging to
my tent from morning till evening daily. To refuse
was to insult them; and as my chance of success in
the exploration unfortunately depended upon my not
offending the traders, I was obliged to be coldly civil,
and nothing was refused them. Hardly a day passed
without broken guns being brought to me for repair ;
and having earned an unenviable celebrity as a gunsmith,
added to my possession of the requisite tools,
I really had no rest, and I was kept almost constantly
at work.
One day Ibrahim was seized with a dangerous fever,
and was supposed to be dying. Again I was in request
; v and seeing that he was in a state of partial
collapse, attended with the distressing symptoms of
want of action of the heart, so frequently fatal at this
stage of the disease, I restored him by a very powerful
stimulant, and thereby gained renown as a physician,
that, although useful, was extremely annoying, as my
tent was daily thronged with patients, all of whom