Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/375

 Rh extraordinary alacrity, not sparing blows of his trunk and tusks. After such a night one could be certain that not an elephant would appear in the banana and doom-palm plantations belonging to the village of old M'Rua.

In the village great joy also reigned, and the negroes passed the whole night in dancing and drinking beer of millet and palm wine. Kali learned from them, however, many important things; it appeared that some of them had heard of some great water lying east and surrounded by mountains. For Stas this was proof that the lake, of which no mention was made in the geography which he had studied, actually existed; also, that going in the direction which they had selected, they would finally encounter the Wahima people. Inferring from the fact that Mea's and Kali's speech differed very little from M'Rua's speech, he came to the conclusion that the name of "Wahima" was in all probability the designation of a locality, and that the peoples living on the shores of "Bassa-Narok" belonged to the great Shilluk tribe, which begins on the Nile and extends, it is not known how far, to the east.