Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/91

Rh America flourishing in Central Africa. At every halt it was his practice to quit the camp and wander through the forest, bringing back with him quantities of plants; but as the savage Niam Niam, who was his interpreter, informed the natives, it was not science but hunger which drove this mysterious white man into the woods, where dismissing his attendants, he used to gather and devour enormous heaps of leaves. At this the wise men of the tribe would shake their heads and remark that it must be true, for while they were starving for hunger, "Mbarikpa" or the "Leaf-eater" as they nicknamed him, invariably came out of the forest with an exhilarated expression and a satiated look. Much in the same way David Douglas, who gave his name to the magnificent Douglas Pine, and who was gored to death in California by a wild bull, or lost in a wolf-trap, was known among the North-American Indians as "the Grass-man." On another occasion when the Monbuttoo saw Schweinfurth's anxiety to collect skulls for his anatomical museum they were sure that he was a sorcerer who extracted a subtle poison from those bones; while everywhere throughout his journey it was not so much the colour of his skin as his long hair, which in their eyes gave him a supernatural look, that most excited the surprise of the natives.

An object thus at once of respect, admiration, and awe, Schweinfurth passed with the adventurous Nubian out of the Niam Niam country and arrived at the court of King Munza, in Monbuttoo land, a potentate who was anxiously expecting the coming of his friend and ally, for were not his storehouses filled full of ivory, the booty of a whole year's hunting, to be exchanged for the red copper which would then flow into the royal treasury? On March 22, 1870, Schweinfurth had audience of the king at his palace, situated midway between the third and fourth degrees of north latitude, some miles beyond the Welle, a mighty stream which flows towards the Atlantic, and is quite beyond the limits of the Nile Basin. In a solemn suit of black with heavy Alpine boots which he wore so constantly that the natives thought he used them to conceal his feet, which were those of a goat, Schweinfurth awaited the arrival of King Munza. His rifles and revolver and his inevitable cane chair were borne before him by his Niam Niam squires, while his Nubian servants carried the presents reserved for his Monbuttoo majesty. The hall in which the interview took place was a hundred feet long, forty high, and fifty broad, while the bold arch of the vaulted roof was supported on pillars formed from the straight stems of trees; the spars and rafters and sides of the building being composed entirely of the leaf-stalks of the wine-palm Raphia vinifera. The floor was a hard red clay plaster, as firm and smooth as asphalt; here in England it would form an excellent skating-rink, but there in Central Africa it was a noble hall of audience for a king. With a blare of trumpets and the dub-dubbing of kettledrums. King Munza, came, the monarch whose daily food was human flesh. He was about forty, of fair height, slim but powerful build, and like the rest of his countrymen erect in figure. Though by no means ugly, and with a thoroughly Caucasian nose, which contrasted strongly with his negro lips, his features were by no means prepossessing, and his expression was a combination of "avarice, violence, and cruelty." With great self-control this cannibal king, who was attended by Aboo Sammat, and a crowd of courtiers and wives, at first took no notice of the white man, whom he was so anxious to see, and when he did condescend to recognize his existence, and asked him questions through an interpreter, the conversation was most commonplace and languished on account of the king's taciturnity. Even the presents, which consisted of a piece of black cloth, a telescope, a silver platter, a porcelain vase, a piece of carved ivory, a book with gilt edges, a double mirror which both reduced and magnified objects, and though last not least thirty necklaces of Venetian glass beads, though they excited the applause of Munza's fifty wives, and though regarded with attention by the king, were received with no approbation, and at last exhausted by hunger, Schweinfurth retired from the presence of this nil admirari monarch with the conviction that no sovereign of the West could surpass King Munza in the gift of self-possession. When he departed the king asked what return he could make the traveller, who modestly demanded a river-hog, potamochærus, and a chimpanzee, which Munza gave his royal word that he should have, and as royally never kept it. If we are asked in what the riches of this king consisted, we answer at once, in copper. With that his treasury was filled, and with copper ornaments the royal person was so covered on that day that he 