Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/92

78 shone all over like a batterie de cuisine, and in his hand he held a strange sickle-shaped scimitar of that metal as though it were a sceptre. Iron and copper are the only metals known in that country, and the Monbuttoos look on them as silver and gold are regarded by us; the only remark that was elicited by the presentation of the silver platter being that it was white iron. With these views of the precious metals, it will be readily conceived at what advantage Aboo Sammat traded with this wily king. It was well worth his while to barter half a bar of copper, worth four or five dollars at most, for a huge elephant's tusk, which on an average realizes in Europe two or three dollars a pound, and on these terms the Nubian continued to deal with the king till his store of ivory was exhausted. These business dealings were relieved by royal visits from King Munza and his wives, and by a court-ball in honour of a great victory gained by Mummery, the king's brother and general, over the Monvoo, a tribe to the south. There is not much dancing, as is well known, at our court-balls, but in Monbuttoo land only one person danced, and that was the king himself. There in a noble hall of the palace, Schweinfurth saw him dancing before his eighty wives clothed in nothing but paint of different patterns, and his courtiers and great officers of state. As the king danced the gongs and kettledrums accompanied him, and his wives clapped their hands. The king was chastely attired; on his head he wore the skin of a great black baboon, and atop of it a plume of feathers; on his wrists and arms he had the tails of genets and guinea-hogs, and around his loins he bore an apron of the tails of other animals, while countless rings rattled upon his naked legs. As for his dancing, it was furious; "his arms dashed in every direction but still keeping time; while his legs exhibited the contortions of an acrobat's, being at one moment stretched out horizontally to the ground, and at the next pointed upwards and elevated in the air." No dancing dervish ever spun round so madly; and so the royal dancer went on for hours with very slight pauses of rest. How long it would have lasted no one could tell, when fortunately a hurricane of wind, and torrents of rain, and thunder and lightning came on, and King Munza, vanquished by the elements, abandoned the hall.

All this occupied three weeks, during which Schweinfurth was indefatigable in his researches, not only into Monbuttoo land but into the regions beyond it farther to the south. On these points, as well as into the polity and government of the Monbuttoo dynasty, which is practically a despotism based on a monopoly of trade, these volumes contain most reliable information which makes them the most valuable contributions to African discovery which we have ever read. Geographically his suspicion that the Welle had its outlet into the Atlantic was rendered a certainty during his residence in that district, and ethnologically he ascertained the existence a few days beyond the Monbuttoo borders of a race of pigmies which has haunted history since the day of Herodotus. Not only did he see a colony of this race settled near King Munza's palace, as well as a whole regiment of them in his service, but he actually exchanged a dog which King Munza fancied for a pigmy boy, named Tikkitikki, whom he brought with him as far as Berber on the Nile, where he fell a victim to a dysentery engendered by his insatiable gluttony. At the same time in these Akkas, as they call themselves, our traveller sees only another branch of the race of Bushmen on the shores of the Atlantic, whom he regards as the primeval African race which has disappeared before the inroads and extension of other more civilized tribes. Very remarkable is the fact that as the traveller in Central Africa proceeds south he finds the people less nomadic and more inclined to regular rule, and therefore to civilization. King Munza and his chiefs and great officers of state and hosts of wives, all painted in different patterns, cannibals though they be, form a polity much more approaching a regular government than the Dinkas, the Mittoos, the Bongos, and even the Niam Niam. On these and many other most interesting points we must refer our readers to these volumes themselves; suffice it to say that after having collected great masses of plants, and a whole heap of human skulls and bones, many of them just fresh from the Monbuttoo cooking-pots, our traveller and his Nubian friend were ready to push on farther south, the gallant Nubian declaring that he would guide Schweinfurth to the world's end. Unfortunately, however, there were obstacles in the way, and a lion in the path, in the person of King Munza, who had no notion of allowing Aboo Sammat to enter into commercial relations with any tribe beyond his 