Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ...to move. I called out in lusty amiability, " Subai?" (their form of greeting, to which the proper answer is " Iba! "), but no reply came. The nearest among them motioned us back in a not discourteous manner, and intimated they would come and talk to us anon. We marched into a small enclosure of thorns and stones, overlooking the stony hollow wherein the Masai were seated, and putting down the burthens, got ready our twenty-eight guns for a desperate fight if necessary. Then the Masai came, perhaps forty at once, with a leader. The leader called out to us imperiously, " Totona!" (" Sit down! "), which we did. Then they conferred among themselves. Some said, "Endara Elajomba!" (" Fight the coast people "). Others said, "No, wait first." Then they again withdrew, and afterwards the captain and a few elder men returned bearing branches in their hands (a sign of peace). They called on two or three of our men to advance and confer with them, so Kiongwe, Ibrahim, and Bakari went. After asking various questions as to who I was, where I came from, and whither I was going, the Masai leader inquired " Had we any sickness?" This query aroused a happy, but sadly unveracious, thought in my mind. "Tell him," I said to Kiongwe, in Swahili, a language the Masai did not understand, "Tell him we have small-pox." Kiongwe grasped the idea, and said to the Masai captain, with well-feigned vexation, "Yes; we have got a man suffering from the white disease" (the Masai name for small-pox). "Show him," the leader replied, at the same time moving several yards off. I immediately dragged forward an Albino, who was a porter in my caravan--a wretched...
