[Illustration: ENCOUNTER WITH A HIPPOPOTAMUS.]
"They showed us a camping-place at the base of the brown, grassy upland, in the midst of a thin grove of trees. They readily subscribed to all the requirements of friendship, blood-brotherhood, and an exchange of a few small gifts. Two of them then crossed the river to Chumbiri, whose green, wooded slopes and fields, and villages and landing-place, were visible, to tell the King of Chumbiri that peaceable strangers desired friendship with him. They appeared to have described us to him as most engaging people, and to have obtained his cordial co-operation and sympathy in a very short time, for soon three canoes appeared conveying about forty men, under three of his sons, who bore to us the royal spear, and several royal gifts, such as palm-wine, a goat, bananas, and a chicken for myself, and a hearty welcome from the old king, their father, with the addition of a promise that he would call himself the next day.
"About 9 A.M. of the 28th, the king of Chumbiri appeared with _éclat_. Five canoes filled with musketeers escorted him.
"Though the sketch below is an admirable likeness of him, it may be well also to append a verbal description. A small-eyed man of fifty years or thereabout, with a well-formed nose, but wide nostrils and thin lips, clean shaved--or rather clean-plucked--with a quiet yet sociable demeanor, ceremonious and mild-voiced, with the instincts of a greedy trader cropping out of him at all points, and cunning beyond measure. The type of his curious hat may be seen on the head of any Armenian priest. It was formed out of close-plaited hyphene-palm fibre, sufficiently durable to outlast his life though he might live a century. From his left shoulder, across his chest, was suspended the sword of the bill-hook pattern, already described in the passages about Ikengo. Above his shoulder stood upright the bristles of an elephant's tail. His hand was armed with a buffalo's tail, made into a fly-flapper, to whisk mosquitoes and gnats off the royal face. To his wrist were attached the odds and ends which the laws of superstition had enjoined upon him, such as charm-gourds, charm-powders in bits of red and black flannel, and a collection of wooden antiquities, besides a snuff-gourd and a parcel of tobacco-leaves.