“Gunbearers, twenty in number, preceded him, and thirty spearmen followed him, and behind these came eight or ten men loaded with gifts of honey, native beer, holcus sorghum, beans, and maize. I at once advanced and invited the Chief to my tent, which had undergone some alterations, that I might honor him as much as lay in my power. Ma-manyara was a tall, stalwart man, with a very pleasing face. He carried in his hand a couple of spears, and, with the exception of a well-worn barsati around his loins, he was naked. Three of his principal men and himself were invited to seat themselves on my Persian carpet. The revolvers and Winchester’s repeating rifles were things so wonderful that to attempt to give you any idea of how awe-struck he and his men were would task my powers. My medicine chest was opened next, and I uncorked a small phial of medicinal brandy and gave each a teaspoonful. Suffice it that I made myself so popular with Ma-manyara and his people that they will not forget me in a hurry.
“Leaving kind and hospitable Ma-manyara, after a four hours’ march we came to the banks of the Gombe Nullah, not the one which Burton, Speke, and Grant have described, for the Gombe which I mean is about one hundred and twenty-five miles south of the Northern Gombe. The glorious park land spreading out north and south of the Southern Gombe is a hunter’s paradise. It is full of game of all kinds--herds of buffalo, giraffe, zebra, pallah, water buck, springbok, gemsbok, blackbuck, and kudu, besides several eland, warthog, or wild boar, and hundreds of the smaller antelope. We saw all these in one day, and at night heard the lions roar and the low of the hippopotamus. I halted here three days to shoot, and there is no occasion to boast of what I shot, considering the myriads of game I saw at every step I took. Not half the animals shot here by myself and men were made use of. Two buffaloes and one kudu were brought to camp the first day, besides a wild boar, which my mess finished up in one night. My boy gun-bearers sat up the whole night eating boar meat, and until I went to sleep I could hear the buffalo meat sizzing over the fires as the Islamized soldiers prepared it for the road.