tain drink which Alvez
furnished in profusion.

Moini Loungga counted in his harem wives of all ages and of all kinds.
The larger part of them accompanied him in this visit to the "lakoni."

Moini, the first, according to date, was a vixen of forty years, of
royal blood, like her colleagues. She wore a bright tartan, a straw
petticoat embroidered with pearls, and necklaces wherever she could
put them. Her hair was dressed so as to make an enormous framework on
her little head. She was, in fact, a monster.

The other wives, who were either the cousins or the sisters of the
king, were less richly dressed, but much younger. They walked behind
her, ready to fulfil, at a sign from their master, their duties as
human furniture. These unfortunate beings were really nothing else. If
the king wished to sit down, two of these women bent toward the earth
and served him for a chair, while his feet rested on the bodies of
some others, as if on an ebony carpet.

In Moini Loungga's suite came his officers, his captains, and his
magicians.

A remarkable thing about these savages, who staggered like their
master, was that each lacked a part of his body--one an ear, another
an eye, this one the nose, that one the hand. Not one was whole.
That is because they apply only two kinds of punishment in
Kazounde--mutilation or death--all at the caprice of the king. For the
least fault, some amputation, and the most cruelly punished are those
whose ears are cut off, because they can no longer wear rings in their
ears.

The captains of the _kilolos_, governors of districts, hereditary or
named for four years, wore hats of zebra skin and red vests for their
whole uniform. Their hands brandished long palm canes, steeped at one
end with charmed drugs.

As to the soldiers, they had for offensive and defensive weapons,
bows, of which the wood, twined with the cord, was ornamented with
fringes; knives, whetted with a serpent's tongue; broad and long
lances; shields of palm wood, decorated in arabesque style. For what
there was of uniform, properly so called, it cost his majesty's
treasury absolutely nothing.

Finally, the kind's cortege comprised, in the last place, the court
magicians and the instrumentalists.

The sorcerers, the "mganngas," are the doctors of the country.
These savages attach an absolute faith to divinatory services, to
incantations, to the fetiches, clay figures stained with white and
red, representing fantastic animals