eye was admired and begged for,
though nothing seemed to please him so much as the traveller's
wide-awake and mosquito curtains. The women, who were allowed to peep
into Sana's den, received a couple of sacks of beads, to commemorate the
visit.

A few days afterwards he was accompanying the king when an adjutant-bird
was seen in a tree. The king had a gun Speke had given him, but he had
little more than one charge of powder remaining. Speke had left his gun
at home. The king at the second shot killed the bird, greatly to his
delight, shouting his usual "_Woh! woh_!" He was so delighted that he
insisted upon carrying the bird to show to his mother.

Before entering the palace, however, he changed his European clothes for
a white goat-skin wrapper. Directly afterwards a battalion of his army
arrived before the palace, under the command of his chief officer, whom
Speke called Colonel Congou. The king came out with spear and shield in
hand, preceded by the bird, and took post in front of the enclosure.
His troops were divided into three companies, each containing about two
hundred men. After passing in single file, they went through various
evolutions. Nothing, Speke says, could be more wild or fantastic than
the sight which ensued. The men, nearly naked, with goat or cat-skins
depending from their girdles, and smeared with war-colours according to
the taste of each individual, one half of the body red or black, the
other blue, in irregular order; as, for instance, one leg would be red,
the other black, whilst the upper part would be the opposite colours,
and so with the chest and arms. Each man carried two spears and one
shield, held as if approaching an enemy. They thus moved in three lines
of single rank and file at fifteen or twenty paces asunder, with the
same high action and elongated step, the ground leg only being bent to
give their strides the greater force. The captains of each company
followed, even more fantastically dressed. The great Colonel Congou,
with his long, whitehaired goat-skins, a fiddle-shaped leather shield,
tufted with white hair at all six extremities, bands of long hair tied
below the knees, and the helmet covered with rich beads of several
colours, surmounted with a plume of crimson feathers, from the centre of
which rose a stem, tufted with goat-hair. Finally the senior officers
came charging at their king, making violent protestations of faith and
honesty, for which they were