The N'gombi people prized a certain chair beyond all other treasures.
For it was made of ivory and native silver, in which the N'gombi are clever workers.
Upon this chair sat kings, great warriors, and chiefs of people; also favoured guests of the land.
Bosambo of the Ochori went to a friendly palaver with the king of the N'gombi, and sat upon the chair and admired it.
After he had gone away, four men came to the village by night and carried off the treasure, and though the King of N'gombi and his councillors searched the land from one end to the other the chair was never found.
It might never have been found but for a Mr. Wooling, a trader and man of parts.
He was known from one end of the coast to the other as a wonderful seller of things, and was by all accounts rich.
One day he decided to conquer new worlds and came into Sanders's territory with complete faith in his mission, a cargo of junk, and an intense curiosity.
Hitherto, his trading had been confined to the most civilized stretches of the country—to places where the educated aboriginal studied the rates of exchange and sold their crops forward.
He had long desired to tread a country where heathenism reigned and where white men were regarded as gods and were allowed to swindle on magnificent scale.