I had rarely occasion to repeat my request, but almost before my wish was uttered there was opened a regular curiosity mart; goods were bartered, and a flourishing trade was done.

The stock of bones that was thus brought to me in one day was quite astonishing, and could not do otherwise than remove any lingering hesitation I might have in believing the cannibal propensities of the people. There were piles of every kind—​fragments of skulls, and lower jaw-bones from which the teeth had been extracted to serve as ornaments for the neck. The belief seemed to be that I had no intention of dealing otherwise than wholesale. Proofs enough were before me; sufficient, I should suppose, to silence even the most stubborn scepticism. It cost me some trouble to convince the people that my requirements only extended to such skulls as were perfectly uninjured, and that for such only could I be content to pay. For a perfect skull I promised an armlet of copper, but I found that nearly all that were brought to me had been smashed for the purpose of extracting the brains. Out of the two hundred skulls that were produced, I was able to select no more than forty, each of which I carefully labelled for consignment to Europe. The people who brought them professed to give full particulars about them, as to where they had come from, and whether they were male or female—​details which of course enhanced the value of the collection. The want of these particulars detracts very much from the worth of many collections of skulls, for, as regards the purposes of comparative ethnology, not much information is to be derived from a skull of which the only explanation is that it came from Brazil or East Africa. The great majority of those which the Monbuttoo brought me had been procured from the people who inhabited the districts south of their own land, and were the result of the raids that had been made upon them; hardly any were the skulls of the Monbuttoo themselves. The condition in which I received many of the fragments afforded indubitable proof that they had been boiled in water and scraped with knives; and some, I suspect, came straight from the platters of the natives, inasmuch as they were still moist, and had the odour of being only just cooked. A good many had all the appearance of being raked out of old dust-heaps, whilst some few had been found in the streams, and had manifestly been laved by the water.

CONTRIBUTION OF SKULLS.

To those who brought the skulls, I thought it expedient to explain that we wanted them, so that in our far-off country we could learn all about the people who dwelt here, and that we were able, from the mere shape of the head, to tell all about people’s tempers and dispositions, their good qualities and their bad; and that for this purpose we gathered skulls together from every quarter of the globe. When the Khartoomers saw that the collection was now going on for a second year, they were only the more confirmed in their belief that I submitted them to a certain process by which I obtained a subtle poison. From the more dense and stupid natives, the idea could not be eradicated that I wanted all the bones for my food. To save the honour of Europe, and in love for the science of which I was the representative, I lavished on these errors an incense unbefitting the doctrine of Gall’s phrenology.

Among those who day after day entered the camp to pay me a visit, were several who had come from a great distance, and amongst them the ambassadors of the neighbouring Niam-niam king, Kanna, whose territories lie to the west and north-west of the Monbuttoo. The district had been part of the kingdom of Keefa, a powerful prince, whose enormous stores of ivory had ever constituted a great attraction for the expeditions of the Khartoomers, though they seldom travelled as far as his dominions. Keefa, whose surname was Ntikkima, about two years before our arrival, had lost his life in a campaign against the Mabode, a black negro people to the south-west of the Monbuttoo. His four eldest sons had partitioned his extensive power between them, and the largest share of land had fallen to the lot of Kanna, who now sent the deputation to invite Mohammed to visit his country. Mohammed, meanwhile, had already determined that the land of Kanna should be the limit of the southward march of a corps that he detached; but time would not permit us ourselves to make so wide a détour. It would occupy the space of several months.

From these Niam-niam envoys I derived several scraps of information about the western regions, which threw some light upon the lower course of the Welle, and of that other stream to the north of it, which, from the union of several streams that rise in the district of Wando, appears very soon to become a large and copious river. Between these two rivers (the Welle and the so-called Bahr-el-Wando, which joins it in Kanna’s district) was situated the residence of the deceased Keefa, which, owing to its position, was described in the Arabic way as being on an island. It was represented as being to the N.N.W. of Munza’s residence, from which, according to their accounts, it was distant some forty miles.

I made inquiries amongst them about the white man Piaggia, whom the Nubians had brought into the country, and who was affirmed to have visited Keefa’s residence; but my respondent replied that, though they had heard of him by report, he had never been into the country; and this corresponded exactly with what had been told me by Ghattas’s company that had brought Piaggia as far as Tombo.

All that Piaggia communicated about the Niam-niam was very interesting, and remains uncontested; but he lies open to the reproof of making fictitious routes. It is evident, moreover, that he arranges the Niam-niam princes in a false order; for example, he makes Keefa follow immediately after Malingde or Malindo; and he only assigns a period of two days for a journey which Antinori, the editor of his reports, has simply stated to be sixty-five miles. I should congratulate a company that could get a party of refractory bearers to accomplish more than a dozen leagues a day, where they would have to cross a dozen brooks and marshes, many of them taking half an hour to accomplish. Not a word, moreover, does he utter about the strange people who reside to the south of the Niam-niam. At Indimma, the population is a very intermingled race, the Niam-niam scarcely making up one-half, and in Keefa’s region scarcely making up a minority. Elsewhere Piaggia’s observations seemed acute enough, but here he has nothing to remark.

THE KING’S SON.

Many as were the visitors that I received at my tent, none awakened greater interest than one of the sons of Munza. The name of this distinguished personage was Bunza, and he was about the lightest-skinned individual that I had here beheld. His complexion could not have been fairer if he had been a denizen of Central Egypt. His hair was equally pale and grizzly; his tall chignon being not unlike a bundle of hemp, and standing in marked contrast to the black tresses which were stretched across the brow. As the hair about the temples does not grow sufficiently long for this purpose, the Monbuttoo are accustomed to use false hair; and as fair heads of hair are somewhat uncommon, false hair to match the original is difficult to purchase. This young man, of whom I was successful in taking a deliberate sketch, exhibited all the characteristics of pronounced albinism, and in truth to a degree which can be often seen in a fair individual of the true Semitic stock, either Jew or Arabian. The eyes seemed painfully affected by light, and had a constant objectless leer; the head, supported on a shrivelled neck, kept nodding with an involuntary movement, and whenever it rested it was sure to be in some extraordinary position. Bunza reminded me very vividly of some white twins that I once saw on the Red Sea: they were fishermen of Djidda, and looked as like each other as eggs from one nest. I do not know that I am warranted in drawing any definite inferences from my observation; but I cannot suppress the remark, that to my mind the Monbuttoo have the tokens of a Semitic origin most thoroughly impressed upon their countenance, to which in particular the nose (which does not at all approach to the common negro outline) very much contributes. Bunza’s nose was a regular hawk’s-bill.