“Bacchus seemed to have rather the upper hand at Ngamini’s primitive court. I doubt if anything weaker than millet pombe is
ever drunk inside the royal boma. During our visit that beverage flowed as freely as beer in a brewery. A huge jar of it was lugged in and placed in the middle of the assembly, and men ladled it out and passed around the gourds continually.
“The Sultan was opulent enough in the matter of pombe, if not in European goods, and so did his best to win our approval of his immense resources in that product. He took us into his brewery, a smaller inclosure that formed an annex to his resident kraal, and enjoyed immensely our astonishment at the vast size of the vats. These were earthenware jars, of bulbous shape, eight in number, and each capable of holding two hundred gallons or more of liquor. I had seen wine jars as large, though of different shape, in Persia, but never expected to find such giant pottery in a Chaga state.
“In brewing pombe the millet, or wimbi, is first pounded with stones to break the grain, then boiled in earthen kettles until it resembles thin cereal soup; the whole is then emptied into the big jars, covered with a cowhide and allowed to ferment. When dipped out for use the sediment is stirred up from the bottom, as also when dipped from smaller vessels to be passed around. Pombe in this condition is a solid tipple, which comes as near being both food and drink as anything of an intoxicating nature can be, and many an African chief all but lives on it. It has a pleasant twang to it, and the European soon comes to like it almost as well as the native boozer does. It goes to the head, too. A pint puts a white man in a joyous frame of mind and sets a negro, who effervesces easier than his white brother, to singing and whooping. The chiefs, however, are as a general thing animated pombe sponges, constantly soaked and with the gourd seldom out of reach.”
A HUNT ON THE ZAMBESI.
The accounts of all African travelers agree, that both vegetable and animal life in Africa is rankest and noblest on the banks of the Zambesi. Volumes might be written of thrilling adventures in this extensive region. “One night,” says a noted traveler, “while journeying up the Zambesi, and just as we had fixed our tents for a good night’s rest, a native came rushing in with the news that two lions had been seen in the vicinity. The men wanted to
go out and look for them immediately, but I dissuaded them from encountering the dangers of a night hunt, and promised that I would accompany them on the morrow.
HUNTING LIONS.
“Early next morning the men were astir and busy with their preparations for a grand hunt. We had dogs with us, and when all was ready, these were let loose. A guide led the way to where he had seen the lions on the previous evening, but long before we had gone so far, and while making our way up a ridge, a noise like muttering thunder reached our ears from the valley beyond the ridge. The guide stopped, listened for a moment, and then, half in fear and half in astonishment, gasped, “The lions!”