From the Niger to the Nile (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: consisted of my escort of five of the men I had drilled and trained as soldiers, four carriers and about seventy arrow- men. Hard marching for six hours without a break brought THE KING OF YO us to Pogwa, or the City of Dogs as I had renamed it for its most characteristic feature. Here we halted for an hour and I had a cup of tea made. The village appeared to be almost empty of inhabitants, for all the able-bodied menhad been called out for service with the Kachella. But the dogs had evidently not followed their masters, judging by the full chorus of barking and howling that was sustained without an interval the whole time we were within hearing. As we were now in a part of the country that had several times previously come within the area of the Tubu raids, I took the precaution of throwing out scouts for the rest of the march. Also there was the chance of a Mobbur ambush in the thick palm-groves that lined the road on the further side of Pogwa. But no enemy was sighted, and another four hours' marching brought us to within a few miles of Bulturu The dawn was now breaking, and away on the horizon the world seemed waking to an alarum of drums. As we went on, the drumming grew louder and presently one could distinguish the separate taps, that fell with a rhythm suggesting words. It was the Tubus signalling to the beleaguered town, I heard afterwards from the Kachella that the drumming had been kept up all through the night and that the burden of its message was, " Where are your big friends ? We are coming to eat you up ! " As we approached the drumming ceased, and we got to Bulturi about six o'clock. All through the continent the natives have a very perfect system of signalling with drums, by which means they rap out messages from village to village, and it is qu...