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Sultan, when you know that it is I who have so

often shot monkeys and other delicacies for your

feast? "The Sultan replied, "Have I not reason

when you send a man by night to enter the quarters

of my wives ? " But he assured him that the ass

was no man, but merely such another animal as an

eland or a buffalo, and finally the Sultan was pacified

with a gift of six rifles. Now the king had four

hundred wives and four hundred sons and daughters,

the eldest of whom he gave me in marriage. She was named Ranbu, and her lips were sweeter than hone}"

and her face was like the full moon at its rising. My marriage with her exalted me in the eyes of the

people of that country, so that my trade increased

and I quickly collected a large store of ivory,

rhinoceros horn, and other things.

Now the Nyam-Nyams are notorious cannibals,

and the different cannibal tribes can be distinguished by the several ways in which they conduct their

feasts : some, for instance, eat only those whom they

capture in war : in other cases, where a member of

the family is ill or advanced in years, the relatives

cut him up that thus they may save him the trouble

of a lingering death. The head Sultan of the Nyam- Nyams only eats virgins and youths who have not

arrived at puberty. They have long bamboo stakes,

on which, after a meal, they fix the jaws of those whom they have consumed, and then boast to their

friends of the number that they have consumed,

which may amount in certain cases to three or four