The most perfect equality prevailed
between the Ditto and Elmoran, and in their savage
circumstances it was really pleasant to see how common
it was for a young girl to wander about the camp with
her arm round the waist of a stalwart warrior."[144]
A LESSON IN GALLANTRY
Crossing the waters of the Victoria Nyanza we come to Uganda, a region
which has been entertainingly described by Speke. One day, he tells us
(379), he was crossing a swamp with the king and his wives:
"The bridge was broken, as a matter of course; and the
logs which composed it, lying concealed beneath the
water, were toed successively by the leading men, that
those who followed should not be tripped up by them.
This favor the King did for me, and I in return for the
women behind; they had never been favored in their
lives with such gallantry and therefore could not
refrain from laughing. He afterward helped the girls
over a brook. The king noticed it, but instead of
upbraiding me, passed it off as a joke, and running up
to the Kamraviona, gave him a poke in the ribs and
whispered what he had seen, as if it had been a secret.
'Woh, woh!' says the Kamraviona, 'what wonders will
happen next?'"
There is perhaps no part of Africa where such an act of gallantry
would not have been laughed at as an absurd prank.
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