Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 185
in Luba country. This man wrote a dying charge com-
mitting the guardianship of his empress-niece to me, and
Maria de Fonseca was always very clannish to her own
colour, calling them "brothers." "Queen Cafe-au-lait
is a happy description of her own pigment, but Mushidi
always condescendingly calls her " our white sister." The
sombre complacency of this degrading union is the
dreariest part of it all, the Portuguese having merely sold
the woman for a few hundred pounds. From the Mushidi
standpoint, however, what he needed badly was an awe-
inspiring prestige so great that the tribes lining his trade
route out to the Atlantic will not dare to molest his
caravans. For like the old Waojogo tricks on the road
East to Zanzibar these Luvale live on the looting of
passing caravans, and no sooner does a caravan pass into
the Interior than these Luvale begin to plot its pro-
spective plunder on the return journey. Thus even
Mushidi's slave clientele run a risky game, for their road
out west is bristling with Luvale " gas-pipe " guns. Sold
by the stupid Biheans to the sly Luvale, the very guns
they sold were pointed against them. This is why
Kavungu is the great half-way point on which all home-
ward-bound Biheans concentrate ; and only when they
have massed in their thousands will they dare to sally out
on the western road. Hence, then, the diplomacy of
planning this Portuguese marriage, for with effusive
flattery Mushidi was told it would link his capital with
the Courts of Europe.
Infatuated with this daring link, he even resolved to