At last, "Sio uden!" The command was answered by the "dip-dip" of
thirty-three paddles, and the canoe glided into the middle of the river
and sped onwards. In her crib she tried to read by the light of a
candle, while the paddlers extemporised songs in her honour, assigning
to her all the virtues under the sun--

_Ma, our beautiful, beloved mother, is on board,
Ho! Ho! Ho_!

The gentle movement, the monotonous "tom-tom-tum" of the drummer, and
the voice of the steersman, became mingled in a dreamy jumble, and she
slept through the night as soundly as on a bed of down. Ten hours'
paddling brought the craft to its destination, and at dawn she was
carried ashore over golden sand and under great trees, and deposited in
the chief's compound amongst goats, dogs, and fowls. She and the
children were given the master's room--which always opens out into the
women's yard--and as it possessed no door a piece of calico was hung up
as a screen. The days were tolerable, but the nights were such as even
she, inured to African conditions, found almost unbearable. It was the
etiquette of the country that all the wives should sit as close to the
white woman as was compatible with her idea of comfort, and as the aim
of each was to be fatter than the other, and they all perspired freely,
and there was no ventilation, it required all her courage to outlast
the ordeal. Lizards, too, played among the matting of the roof, and
sent down showers of dust, while rats performed hop, skip, and jump
over the sleepers.

Crowds began to pour in from a wide area. Many of the people had never
looked upon a white woman, and she had to submit to being handled and
examined in order to prove that she was flesh and blood like