Note 2 — Chapter X · OUR EMBASSY TO THE CHIEF ’MTOKO

Before we took our leave the Mondoro presented us with a goat, regretting that, owing to the bad times, he could not give us a handsomer present. We now understood several points which had been a mystery to us before—the constant and rather deferential way in which the ’Mtoko had spoken of his uncle, and the reason why, in the first instance, our guides had told us that the ’Mtoko dwelt at Lutzi. Also we now seemed thoroughly to grasp the strange cult of the lion god, a cult probably carrying us back to the far-distant ages, when the Arabian tribes invented the system of totems, and called the stars by their names.2