CONTENTS
Maisha ya Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi: Yaani Tippu Tip, kwa maneno yake mwenyewe
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Author: Tippu- tip
Year: 1890
A month passed there until one afternoon Stanley appeared. We greeted him, welcomed him and gave him a house. The following morning we went to see him and he showed us a gun, telling us, "From this gun fifteen bullets come out!" Now we knew of no such gun firing fifteen rounds, neither knew of one nor had seen such. I asked him, "From a single barrel?" He said they came from a single barrel. So I asked him to fire it so that we could see. But he said we should produce a fee of 20-30 dollars for firing it once. In my heart I thought he was lying. A single-barrelled gun; the second I thought was a cleaning rod! How could the bullets come out of one barrel one after another? I said to him, "Over in Rumami there's a bow which takes twenty arrows. When you shoot, all twenty fly together. And each arrow kills a man." At that he went outside and fired twelve rounds. Then he took a pistol and fired six rounds. He came back and sat down on the verandah. We were amazed. I asked him how he loaded the bullets and he showed me.
the autobiography of Tippu-Tib
Swahili text with English translation by W.H.Whiteley, 1958-
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