"Nyangwé is the extreme westernmost locality inhabited by the Arab traders from Zanzibar. It stands in east longitude 26° 16', south latitude 4° 15', on the right or eastern side of the Lualaba, on the verge of a high and reddish bank rising some forty feet above the river, with clear open country north along the river for a distance of three miles, east some ten miles, south over seventy miles, or as far as the confluence of the Luama with the Lualaba. The town called Nyangwé is divided into two sections. The northern section has for its centre the quarters of Muini Dugumbi, the first Arab arrival here (in 1868); and around his house are the commodious quarters of his friends, their families and slaves--in all, perhaps, three hundred houses. The southern section is separated from its neighbor by a broad hollow, cultivated and sown with rice for the Arabs. When the Lualaba rises to its full amplitude, this hollow is flooded. The chief house of the southern half of Nyangwé is the large and well-built clay _banda_ of Sheik Abed bin Salim. In close neighborhood to this are the houses and huts of those Arab Wangwana who prefer the company of Abed bin Salim to Muini Dugumbi.
"Between the two foreign chiefs of Nyangwé there is great jealousy. Each endeavors to be recognized by the natives as being the most powerful. Dugumbi is an east-coast trader of Sa'adani, a half-caste, a vulgar, coarse-minded old man of probably seventy years of age, with a negroid nose and a negroid mind. Sheik Abed is a tall, thin old man, white-bearded, patriarchal in aspect, narrow-minded, rather peevish and quick to take offence, a thorough believer in witchcraft, and a fervid Muslim.
"Close to Abed's elbows of late years has been the long-nosed young Arab, Mohammed bin Sayid, superstitious beyond measure, of enormous cunning and subtlety, a pertinacious beggar, of keen trading instincts, but in all matters outside trade as simple as a child. He offered, for a consideration and on condition that I would read the Arabic Koran, to take me up and convey me to any part of Africa within a day. By such unblushing falsehoods he has acquired considerable influence over the mind of Sheik Abed. The latter told me that he was half afraid of him, and that he believed Mohammed was an extraordinary man. I asked the silly old sheik if he had lent him any ivory. No; but he was constantly being asked for the loan of ten frasilah (three hundred and fifty pounds) of ivory, for which he was promised fifteen frasilah, or five hundred and twenty-five pounds, within six months.