The response came back by the same roundabout route, beginning at the lady to her husband, etc.
After explanations and re-explanations, I perceived that our new friends were mixing up my message of peace and friendship with Makololo affairs, and stated that it was not delivered on the authority of any one less than that of their Creator, and that if the Makololo did again break His laws and attack the Balonda, the guilt would rest with the Makololo and not with me.

The palaver then came to a close.
By way of gaining their confidence, I showed them my hair, which is considered a curiosity in all this region.

They said, "Is that hair?
It is the mane of a lion, and not hair at all." Some thought that I had made a wig of lion's mane, as they sometimes do with fibres of the "ife", and dye it black, and twist it so as to resemble a mass of their own wool.

I could not return the joke by telling them that theirs was not hair, but the wool of sheep, for they have none of these in the country; and even though they had, as Herodotus remarked, "the African sheep are clothed with hair, and men's heads with wool." So I had to be content with asserting that mine was the real original hair, such as theirs would have been had it not been scorched and frizzled by the sun.
In proof of what the sun could do, I compared my own bronzed face and hands, then about the same in complexion as the lighter-colored Makololo, with the white skin of my chest.

They readily believed that, as they go nearly naked and fully exposed to that influence, we might be of common origin after all.