palace, could not give pomW, and instead gave my female
escort sundry baskets of plantains and potatoes, signifying
a dinner, and walked half-way home, flirting with me as
before.
15 th.—I called on the king with all the spirits I had
made, as well as the saccharine residue. We found him
holding a levee, and receiving his offerings of a batch of
girls, cows, goats, and other things of an ordinary nature.
One of the goats presented gave me an opportunity of
hearing one of the strangest stories I had yet heard in this
strange country: it was a fine for attempted regicide, which
happened yesterday, when a boy, finding the king alone,
which is very unusual, walked up to him and threatened
to kill him, because, he said, he took the lives of men unjustly.
The king explained by description and pantomime
how the affair passed. When the youth attacked him he
had in his hand the revolving pistol I had given him, and
showed us, holding the weapon to his cheek, how he had
presented the muzzle to the boy, which, though it was
unloaded, so frightened him that he ran away. All the
courtiers nyanzigged vigorously for the condescension of
the king in telling us this story. There must have been
some special reason why, in a court where trifling breaches
of etiquette were punished with a cruel death, so grave a
crime should have been so leniently dealt with; but I
could not get at the bottom of the affair. The culprit, a
good-looking young fellow of sixteen or seventeen, who
brought in the goat, made his n’yanzigs, stroked the goat
and his own face with his hands, n’yamzigged again with
prostrations, and retired.
After this scene, officers announced the startling fact
that two white men had been seen at Kamrasi’s, one with
a beard like myself, the other smooth-faced. I jumped at
this news, and said, “ Of course, they are there; do let me
send a letter to them.” I believed it to be Petherick and
a companion whom I knew he was to bring with him.
The king, however, damped my ardour by saying the
information was not perfect, and we must wait until
certain Wakungti, whom he sent to search in Unyoro,
returned.
16 th.—The regions about the palace were all in a state
of commotion to-day, men and women running for their
lives in all directions, followed by Wakungti and their
retainers. The cause of all this commotion was a royal
order to seize sundry refractory Wakungti, with their
property, wives, concubines—if such a distinction can be
made in this country—and families all together. At the
palace Mtdsa had a musical party, playing the flute occasionally
himself. After this he called me aside, and said,
“ Now, Bana, I wish you would instruct me, as you have
so often proposed doing, for I wish to learn everything,
though I have little opportunity for doing so.” Not
knowing what was uppermost in his mind, I begged him
to put whatever questions he liked, and he should be
answered seriatim—hoping to find him inquisitive on
foreign matters; but nothing was more foreign to his
mind: none of his countrymen ever seemed to think beyond
the sphere of Uganda.
The whole conversation turned on medicines, or the
cause and effects of diseases. Cholera, for instance, very
much affected the land at certain seasons, creating much
mortality, and vanishing again as mysteriously as it
came. What brought this scourge? and what would
cure it ? Supposing a man had a headache, what should
he take for it ? or a leg-ache, or a stomach-ache, or itch;
in fact, going the rounds of every disease he knew, until,
exhausting the ordinary complaints, he went into particulars
in which he was personally much interested; but I
was unfortunately unable to prescribe medicines which
produce the physical phenomenon next to his heart.
17th.-—I called upon the king by appointment, and
2 B