word of it would ever reach the king; for, however appropriate
or important the matter might be, it was more
than anybody dare do to tell the king, as it would he an
infringement of the rule that no one is to speak to him
unless in answer to a question. My second buck of the
first day was brought in by the natives, but they would
not allow it to approach the hut until it had been skinned;
and I found their reason to be a superstition that otherwise
no others would ever be killed by the inmates of
that establishment.
I marched up the left bank of the Nile at a considerable
To isamba Rapids, distance from the water, to the Isamba Eapids,
passing through rich jungle and plantain-gar-
dens. Nango, an old friend, and district officer of the
place, first refreshed us with a dish of plantain-squash
and dried fish, with pombd. He told us he is often
threatened by elephants, but he sedulously keeps them
off with charms; for if they ever tasted a plantain they
would never leave the garden until they had cleared it
out. He then took us to see the nearest falls of the Nile
—extremely beautiful, but very confined. The water ran
deep between its banks, which were covered with fine
grass, soft cloudy acacias, and festoons of lilac convolvuli;
whilst here and there, where the land had slipped above
the rapids, bared places of red earth could be seen, like
that of Devonshire; there, too, the waters, impeded by a
natural dam, looked like a huge mill-pond, sullen and
dark, in which two crocodiles, laving about, were looking
out for prey. From the high banks we looked down upon
a line of sloping wooded islets lying across the stream,
which divide its waters, and, by interrupting them, cause
at once both dam and rapids. The whole was more fairylike,
wild, and romantic than—I must confess that my
thoughts took that shape—anything I ever saw outside of
a theatre. It was exactly the sort of place, in fact, where,
bridged across from one side-slip to the other, on a moonlight
night,, brigands would assemble to enact some dreadful
tragedy. Even the Wangtiana seemed spellbound at
the novel beauty of the sight, and no one thought of
moving till hunger warned us night was setting in, and
we had better look out for lodgings.
Start again, and after drinking pombfi with Nango,
when we heard that three Wakungfi had been
To Kirmdi, - . ge^ e(j a^. in consequence of the murder,
the march was recommenced, but soon after stopped’ by
the mischievous machinations of our guide, who pretended
it was too late in the day to cross the jungles on ahead,
either by the road to the source or the palace, and therefore
would not move till the morning; then, leaving us,
on the pretext of business, he vanished, and was never
seen again. A small black fly, with thick shoulders and
bullet-head, infests the place, and torments the naked
arms and legs of the people with its sharp stings to an
extent that must render life miserable to them.
After a long struggling march, plodding through huge
To church Estate, grasses and j ungle, we reached a district which
27i7i- I cannot otherwise describe than by calling it
a “ Church Estate.” It is dedicated in some mysterious
manner to Lubari (Almighty), and although the king
appeared to have authority over some of the inhabitants
of it, yet others had apparently a sacred character, exempting
them from the civil power, and he had no right to
dispose of the land itself. In this territory there are small
villages only at every fifth mile, for there is no road, and
the lands run high again, whilst, from want of a guide, we
often lost the track. It now transpired that Budja, when
he told at the palace that there was no road down the
banks of the Nile, did so in consequence of his fear that
if he sent my whole party here they would rob these
church lands, and so bring him into a scrape with the
wizards or ecclesiastical authorities. Had my party not
2 Gc