been under control, we could not bave put up bere;
but on my being answerable tbat no tbefts should take
place, tbe people kindly ■ consented to provide us with
board and lodgings, and we found them very obliging.
One elderly man, half-witted—they said the king had
driven his senses from him by seizing his house and
family—came at once on hearing of our arrival, laughing
and singing in a loose jaunty maniacal manner, carrying
odd sticks, shells, and a bundle of mbiigu rags, which he
deposited before me, dancing and singing again, then retreating
and bringing some more, with a few plantains
from a garden, which I was to eat, as kings lived upon
flesh, and “ poor Tom” wanted some, for he lived with
lions and elephants in a hovel beyond the gardens, and
his belly was empty. He . was precisely a black specimen
of the English parish idiot.
At last, with a good push for it, crossing hills and
To Ripon Fails, ■ threading huge grasses, as well as extensive
•¿m. village plantations lately devastated by elephants—
they had eaten all that was eatable, and what
would not serve for food they had destroyed with their
trunks, not one plantain or one hut being left entire—we
arrived at the extreme end of the journey, the farthest
point ever visited by the expedition on the same parallel
of latitude as king Mtdsa’s palace, and just forty miles
east of it.
We were well rewarded; for the “ stones,” as the Wa-
ganda call the falls, was by far the most interesting sight
I had seen in Africa. Everybody ran to see them at once,
though the march had been long and fatiguing, and even
my sketch-bloek was called into play. Though beautiful,
the scene was not exactly what I expected; for the broad
surface of the lake was shut out from view by a spur of
hill, and the falls, about 12 feet deep, and 400 to 500 feet
broad, were broken by rocks. Still it was a sight that
attracted one to it for hours—-the roar of the waters, the