through Bombay, to obtain a final interview with me,
saying they knew Mtésa’s power, and disobedience to him
would only end in taking away all chance of escape. In
reply, I said I would not listen to them, as I had seen
enough of them to* know it was no use speaking with a
pack of unreasonable cowards, having tried it so often
before ; but I sent a message requesting them, if they did
desert me at last, to leave my guns ; and, further, added
an intimation that, as soon as they reached the coast,
they would be put into prison for three years. Thé
scoundrels insolently said “ tuendé sétu ” (let’s be off),
rushed to the Waganda drums, and beat the march.
lsi.—Early in the morning, as Budja drummed the
home march, I called him up, gave him a glass rain-
gauge as a letter for Mtésa, and instructed him to say I
would send a man to Mtésa as soon as I had seen Kam-
rasi about opening the road; that I trusted he would
take all the guns from the deserters and keep them for
me, but the men themselves I wished transported to an
island on the N’yanza, for I could never allow such
scoundrels again to enter my camp. It was the effect
of desertions like these that prevented any white men
visiting these countries. This said, the Waganda all left
us, taking with them twenty-eight Wanguana, armed
with twenty-two carbines. Amongst them was the
wretched governess, Manamaka, who had always thought
me a wonderful magician, because I possessed, in her
belief, an extraordinary power in inclining all the black
kings’ hearts to me, and induced them to give the roads
no one before of my colour had ever attempted to use.
With a following reduced to twenty men, armed with
fourteen carbines, I now wished to start for Kamrasi’s,
but had not even sufficient force to lift the loads. A little
while elapsed, and a party of fifty Wanyoro rushed wildly
into camp, with their spears uplifted, and looked for the
Waganda, but found them gone. The athletic Kajunjü,
it transpired, had returned to Kamrasi s, told him our
story, and received orders to snatch us away from the
Waganda by force, for the great Mkamma, or king, was
most anxious to see his white visitors; such men had
never entered Unyoro before, and neither his father nor
his father’s fathers had ever been treated with such a
visitation; therefore he had sent on these fifty men to
fall by surprise on the Waganda, and secure us. But
again, in a little while, about 10 A.M., Kajunjii, in the
same wild manner, at the head of 150 warriors, with the
soldier’s badge—a piece of mbiigii or plantain-leaf tied
round their heads, and a leather sheath on their spearheads,
tufted with cow’s-tail—rushed in exultingly, having
found, to their delight, that there was no one left
to fight with, and that they had gained an easy victory.
They were certainly a wild set of ragamuffins—as different
as possible from the smart, well-dressed, quick-of-speech
Waganda as could be, and anything but prepossessing
to our eyes. However, they had done their work, and
I offered them a cow, wishing to have it shot before
them; but the chief men, probably wishing the whole
animal to themselves, took it alive, saying the men were
all the king’s servants, and therefore could not touch a
morsel.
Kamrasi expected us to advance next day, when some
men would go on ahead to announce our arrival, and
bring a letter which was brought with beads by Gani
before Baraka’s arrival here. I t was shown to Baraka in
the hope that we would come by the Karague route, but
not to Mabruki, because he came from Uganda. Kidg-
wiga informed us that Kamrasi never retaliated on
Mtfea when he lifted Unyoro cows, though the Waganda
keep their cattle on the border—which simply meant he
had not the power of doing so. The twenty remaining
Wangtiana, conversing over the sudden scheme of the
deserters, proposed, on one side, sending for them, as, had