asking me to send Mtesa some pretty things from England
such as he never saw.
lsi.—Kamrasi sent his commander-in-chief to inquire
after my health, and to say Budja had left in fear and
trembling lest Mtdsa should cut all their heads off for
failing in the mission; but he had sent Kidgwiga’s brother
with a pot of pombd to escort the Waganda beyond
his frontier, and cheer them on the way;: for the tin cartridge
box, he thought, would save their lives by satisfying
Mtesa they had seen me. The commander-in-chief then
told me Kamrasi did not wish them to accompany me
through Kidi, for the Kidi people don’t like the Waganda,
and, discovering their nationality by the ■ fulness of their
teeth, would bring trouble on us whilst trying to kill
them. I said I thanked Kamrasi for his having treated
the Waganda with such marked respect, in allowing them
to see me, and sending them back with an escort; but I
thought it would have been better if he had spoken the
truth plainly out, for then I could have told them I feared
to have them in company with me. In return for my
civilities, the king then sent one of his Ghopi officers to
see me, who went four stages with Bombay, and he also
sent some rich beads which he wished me to look at.
They were nieely kept in a neat though very large casing
of rush pith, and were those sent as a letter from Gani,
to inform him that we were expected to come vid Karague.
After this, to keep us in good-humour, Kamrasi sent to
inform us that some Gani men, twenty-five in number,
had just arrived, and had given him a lion-skin, several
tippet monkey-skins, and some giraffe hair, as well as a
stick of copper or brass wire. Bombay was met by them
on the confines of Gani.
2c?: The king sent me a pot of pombd to-day, inquiring
after my health, and saying he would like to take the
medicine I gave him if I would send Fry over to administer
it, but he would be ashamed to swallow pills before
me. Hitherto he had not been able to take the medicine
from press of business in collecting an army to fight his
brothèrs ; but as his troops would all leave for war to-day,
he expected to have leisure.
In plying the Kamraviona to try if we could get rid of
the annoying restraints which made our residence here a
sort of imprisonment, I discovered that the whole affair
was not one of blunder or accident, but that we actually
were prisoners thus by design. It appeared that Kamrasi’s
brothers, when they heard we were coming into Unyoro,
murmured, and said to the king, “ Why are you bringing
such guests amongst us, who will practise all kinds of
diabolical sorcery, and bring evil on us ?” To which
TTa.mra.Ri replied, “ I have invited them to come, and they
shall come ; and if they bring evil with them, let that all
fall on my shoulders, for you shall not see them.” He
then built a palaver-house on the banks of the Kafü to
receive us in privately;, and when we were to go to Gani,
it was his intention to slip us off privately down the
Kafü. Thé brothers were so thoroughly frightened, that
when Ka.mra.Ri opened his chronometer before them to
show them the works in motion, they turned their heads
away. The large block-tin box I gave Kamrasi, as part
of his hongo, was, I heard, called Mzungü, or the white
man, by him.
In the evening the beads recently brought from Gani
were sent for my inspection, with an intimation that
Ka.mra.Ri highly approved of them, and would like me to
give him a few like them. Some of Kamrasi’s spies,
whom he had sent to the refractory allies of Rionga his
brother, returned bringing a spear and some grass from
the thatch of the hut of a Chopi chief. The removal of
the grass was a piece of state policy. It was stolen by
Kamrasi’s orders, in order that he might spread a charm
on the Chopi people, and gain such an influence over
them that their spears could not prevail against the