have to march in them seven or eight hundred miles to
the coast. However, we reached Kampala after a five
hours’ tramp, -and on Christmas Day I dined with Gibb
and Wise. Two bottles of champagne and a plum
pudding !
C H A P T E R X X .
U G A N D A A N D IT S P E O P L E
I REMAINED at Kampala about six weeks, the first
part of which was mainly taken up with fever, a
legacy of the swamps of Unyoro. The time was not
particularly eventful. I spent most of it putting my
papers and such like in order, writing the many letters
called forth by the fact that I was once more in touch
with a certain kind of civilization, and observing the
manners and customs of the natives. It was not perhaps
a very high grade of civilization by which I was surrounded,
and the postal facilities were the leading feature
of it. My immediate environment may otherwise be
judged of by two interesting cases which arose on the
same day. One was an instance of sorcery among the
Soudanese. One of the soldiers, happening to find himself
ill, remembered that some time before he had woke up
in the night and seen a naked woman looking at him.
There could be no doubt therefore that she had bewitched
him. She was promptly seized, and the next day was
submitted to an ordeal. A sacred bean was cut in two,
and half of it was given her to eat: if she was guilty she
would fall dead. In the afternoon I asked what the result
had been. “ Oh,” answered my informant, “ she ate the
bean, and she is dead. Then she was burnt, because
otherwise she would have returned as a spirit.” “ But,” I
said, “ did she not move at all while she was being
burnt ? ” “ Oh, yes,” was the answer ; “ but only for just
one moment.” I need not say that the offenders were
severely punished.