masses o f a greyish blue colour, imparted to
them b y moss and lichens, or large fragments
flung together as in some Cyclopean cairn, sundered
and riven b y warring elements. A t their base lie,
thickly strewn, the debris o f quartz-veined gneiss
and granite and iron-coloured rock, half choking
the passage o f some p e tty stream, which vents
its petulance, as it struggles through it to gain the
clear, disencumbered valley, and the placid river,
guarded b y banks o f slender cane and papyrus.
And then the traveller would observe that the
valleys are gradually deepening, and the hills
increasing in height, Until suddenly he would be
ushered into the presence o f that king o f mountains,
Mount Gordon-Bennett, which towers sheer
up to the azure with a white veil about his
crown, surrounded b y clusters o f savage heights
and ridges, and before whose indisputable sublimity
his soul seems to shrink. Escaping from
the vicinity o f this mountain monarch, he would
be swept over a brown parched plateau for a
short hour, and then, all suddenly, come to a
pause at the edge o f an awful precipice some
1500 feet in depth. A t the bottom o f this, slumbering
serenely, and reflecting the plateau walls
on its placid surface, lies the blue Muta Nzigé.
GENERAL REMARKS.
I have still to add some details o f interest.
Mtesa, in the preceding introduction to the
reader, playing the part o f Emperor at a public
burzah, has still only a vague and indistinct
personality, and so, to complete the portrait, I
venture to append the following remarks.
On first acquaintance, as I have already said,
he strikes thé traveller as a most fascinating and
a peculiarly amiable man, and should the traveller
ever think o f saving this pagan continent from
the purgatory o f heathendom, the Emperor must
occur to him as o f all men in Africa the most
promising to begin with. F o r his intelligence and
natural faculties are o f a v e ry high order, his p ro fessions
o f love to white men great, and his hospitality
apparently boundless. Had he been
educated in Europe, there can b e little doubt but
that he would have become a worthy member
o f society; but nursred in the lap o f paganism,
and graduate only in superstition and ignorance,
he is to-day no more than an extraordinary
African.
Flattering as it may be to me to have had
the honour o f converting the pagan Emperor of
Uganda to Christianity, I cannot hide from myself
the fact that the conversion is only nominal,
and that, to continue the good w o rk in earnest,
a patient, assiduous, and zealous missionary is
required. A few months’ talk about Christ and
His blessed w o rk on earth, though sufficiently
attractive to Mtesa, is not enough to eradicate
the evils which thirty-five years o f brutal, sen