forest,
we emerged on the first of the populous parts of Usui, a most
convulsed-looking country, of well-rounded hills composed of sandstone.
In all the parts not under cultivation they were covered with brushwood.
Here the little grass-hut villages were not fenced by a boma, but were
hidden in large fields of plantains. Cattle were numerous, kept by the
Wahuma, who could not sell their milk to us because we ate fowls and a
bean called maharague.

Happily no one tried to pillage us here, so on we went to Vikora's,
another officer, living at N'yakasenye, under a sandstone hill, faced
with a dyke of white quartz, over which leaped a small stream of
water--a seventy-feet drop--which, it is said, Suwarora sometimes paid
homage to when the land was oppressed by drought. Vikora's father it was
whom Sirboko of Mininga shot. Usually he was very severe with merchants
in consequence of that act; but he did not molest us, as the messenger
who went on to Suwarora returned here just as we arrived, to say we must
come on at once, as Suwarora was anxious to see us, and had ordered his
Wakungu not to molest us. Thieves that night entered our ringfence of
thorns, and stole a cloth from off one of my men while he was sleeping.

We set down Suwarora, after this very polite message, "a regular trump,"
and walked up the hill of N'yakasenye with considerable mirth, singing
his praises; but we no sooner planted ourselves on the summit than we
sang a very different tune. We were ordered to stop by a huge body of
men, and to pay toll.

Suwarora, on second thoughts, had changed his mind, or else he had been
overruled by two of his officers--Kariwami, who lived here, and Virembo,
who lived two stages back, but were then with their chief. There was no
help for it, so I ordered the camp to be formed, and sent Nasib and the
mace-bearers at once off to the palace to express to his highness how
insulted I felt as his guest, being stopped in this manner, even when
I had his Kaquenzingiriri with me as his authority that I was invited
there as a guest. I was not a merchant who carried merchandise, but a
prince like himself, come on a friendly mission to see him and Rumanika.
I was waiting at night for the return of the messengers, and sitting
out with my sextant observing the stars, to fix my position, when some
daring thieves, in the dark bushes close by, accosted two of the women
of the camp, pretending a desire to know what I was doing. They were