ir official privilege, a first
peep; and this being refused, they tried to persuade me that the
articles comprising the present required to be covered with chintz, for
it was considered indecorous to offer anything to his majesty in a naked
state. This little interruption over, the articles enumerated below [18]
were conveyed to the palace in solemn procession thus:--With N'yamgundu,
Maula, the pages, and myself on the flanks, the Union-Jack carried by
the kirangozi guide led the way, followed by twelve men as a guard of
honour, dressed in red flannel cloaks, and carrying their arms sloped,
with fixed bayonets; whilst in their rear were the rest of my men, each
carrying some article as a present.

On the march towards the palace, the admiring courtiers, wonder-struck
at such an unusual display, exclaimed, in raptures of astonishment, some
with both hands at their mouths, and others clasping their heads with
their hands, "Irungi! irungi!" which may be translated "Beautiful!
beautiful!" I thought myself everything was going on as well as could
be wished; but before entering the royal enclosures, I found, to my
disagreeable surprise, that the men with Suwarora's hongo or offering,
which consisted of more than a hundred coils of wire, were ordered to
lead the procession, and take precedence of me. There was something
specially aggravating in this precedence; for it will be remembered that
these very brass wires which they saw, I had myself intended for Mtesa,
that they were taken from me by Suwarora as far back as Usui, and it
would never do, without remonstrance, to have them boastfully paraded
before my eyes in this fashion. My protests, however, had no effect upon
the escorting Wakungu. Resolving to make them catch it, I walked along
as if ruminating in anger up the broad high road into a cleared square,
which divides Mtesa's domain on the south from his Kamraviona's, or
commander-in-chief, on the north, and then turned into the court. The
palace or entrance quite surprised me by its extraordinary dimensions,
and the neatness with which it was kept. The whole brow and sides of the
hill on which we stood were covered with gigantic grass huts, thatched
as neatly as so many heads dressed by a London barber, and fenced all
round with the tall yellow reeds of the common Uganda tiger-grass;
whilst within the enclosure, the lines of huts were joined together, or
partitioned off into courts, with walls of the same grass. It is he