re
most of Mtesa's three or four hundred women are kept, the rest being
quartered chiefly with his mother, known by the title of N'yamasore, or
queen-dowager. They stood in little groups at the doors, looking at us,
and evidently passing their own remarks, and enjoying their own jokes,
on the triumphal procession. At each gate as we passed, officers on duty
opened and shut it for us, jingling the big bells which are hung upon
them, as they sometimes are at shop-doors, to prevent silent, stealthy
entrance.

The first court passed, I was even more surprised to find the unusual
ceremonies that awaited me. There courtiers of high dignity stepped
forward to greet me, dressed in the most scrupulously neat fashions.
Men, women, bulls, dogs, and goats, were led about by strings; cocks and
hens were carried in men's arms; and little pages, with rope-turbans,
rushed about, conveying messages, as if their lives depended on their
swiftness, every one holding his skin-cloak tightly round him lest his
naked legs might by accident be shown.

This, then, was the ante-reception court; and I might have taken
possession of the hut, in which musicians were playing and singing
on large nine-stringed harps, like the Nubian tambira, accompanied by
harmonicons. By the chief officers in waiting, however, who thought fit
to treat us like Arab merchants, I was requested to sit on the ground
outside in the sun with my servants. Now, I had made up my mind never to
sit upon the ground as the natives and Arabs are obliged to do, nor
to make my obeisance in any other manner than is customary in England,
though the Arabs had told me that from fear they had always complied
with the manners of the court. I felt that if I did not stand up for my
social position at once, I should be treated with contempt during the
remainder of my visit, and thus lose the vantage-ground I had assumed
of appearing rather as a prince than a trader, for the purpose of
better gaining the confidence of the king. To avert over-hastiness,
however--for my servants began to be alarmed as I demurred against doing
as I was bid--I allowed five minutes to the court to give me a proper
reception, saying, if it were not conceded I would then walk away.

Nothing, however, was done. My own men, knowing me, feared for me, as
they did not know what a "savage" king would do in case I carried out my
threat; whilst the Waganda, lost in amazement at what seemed little less
than blasphemy, sto