, by the king rising and
walking away, whilst I returned with the Kamraviona, who begged for ten
more blue eggs in addition to my present to make a full necklace, and
told my men to call upon him in the morning, when he would give me
anything I wished to eat. Bombay was then ordered to describe what sort
of food I lived on usually; when, Mganda fashion, he broke a stick into
ten bits, each representing a differing article, and said, "Bana eat
mixed food always"; and explained that stick No. 1 represented beef; No.
2, mutton; No. 3, fowl; No. 4, eggs; No. 5, fish; No. 6, potatoes; No.
7, plantains; No. 8, pombe; No. 9, butter; No. 10, flour.

16th.--To-day the king was amusing himself among his women again, and
not to be seen. I sent Bombay with ten blue eggs as a present for the
Kamraviona, intimating my desire to call upon him. He sent me a goat
and ten fowls' eggs, saying he was not visible to strangers on business
to-day. I inferred that he required the king's permission to receive me.
This double failure was a more serious affair then a mere slight; for
my cows were eaten up, and my men clamouring incessantly for food;
and though they might by orders help themselves "ku n'yangania"--by
seizing--from the Waganda, it hurt my feelings so much to witness this,
that I tried from the first to dispense with it, telling the king I had
always flogged my men for stealing, and now he turned them into a pack
of thieves. I urged that he should either allow me to purchase rations,
or else feed them from the palace as Rumanika did; but he always turned
a deaf ear, or said that what Sunna his father had introduced it ill
became him to subvert; and unless my men helped themselves they would
die of starvation.

On the present emergency I resolved to call upon the queen. On reaching
the palace, I sent an officer in to announce my arrival, and sat waiting
for the reply fully half an hour, smoking my pipe, and listening to
her in the adjoining court, where music was playing, and her voice
occasionally rent the air with merry boisterous laughing.

The messenger returned to say no one could approach her sanctuary or
disturb her pleasure at this hour; I must wait and bide my time, as the
Uganda officers do. Whew! Here was another diplomatic crisis, which had
to be dealt with in the usual way. "I bide my time!" I said, rising in
a towering passion, and thrashing the air with my ramrod walking-stick,
before all the visiting Wakungu, "when