wife and children must
be like him; what would not Sunna have given for such a treat?--but it
was destined to Mtesa's lot. What is the interpretation of this sign, if
it does not point to the favour in which Mtesa is upheld by the spirits?
I wished to go, but no: "Stop a little more," they said, all in a
breath, or rather out of breath in their excitement; "remove the hat
and show the hair; take off the shoes and tuck up the trousers; what on
earth is kept in the pockets? Oh, wonder of wonders!--and the iron!"
As I put the watch close to the ear of one of them, "Tick, tick,
ticks--woh, woh, woh"--everybody must hear it; and then the works had
to be seen. "Oh, fearful!" said one, "hide your faces: it is the Lubari.
Shut it up, Bana, shut it up; we have seen enough; but you will come
again and bring us beads." So ended the day's work.

6th.--To-day I sent Bombay to the palace for food. Though rain fell
in torrents, he found the king holding a levee, giving appointments,
plantations, and women, according to merit, to his officers. As one
officer, to whom only one woman was given, asked for more, the king
called him an ingrate, and ordered him to be cut to pieces on the spot;
and the sentence was, as Bombay told me, carried into effect--not with
knives, for they are prohibited, but with strips of sharp-edged grass,
after the executioners had first dislocated his neck by a blow delivered
behind the head, with a sharp, heavy-headed club.

No food, however, was given to my men, though the king, anticipating
Bombay's coming, sent me one load of tobacco, one of butter, and one of
coffee. My residence in Uganda became much more merry now, for all the
women of the camp came daily to call on my two little girls; during
which time they smoked my tobacco, chewed my coffee, drank my pombe,
and used to amuse me with queer stories of their native land. Rozaro's
sister also came, and proposed to marry me, for Maula, she said, was a
brutal man; he killed one of his women because he did not like her, and
now he had clipped one of this poor creature's ears off for trying to
run away from him; and when abused for his brutality, he only replied,
"It was no fault of his, as the king set the example in the country."

In the evening I took a walk with Kahala, dressed in a red scarf, and
in company with Lugoi, to show my children off in the gardens to my fair
friends of yesterday. Everybody was surprised. The Mgemma begged us
to sit with him an