where
trifling breaches of etiquette were punished with a cruel death, so
grave a crime should have been so leniently dealt with; but I could
not get at the bottom of the affair. The culprit, a good-looking young
fellow of sixteen or seventeen, who brought in the goat, made his
n'yanzigs, stroked the goat and his own face with his hands, n'yanzigged
again with prostrations, and retired.

After this scene, officers announced the startling fact that two white
men had been seen at Kamrasi's, one with a beard like myself, the other
smooth-faced. I jumped at this news, and said, "Of course, they are
there; do let me send a letter to them." I believed it to be Petherick
and a companion whom I knew he was to bring with him. The king, however,
damped my ardour by saying the information was not perfect, and we must
wait until certain Wakungu, whom he sent to search in Unyoro, returned.

16th.--The regions about the palace were all in a state of commotion
to-day, men and women running for their lives in all directions,
followed by Wakungu and their retainers. The cause of all this commotion
was a royal order to seize sundry refractory Wakungu, with their
property, wives, concubines--if such a distinction can be made in this
country--and families all together. At the palace Mtesa had a musical
party, playing the flute occasionally himself. After this he called me
aside, and said, "Now, Bana, I wish you would instruct me, as you have
often proposed doing, for I wish to learn everything, though I have
little opportunity for doing so." Not knowing what was uppermost in his
mind, I begged him to put whatever questions he liked, and he should be
answered seriatim--hoping to find him inquisitive on foreign matters;
but nothing was more foreign to his mind: none of his countrymen ever
seemed to think beyond the sphere of Uganda.

The whole conversation turned on medicines, or the cause and effects of
diseases. Cholera, for instance, very much affected the land at certain
seasons, creating much mortality, and vanishing again as mysteriously as
it came. What brought this scourge? and what would cure it? Supposing
a man had a headache, what should he take for it? or a leg ache, or a
stomach-ache, or itch; in fact, going the rounds of every disease
he knew, until, exhausting the ordinary complaints, he went into
particulars in which he was personally much interested; but I was
unfortunately unable to prescribe medicines which produce the