know if my purpose was fighting.
I made him a present of the great principle that power commands respect,
and it was to prevent any chance of fighting that we required so
formidable an escort. His reply was that he would tell the king; and he
immediately rose and walked away home.

K'yengo and the representatives of Usui and Karague now arrived by order
of the king to bid farewell, and received the slaves and cattle lately
captured. As I was very hungry, I set off home to breakfast. Just as I
had gone, the provoking king inquired after me, and so brought me back
again, though I never saw him the whole day. K'yengo, however, was very
communicative. He said he was present when Sunna, with all the forces he
could muster, tried to take the very countries I now proposed to travel
through; but, though in person exciting his army to victory, he could
make nothing of it. He advised my returning to Karague, when Rumanika
would give me an escort through Nkole to Unyoro; but finding that
did not suit my views, as I swore I would never retrace one step, he
proposed my going by boat to Unyoro, following down the Nile.

This, of course, was exactly what I wanted; but how could king Mtesa,
after the rebuff he had received from Kamrasi be induced to consent
to it? My intention, I said, was to try the king on the Usoga and Kidi
route first, then on the Masai route to Zanzibar, affecting perfect
indifference about Kamrasi; and all those failing--which, of course,
they would--I would ask for Unyoro as a last and only resource. Still I
could not see the king to open my heart to him, and therefore felt quite
nonplussed. "Oh," says K'yengo, "the reason why you do not see him is
merely because he is Ashamed to show his face, having made so many fair
promises to you which he knows he can never carry out: bide your time,
and all will be well." At 4 p.m., as no hope of seeing the king was
left, all retired.

30th.--Unexpectedly, and for reasons only known to himself, the king
sent us a cow and load of butter, which had been asked for many days
ago. The new moon seen last night kept the king engaged at home, paying
his devotions with his magic horns or fetishes in the manner already
described. The spirit of this religion--if such it can be called--is not
so much adoration of a Being supreme and beneficent, as a tax to certain
malignant furies--a propitiation, in fact, to prevent them bringing evil
on the land, and to insure a fruitful harvest.