he order is religiously kept. I wished
to send a message to Mtesa by an officer who is starting at once to
pay his respects at court; but although he received it, and promised to
deliver it, Kasoro laughed at me for expecting that one word of it would
ever reach the king; for, however, appropriate or important the matter
might be, it was more than anybody dare do to tell the king, as it would
be an infringement of the rule that no one is to speak to him unless in
answer to a question. My second buck of the first day was brought in by
the natives, but they would not allow it to approach the hut until it
had been skinned; and I found their reason to be a superstition
that otherwise no others would ever be killed by the inmates of that
establishment.

I marched up the left bank of the Nile at a considerable distance
from the water, to the Isamba rapids, passing through rich jungle and
plantain-gardens. Nango, an old friend, and district officer of the
place, first refreshed us with a dish of plantain-squash and dried
fish, with pombe. He told us he is often threatened by elephants, but
he sedulously keeps them off with charms; for if they ever tasted a
plantain they would never leave the garden until they had cleared it
out. He then took us to see the nearest falls of the Nile--extremely
beautiful, but very confined. The water ran deep between its banks,
which were covered with fine grass, soft cloudy acacias, and festoons
of lilac convolvuli; whilst here and there, where the land had slipped
above the rapids, bared places of red earth could be seen, like that
of Devonshire; there, too, the waters, impeded by a natural dam, looked
like a huge mill-pond, sullen and dark, in which two crocodiles, laving
about, were looking out for prey. From the high banks we looked down
upon a line of sloping wooded islets lying across the stream, which
divide its waters, and, by interrupting them, cause at once both dam and
rapids. The whole was more fairy-like, wild, and romantic than--I must
confess that my thoughts took that shape--anything I ever saw outside
of a theatre. It was exactly the sort of place, in fact, where, bridged
across from one side-slip to the other, on a moonlight night, brigands
would assemble to enact some dreadful tragedy. Even the Wanguana seemed
spellbound at the novel beauty of the sight, and no one thought of
moving till hunger warned us night was setting in, and we had better
look out for lodgings.

Start a