us _by
degrees_ getting rid of the 1000-feet difference of level between
Foweira and Magungo." While mapping this region, Gordon one day
marched eighteen miles through jungle and in pouring rain, and on each
of the four following days he also walked fifteen miles--and the month
was August, only a few miles north of the Equator, or, in other words,
the very hottest period of the year. Having established the course of
the Nile and its navigability to the Murchison Falls close to the
Victoria Nyanza, General Gordon gave what he thought was a finishing
touch to this exploring expedition by effecting an arrangement with
King Mtesa.

But in order to explain the exact significance of this step, and the
consequent disappointment when it was found that the arrangement was
illusory and destitute of practical value, it is necessary to go back
a little, and trace the course of events in the Uganda region.

The Egyptian advance towards the south brought in its train two
questions of external policy. One was with Abyssinia, of which we
shall hear much in the next chapter; and the other was with the
kingdom of Uganda and the kinglets who regarded Mtesa as their chief.
Of these the principal was Kaba Rega, chief of Unyoro, and the
recognised ruler of the territory lying between the two Lakes. He was
a man of capacity and spirit, and had raised himself to the position
he occupied by ousting kinsmen who had superior claims to the
privileges of supreme authority. In the time of Gordon's predecessor,
Sir Samuel Baker, Kaba Rega had come to the front as a native
champion, resolved to defy the Egyptians and their white leaders to do
their worst. In a spirited attack on Baker's camp at Masindi, he
endeavoured to settle the pretensions of his invaders at a blow, but
he found that numbers were no match for the superior arms of his
opponent. But defeat did not diminish his spirit. Baker decreed his
deposition as King of Unyoro, proclaiming in his stead a cousin named
Rionga, but the order had no practical effect. Kaba Rega retired a
little from the vicinity of the Egyptian forces; he retained "the
magic stool" of authority over the lands and peoples of Unyoro, and
his cousin Rionga possessed nothing beyond the empty title contained
in an Egyptian official decree. This was the position when Gordon
appeared on the scene, and his first obligation was to give something
like force and reality to the pretensions of Rionga.

If Kaba Rega had been s