The King
Then, Ever Attentive To Our Position As Guests, Sent His Royal
Musicians To Give Us A Tune.
The men composing the band were a
mixture of Waganda and Wanyambo, who played on reed instruments
made telescope fashion, marking time by hand-drums.
At first
they marched up and down, playing tunes exactly like the
regimental bands of the Turks, and then commenced dancing a
species of "hornpipe," blowing furiously all the while. When
dismissed with some beads, Nnanaji dropped in and invited me to
accompany him out shooting on the slopes of the hills overlooking
the lake. He had in attendance all the king's sons, as well as a
large number of beaters, with three or four dogs. Tripping down
the greensward of the hills together, these tall, athletic
princes every now and then stopped to see who could shoot
furthest, and I must say I never witnessed better feats in my
life. With powerful six-feet-long bows they pulled their arrows'
heads up to the wood, and made wonderful shots in the distance.
They then placed me in position, and arranging the field, drove
the covers like men well accustomed to sport - indeed, it struck
me they indulged too much in that pleasure, for we saw nothing
but two or three montana and some diminutive antelopes, about the
size of mouse deer, and so exceedingly shy that not one was
bagged.
Returning home to the tents as the evening sky was illumined with
the red glare of the sun, my attention was attracted by observing
in the distance some bold sky-scraping cones situated in the
country Ruanda, which at once brought back to recollection the
ill-defined story I had heard from the Arabs of a wonderful hill
always covered with clouds, on which snow or hail was constantly
falling. This was a valuable discovery, for I found these hills
to be the great turn-point of the Central African watershed.
Without loss of time I set to work, and, gathering all the
travellers I could in the country, protracted, from their
descriptions, all the distance topographical features set down in
the map, as far north as 3§ of north latitude, as far east as
36§, and as far west as 26§ of east longitude; only afterwards
slightly corrected, as I was better able to connect and clear up
some trifling but doubtful points.
Indeed, I was not only surprised at the amount of information
about distant places I was enabled to get here from these men,
but also at the correctness of their vast and varied knowledge,
as I afterwards tested it by observation and the statements of
others. I rely so far on the geographical information I thus
received, that I would advise no one to doubt the accuracy of
these protractions until he has been on the spot to test them by
actual inspection. About the size only of the minor lakes do I
feel doubtful, more especially the Little Luta Nzige, which on
the former journey I heard was a salt lake, because salt was
found on its shores and in one of its islands.
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