My Protests, However, Had No Effect Upon The
Escorting Wakungu.
Resolving to make them catch it, I walked
along as if ruminating in anger up the broad high road into a
cleared square, which divides Mtesa's domain on the south from
his Kamraviona's, or commander-in-chief, on the north, and then
turned into the court.
The palace or entrance quite surprised me
by its extraordinary dimensions, and the neatness with which it
was kept. The whole brow and sides of the hill on which we stood
were covered with gigantic grass huts, thatched as neatly as so
many heads dressed by a London barber, and fenced all round with
the tall yellow reeds of the common Uganda tiger-grass; whilst
within the enclosure, the lines of huts were joined together, or
partitioned off into courts, with walls of the same grass. It is
here most of Mtesa's three or four hundred women are kept, the
rest being quartered chiefly with his mother, known by the title
of N'yamasore, or queen-dowager. They stood in little groups at
the doors, looking at us, and evidently passing their own
remarks, and enjoying their own jokes, on the triumphal
procession. At each gate as we passed, officers on duty opened
and shut it for us, jingling the big bells which are hung upon
them, as they sometimes are at shop-doors, to prevent silent,
stealthy entrance.
The first court passed, I was even more surprised to find the
unusual ceremonies that awaited me. There courtiers of high
dignity stepped forward to greet me, dressed in the most
scrupulously neat fashions. Men, women, bulls, dogs, and goats,
were led about by strings; cocks and hens were carried in men's
arms; and little pages, with rope-turbans, rushed about,
conveying messages, as if their lives depended on their
swiftness, every one holding his skin-cloak tightly round him
lest his naked legs might by accident be shown.
This, then, was the ante-reception court; and I might have taken
possession of the hut, in which musicians were playing and
singing on large nine-stringed harps, like the Nubian tambira,
accompanied by harmonicons. By the chief officers in waiting,
however, who thought fit to treat us like Arab merchants, I was
requested to sit on the ground outside in the sun with my
servants. Now, I had made up my mind never to sit upon the
ground as the natives and Arabs are obliged to do, nor to make my
obeisance in any other manner than is customary in England,
though the Arabs had told me that from fear they had always
complied with the manners of the court. I felt that if I did not
stand up for my social position at once, I should be treated with
contempt during the remainder of my visit, and thus lose the
vantage-ground I had assumed of appearing rather as a prince than
a trader, for the purpose of better gaining the confidence of the
king.
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