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. It was rather
ominous that hail fell with violence, and lightning burnt down
one of the palace huts, while the king was in the midst of his
propitiatory devotions.
1st. - As Bombay was ordered to the palace to instruct the king in
the art of casting bullets, I primed him well to plead for the
road, and he reported to me the results, thus: First, he asked
one thousand men to go through Kidi. This the king said was
impracticable, as the Waganda had tried it so often before
without success.
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