16th. - To-day the king was amusing himself among his women again,
and not to be seen. I sent Bombay with ten blue eggs as a
present for the Kamraviona, intimating my desire to call upon
him. He sent me a goat and ten fowls' eggs, saying he was not
visible to strangers on business to-day. I inferred that he
required the king's permission to receive me. This double
failure was a more serious affair then a mere slight; for my cows
were eaten up, and my men clamouring incessantly for food; and
though they might by orders help themselves "ku n'yangania" - by
seizing - from the Waganda, it hurt my feelings so much to witness
this, that I tried from the first to dispense with it, telling
the king I had always flogged my men for stealing, and now he
turned them into a pack of thieves. I urged that he should either
allow me to purchase rations, or else feed them from the palace
as Rumanika did; but he always turned a deaf ear, or said that
what Sunna his father had introduced it ill became him to
subvert; and unless my men helped themselves they would die of
starvation.
On the present emergency I resolved to call upon the queen. On
reaching the palace, I sent an officer in to announce my arrival,
and sat waiting for the reply fully half an hour, smoking my
pipe, and listening to her in the adjoining court, where music
was playing, and her voice occasionally rent the air with merry
boisterous laughing.
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