We Sent A Picture Of
Mtesa As A Gift, The Two Books To Look At And An Acknowledgement
That The Mosquito-Curtains Were His, Only He Must Have Patience
Until Bombay Arrived; But His Proposition About The Fence We
Rejected With Scorn.
The king had been raising an army to fight
Rionga - the true reason, we suspect, for the beating of the
drums.
27th and 28th. - There was drumming and music all day and night,
and the army was being increased to a thousand men, but we poor
prisoners could see nothing of it. Frij was therefore sent to
inspect the armament and brings us all the news. Some of
N'yamyonjo's men, seeing mine armed with carbines, became very
inquisitive about them, and asked if they were the instruments
which shot at their men on the Nile - one in the arm, who died;
the other on the top of the shoulder, who was recovering. The
drums were kept in private rooms, to which a select few only were
admitted. Kamrasi conducts all business himself, awarding
punishments and seeing them carried out. The most severe
instrument of chastisement is a knob-stick, sharpened at the
back, like that used in Uganda, for breaking a man's neck before
he is thrown into the N'yanza; but this severity is seldom
resorted to, Kamrasi being of a mild disposition compared with
Mtesa, whom he invariably alludes to when ordering men to be
flogged, telling them that were they in Uganda, their heads would
suffer instead of their backs.
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