NG'UBU TO KAGEI AND UKEREWE. 89 the court-house, a large circular building with open walls and a conical thatched roof supported on a forest of poles, where the king holds councils and conducts trials and receives his visitors. On these occasions he brings his throne with him, a large stool of native manufacture, ornamented with crocodile's teeth, lion's claws, and hippopotamus' tusks.

Lukonge, the king of Ukerewe, was young, and, for a negro, rather a handsome-looking man, and showed great intelligence, though his knowledge of the outside world was limited in the extreme ; and on a subsequent occasion, when Lieut. Smith, O'Neill and I paid him a visit, he wished to know if there were any more white men in the world besides our three selves. He expressed a wish that white men should settle in his country and teach his people, and asked me if I would stay with him. Near Bukindo, the capital, the trader Songoro had an establishment where he grew rice, onions, tomatoes, and other vegetables foreign to the country, and near here, too, he was building a dhow or native craft to enable him to carry on better his trade in slaves.

The greater part of the island of Ukerewe is covered with forest, and it is connected with the mainland by a narrow swampy strip of land, through which are one or two narrow channels, known as Kugeshi. Nearly the whole of the island is under Lukonge's dominion ; there is however a small part at the north-west of it, called Ilangara, which is governed by another chief,