112 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

let me give him something for that on which the house was huilt, as that would have given us a right , to it, which the natives would have respected, but 1 Mtesa could never he induced to sell in any way.

When Smith left Uganda, he said he hoped to be back there by the end of October, but I heard nothing about him till November the llth, when I received a budget of letters from England, which Smith had sent on by an Arab. I had not had a line from England since February, and it may well be imagined what a delight it was to get these letters and papers, though they were most of them fifteen months old. A letter from Smith said that the mail had been brought with a caravan of stores by an Englishman named Morton, who had left again for the coast, that the dhow was nearly finished, and that when that was done and he had explored the Shimiyu, he and O'Neill hoped to come on to Uganda. Another month had passed away, I had moved into my new house, and matters were going on much as before, when one morning, as I was walking up to the palace, I was overtaken by a negro trader named Sungura, or the Rabbit, who lived in Uganda, and he told me that a white man had arrived in Uganda from the North, that his name was Abdul Amini, and that he was sent by Colonel Gordon to see Mtesa. Of course I was anxious to see this " Mzungu," but he was ill for some time after he got to the capital, and Mtesa, who did not wish me to