58 MRULI TO THE CAPITAL OF UNYORO.

not ten persons had turned up; and when, after half an hour’s bargaining and palaver, a few more Negroes appeared, no one seemed to know the road, although Kabréga’s capital could not have been more than five or six hours distant. I was therefore compelled to send two men to Kabréga to beg him to send me a guide, knowing all the while that this ignorance was a mere pretence. Fortunately I had been able to procure a sheep and a few fowls, as well as some sesame (Sesamum orientale) for my people in exchange for a few beads, so that they at least did not starve. There were several heavy storms of rain again that day.

At last, on the 21st, we started. The horns had been blowing for hours, and my people had urged me to march. As, however, I had heard the beating of a big drum for about half an hour, I concluded that Kabréga was sending one of his chiefs to meet me; and so it turned out, for soon after, Makango (big chief) Bkamba appeared, accompanied by a drummer, a gunboy, and some five or six other people, to greet me and to escort me at once to Kabréga. Hverything was now arranged like magic, and off we marched, our luggage in advance. We climbed up through well-cultivated land, in which were many huts; then, turning round by a large banana grove, we descended to a big papyrus swamp, the crossing of which, although it was only about two hundred yards broad, occupied a whole halfhour, because the water between each single thicket reached up to our necks and the roots caught our feet lke nooses. Only one who has experienced such a passage can form an idea of its unpleasantness, especially when stinging and_ prickly vossia-grass abounds, When we at length found ourselves safely on the opposite bank, the porters, who were most wonderfully willing, went on before, and we passed through dense masses of grass with many mimosas, which occasionally gave place to meadowland, until we entered a sort of defile between two ranges of mountains, and marched on, up and down hill. One of these hills was decorated by a solitary beautiful draceena. In a banana grove, where fig-trees and phoenix palms were growing, we saw the fresh spoors of two large hyenas. ‘The last part of the road led along the mountain-side to the left, Khor