Accordingly instructions were issued to prepare five days’ provisions, that from the free provisions obtained from the Nyanza we might be well into Ankori before beginning the distribution of beads and cloth to about 1000 people, and also permission to assist themselves gratuitously was withdrawn, and the criers were sent through the camp proclaiming in the several languages that any person detected robbing plantations, or convicted of looting villages, would be made a public example.
1889.
July 4.
Kiteté.
On the morning of the 4th we turned our backs to the Albert Edward Nyanza, and followed a road leading east of south over the plain. In about an hour the level flat assumed a rolling character freely sprinkled over with bush clumps and a few trees. An hour’s experience of this kind brought us to the base of the first line of hills, thence up one ascent after another until noon, when we halted at Kitété, having gained a thousand feet of altitude. We were received kindly, and welcomed in the name of the King Antari. Messengers had arrived almost simultaneously from Masakuma, the Governor of the Lake Province of Ankori, that we should be received with all hospitality and honour, and brought by degrees to him. Consequently, such is the power of emissaries from authority, the villagers were ordered out of their houses with cries of “Room for the guests of Antari! Room for the friends of Masukuma! Ha, villains, don’t you hear? Out with you, bag and baggage!” and so forth, the messengers every now and then taking sly glances at us to note if we admired the style of the thing. We had not been long in Ankori before we grasped the situation thoroughly. Ankori was the king’s property. The people we should have to deal with were only the governors, called Wakungu, and the king, his mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, &c. Ankori was a copy of Uganda.
From Kitété a considerable portion of the south-east extremity of Lake Albert Edward appeared in view. We were a thousand feet above it. The sun shone strongly, and for once we obtained about a ten-mile view through the mist. From 312½° to 324° magnetic, the flats below were penetrated with long-reaching inlets of the lake, surrounding numbers of little low islets. To 17½° magnetic rose Nsinda Mountain, 2500 feet above the lake; and behind, at the distance of three miles, rose the range of Kinya-magara; and on the eastern side of a deep valley separating it from the uplands of Ankori rose the western face, precipitous and gray, the frowning walls of the Denny range.