The country is said to be infested with lions and leopards, but we had heard nothing of them during the night. A hyæna, however, broke into our campfold on the first night at Masakuma’s, and dragged away a goat.
Two days’ short marches of four and three-quarters and three hours respectively, enabled us to reach Katara on the 11th of July. Our road had led through a long winding valley, the Denny range on our right and the Ivanda on our left. The streamlets we now crossed were the sources of the Rusango, which, flowing north towards the Edwin Arnold Mt., meet the Mpanga flowing south from the Gordon Bennett and Mackinnon Cones. The Mpanga we crossed as we marched parallel with the eastern shore of the Lake Albert Edward.
Soon after arrival in camp two Waganda Christians named Samuel and Zachariah, with an important following, appeared by the permission of Antari. After greeting us, they said they wished to impart some information if I could grant them a quiet hour. Expectant of the usual praises of their king Mwanga, which every loyal Mganda, as I knew him, was very prone to utter, we deferred the interview until evening. They delivered a packet of gunpowder and percussion caps, the property of a Manyuema, to me, which they had picked up on the road. This act was in their favour, and I laid it down near my chair, but within a few minutes it had been abstracted by a light-fingered Moslem.
When evening came Zachariah took upon himself to relate a narrative of astonishing events which had occurred in Uganda last year. King Mwanga, the son of Mtesa, had proceeded from bad to worse, until the native Mohammedans had united with the Christians, who are called “Amasia,” to depose the cruel tyrant because of his ruthless executions. The Christians were induced to join the Mohammedans—proselytes of the Arab traders—unanimously, not only because of Mwanga’s butcheries of their co-religionists, but because he had recently meditated a wholesale massacre of them. He had ordered a large number of goats to be carried on an island, and he had invited the Christians to embark in his canoes for their capture. Had they accepted his invitation, his intention had been to withdraw the vessels after the disembarkation, and to allow them to subsist on the goats, and afterwards starve. But one of the pages betrayed his purposes, and warned the Christian chiefs of the king’s design. Consequently they declined to be present.
The union of these two parties in the kingdom of Uganda was soon followed by a successful attempt to depose him. Mwanga resisted for a time with such as were faithful to him, but as his capitals, Rubaga and Ulagalla, were taken, he was constrained to leave the country. He departed in canoes to the south of Lake Victoria, and took refuge with Said bin Saif alias Kipanda, a trader, and an old acquaintance of mine in 1871, who was settled in Usukuma. Said, the Arab, however, ill-treated the dethroned king, and he secretly fled again, and sought the protection of the French missionaries at Bukumbi. Previous to this it appears that both English and French missionaries had been expelled from Uganda by Mwanga, and deprived of all their property except their underclothing. The French settled themselves at Bukumbi, and the English at Makolo’s, in Usambiro, at the extreme south end of Lake Victoria.
After Mwanga’s departure from Uganda, the victorious Moslem and Christian proselytes elected Kiwewa for their king. Matters proceeded smoothly for a time, until it was discovered that the Moslem party were endeavouring to excite hostility against the Christians in the mind of the new King. They were heard to insinuate that, as England was ruled by a queen, that the Christians intended to elevate one of Mtesa’s daughters on the throne occupied by Kiwewa. This king then leaned to the Moslems, and abandoned the Christians, but they were pleased to express their doubts of his attachment to them and their faith, and would not be assured of it unless he formally underwent the ceremony of circumcision. The necessity of this Kiwewa affected not to understand, and it was then resolved by the Moslems to operate on him by force, and twelve Watongoli (colonels) were chosen to perform the operation. Among these colonels was my gossip, Sabadu, to whom I was indebted for the traditional history of Uganda. Kiwewa was informed of their purpose, and filled his house with armed men, who, as the colonels entered the house, were seized and speared one by one. The alarm soon spread through the capital, and an assault was instantly made on the palace and its court, and in the strife Kiwewa was taken and slain.
The rebels then elected Karema to be King of Uganda, who was a brother of the slain Kiwewa and the deposed Mwanga, and he was the present occupant of the throne.
The Christians had repeatedly attacked Karema’s forces, and had maintained their cause well, sometimes successfully; but at the fourth battle they were sorely defeated, and the survivors had fled to Ankori to seek refuge with Antari, who, it was thought, would not disdain the assistance of such a force of fighting men in his various troubles with Mpororo and Ruanda. There were now about 2,500 Christians at Ankori’s capital, and about 2,000 scattered in Uddu.
Having heard that Mwanga had become a Christian, and been baptised by the French missionaries during his stay with them in Bukumbi, the Christians tendered their allegiance to him, and he came to Uddu to see them, in company with an English trader named Stokes; but, as the means of retaking the throne were small, Mwanga took possession of an island not far from the Murchison Bay, and there he remains with about 250 guns, while Stokes, it is believed, had returned to the coast with ivory to purchase rifles and ammunition at Zanzibar in the cause of Mwanga. Up to this date the mainland of Uganda was under Karema, while the islands recognised Mwanga, and the entire flotilla of Uganda, mustering several hundred canoes, was at the disposition of the latter.
They then informed me that their appearance in my camp was due to the fact that while at the capital they had heard of the arrival of white men, and they had been sent by their compatriots to solicit our assistance to recover the throne of Uganda for Mwanga.