He did not fare so well with the Wavuma tribe. They attracted Stanley’s attention by sending out a canoe loaded with provisions and gifts. But shoreward suddenly appeared a whole fleet of canoes, evidently bent on surrounding the “Lady Alice.” As her crew bent to their oars in order to escape, a storm of lances came upon them from the first canoe, whose captain held up a string of beads in a tantalizing manner which he had stolen from the white man’s boat. Stanley fired upon him and doubled him up in his boat. Then using his larger rifle he punctured the foremost of the other canoes with heavy bullets below the water line, so that they had enough to do to keep them from sinking. They ceased to give chase and the “Lady Alice” escaped.
Directly north of Victoria Nyanza is Uganda or the country of the Waganda,[1] over which King Mtesa presides. Stanley struck the country on the next day after his adventure with the Wavuma. It was a revelation to him. He fancied he had, in a night, passed from Pagan Africa to Mohammedan Europe or Asia. Instead of the stones and spear thrusts of the Wavuma he met with nothing save courtesy and hospitality. In place of naked howling savages he now saw bronze-colored people, clean, neatly clad, with good houses, advanced agriculture, well adapted industry, and considerable knowledge of the arts.
[1] Note:—In Eastern and Central Africa, from the Lakes of the Nile to Hottentotland the native races belong to the Bantu division of the African stock. They are not so dark as, and in many respects differ from, the true negroes of the Western or Atlantic coast. Throughout this entire Bantu division the prefix “U” means a country. Thus U-ganda is the country of Ganda. So “Wa,” or in some places “Ba,” “Ma” or “Ama,” means people. Thus Wa-ganda means the people of Uganda. So would Ba-ganda, Ma-ganda, or Ama-ganda. “Ki” means the language. Ki-ganda is the language of the Uganda. “Mena” means the prince of a tribe. By recollecting these, the reader will be much assisted.
The village chief approached attired in a white shirt, and a fine cloak of bark-cloth having over it a monkey skin fur. On his head was a handsome cap, on his feet sandals. His attendants were clothed in the same style, though less costly. He smilingly bade the strangers welcome, spread before them a feast of dressed kid, ripe bananas, clotted milk, sweet potatoes and eggs, with apologies for having been caught unprepared for his guests.
Stanley looked on in wonder. It was a land of sunshine and plenty—a green and flowery Paradise set between the brilliant sky and the pure azure of the lake. Care and want seem never to have intruded here. There was food and to spare growing wild in the woods or in the cultivated patches around the snug homesteads. Every roomy, dome-shaped hut had its thatched portico where the inhabitants chatted and smoked. Surrounding them were court-yards, with buildings which served as barns, kitchens and wash-houses, all enclosed in trimly kept hedges. Outside was the peasants’ garden where crops of potatoes, yams, pease, kidney-beans and other vegetables grew of a size that would make a Florida gardner envious. Bordering the gardens were patches of tobacco, coffee, sugar-cane, and castor oil plant, all for family use. Still further beyond were fields of maize and other grains, and plantations of banana, plantain, and fig. Large commons afforded pasturage for flocks of goats and small, white, harmless cattle.
The land is of inexhaustible fertility. The sunshine is unfailing; drought in this moist climate is unknown; and the air is cooled and purified by the breezes from the lake and from the mountains. Within his own inclosure the peasant has enough and to spare for himself and his household, both of luxuries and necessaries. His maize fields furnish him with the staff of life, and the fermented grain yields the “pombe,” which he regards almost as much a requisite of existence as bread itself. The grinding of flour and the brewing of beer are all performed under his own eye by his family. The fig-tree yields him the bark out of which his clothes are made; but the banana is, perhaps, the most indispensable of the gifts of nature
in these climes. It supplies him, says Stanley, with “bread, potatoes, dessert, wine, beer, medicine, house and fence, bed, cloth, cooking-pot, table-cloth, parcel-wrapper, thread, cord, rope, sponge, bath, shield, sun-hat, and canoe. With it, he is happy, fat, and thriving; without it, a famished, discontented, woe-begone wretch.” The banana grows to perfection in Uganda; groves of it embower every village, and the Waganda in addition to being fat and prosperous have plenty of leisure for the arts of war and peace.
They are unfortunately inclined to war, though they make cloth, tan skins, work in metals, and build houses and canoes. Even literature is not unknown among them. Well might Speke have said of Ripon Falls at the outlet of the Nile, with “a wife and family, a yacht and a gun, a dog and a rod, one might here be supremely happy and never wish to visit the haunts of civilization again.”
Word is sent to the king of the arrival of the strangers. An escort comes inviting them to the court. The new comer quite eclipsed the village chiefs in the gorgeousness of his apparel. A huge plume of cock’s feathers surmounted an elaborately worked head-dress. A crimson robe hung about him with a grace worthy an ancient Roman, while over it was hung a snow-white goat-skin. The progress to the headquarters of the court was conducted with due pomp and circumstance. Every step Stanley’s wonderment and admiration increased; each moment he received new proofs that he had fallen among a people as different from those whom his previous wanderings had made him acquainted with as are white Americans from Choctaws. Emerging from the margin of dense forests and banana and plantain groves on the lake shores, the singular beauty of the land revealed itself to him. Wherever he turned his eyes there was a brilliant play of colors, and a boldness and diversity of outline such as he had never before seen. Broad, straight, and carefully-kept roads led through a rolling, thickly-peopled country clad in perennial green. Now the path would dive down into a hollow, where it was shaded by the graceful fronds of plantains and other tropical trees, where a
stream murmured over the stones, and the air was filled with the fragrance of fruit; and then again it would crest a ridge, from whence a magnificent prospect could be obtained of the sea-like expanse of the lake, with its wooded capes and islands, the dim blue lines of the distant hills, and the fruitful and smiling country lying between, its soft, undulating outline of forest-covered valley and grassy hill sharply broken by gigantic table-topped masses of gray rocks and profound ravines.