20th.—The king sent for us at noon; but when we reached the palace we found he had started on a shooting tour; so, to make the best of our time, we called again upon the queen for the same purpose as yesterday, as also to get my books of birds and animals, which, taken merely to look at for a day or so, had been kept for months. After hours of waiting, her majesty appeared standing in an open gateway; beckoned us to advance, and offered pombe; then, as two or three drops of rain fell, she said she could not stand the violence of the weather, and forthwith retired without one word being obtained. An officer, however, venturing in for the books, at length I got them.
21st.—To-day I went to the palace, but found no one; the king was out shooting again.
22d.—We resolved to-day to try on a new political influence at the court. Grant had taken to the court of Karague a jumping-jack, to amuse the young princes; but it had a higher destiny, for it so fascinated the king Rumanika himself that he would not part with it—unless, indeed, Grant would make him a big one out of a tree which was handed to him for the purpose. We resolved to try the influence of such a toy on king Mtesa, and brought with us, in addition, a mask and some pictures. But although the king took a visiting card, the gate was never opened to us. Finding this, and the day closing, we deposited the mask and pictures on a throne, and walked away. We found that we had thus committed a serious breach of state etiquette; for the guard, as soon as they saw what we had done, seized the Wanguana for our offences in defiling the royal seat, and would have bound them, had they not offered to return the articles to us.
23d.—Early in the morning, hearing the royal procession marching off on a shooting excursion, we sent Bombay running after it with the mask and pictures, to aquaint the king with our desire to see him, and explain that we had been four days successively foiled in attempts to find him in his palace, our object being an eager wish to come to some speedy understanding about the appointed journeys to the Salt Lake and Karague. The toys produced the desired effect; for the king stopped and played with them, making Bombay and the pages don the masks by turns. He appointed the morrow for an interview, at the same time excusing himself for not having seen us yesterday on the plea of illness. In the evening Kahala absconded with another little girl of the camp in an opposite direction from the one she took last time; but as both of them wandered about not knowing where to go to, and as they omitted to take off all their finery, they were soon recognised as in some way connected with my party, taken up, and brought into camp, where they were well laughed at for their folly, and laughed in turn at the absurdity of their futile venture.
24th.—Hoping to keep the king to his promise, I went to the palace early, but found he had already gone to see his brothers, so followed him down, and found him engaged playing on a harmonicon with them. Surprised at my intrusion, he first asked how I managed to find him out; then went on playing for a while; but suddenly stopping to talk with me, he gave me an opportunity of telling him I wished to send Grant off to Karague, and start myself for Usoga and the Salt Lake in the morning. "What! going away?" said the king, as if he had never heard a word about it before; and then, after talking the whole subject over again, especially dwelling on the quantity of powder I had in store at Karague, he promised to send the necessary officers for escorting us on our respective journeys in the morning.
The brothers' wives then wished to see me, and came before us, when I had to take off my hat and shoes as usual, my ready compliance inducing the princes to pass various compliments of my person and disposition. The brothers then showed me a stool made of wood after the fashion of our sketching-stool, and a gun-cover of leather, made by themselves, of as good workmanship as is to be found in India. The king then rose, followed by his brothers, and we all walked off to the pond. The effect of stimulants was mooted, as well as other physiological phenomena, when a second move took us to the palace by torchlight, and the king showed a number of new huts just finished and beautifully made. Finally, he settled down to a musical concert, in which he took the lead himself. At eight o'clock, being tired and hungry, I reminded the king of his promises, and he appointed the morning to call on him for the Wakungu, and took leave.
25th.—Makinga, hearing of the intended march through Usoga, was pleased to say he would like to join my camp and spend his time in buying slaves and ivory there. I went to the palace for the promised escort, but was no sooner announced by the pages than the king walked off into the interior of his harem, and left me no alternative but to try my luck with the Kamraviona, who, equally proud with his master, would not answer my call,—and so another day was lost.
26th.—This morning we had the assuring intelligence from Kaddu that he had received orders to hold himself in readiness for a voyage to Karague in twenty boats with Grant, but the date of departure was not fixed. The passage was expected to be rough, as the water off the mouth of the Kitangule Kagera (river) always runs high, so that no boats can go there except at night, when the winds of day subside, and are replaced by the calms of night. I called at the palace, but saw nothing of the king, though the court was full of officials; and there were no less than 150 women, besides girls, goats, and various other things, seizures from refractory state officers, who, it was said, had been too proud to present themselves at court for a period exceeding propriety.
All these creatures, I was assured, would afterwards be given away as return-presents for the hongos or presents received from the king's visitors. No wonder the tribes of Africa are mixed breeds. Amongst the officers in waiting was my friend Budja, the ambassador that had been sent to Unyoro with Kidgwiga, Kamrasi's deputy. He had returned three days before, but had not yet seen the king. As might have been expected, he said he had been anything but welcomed in Unyoro. Kamrasi, after keeping him half-starved and in suspense eight days, sent a message—for he would not see him—that he did not desire any communication with blackguard Waganda thieves, and therefore advised him, if he valued his life, to return by the road by which he came as speedily as possible. Turning to Congow, I playfully told him that, as the road through Unyoro was closed, he would have to go with me through Usoga and Kidi; but the gallant colonel merely shuddered, and said that would be a terrible undertaking.
27th.—The king would not show, for some reason or other, and we still feared to fire guns lest he should think our store of powder inexhaustible, and so keep us here until he had extorted the last of it. I found that the Waganda have the same absurd notion here as the Wanyambo have in Karague, of Kamrasi's supernatural power in being able to divide the waters of the Nile in the same manner as Moses did the Red Sea.