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SYSTEM OF CULTIVATION.

diversified by plantain gardens. At another time, walnut-sized nodules of iron covered with rusty dust might be picked up, which the natives know how to convert into glistening spear-heads. Then the lofty escarpments, raised into their position by some great convulsion of nature, are well worthy of notice, as well as the volcanic mounds in Kishakka, as seen from the space above Vihembé, some bare and red, and strewn with white quartz; others covered with pale-green grass to the summit, and dotted with trees sweeping down to and shading the valleys below. Their forms were saddle-shaped, horseshoes, and frustums of cones; many were crowned with rock, and nearly all had stratified splinters bursting from their sides.

The eastern slopes below the escarpments, where the debris lay, were better cultivated than the western rocky parts. The fields were hoed up by the 8th of October for the expected rain, the weeds being collected in a heap and burnt. The plantain trees stood at intervals of six feet, yielding food and wine in due season. The decayed leaves and stems were allowed to remain to preserve the roots and soil from the heat, and afford nourishment to the "maharageh" beans, which thrive in the shade. The other crops seen ripening in November were Indian-corn and manioc. The sweet potato was ripe and abundant, but sorghum was scarce and dear; and tobacco, fowls, goats, and cows were dearer than in Unyamuézi. The cattle were here the largehorned heavy variety of Karagué, without humps, hornless like the Teeswater breed, but, unlike them, bony and gaunt from bad grazing. They are allowed to remain in the field all night, without fence, round the smouldering fires.

In the southern forests of Uzinza much the same sort of game were seen as in the countries noticed before,

THE

KING OF BIRDS."

175

but the greatest number and variety of animals he had seen in Africa were noticed by Grant in the valley of Urigi, between Uzinza and Karagué. This valley is covered with four-feet-high grasses, is from three to four miles broad, and probably twenty miles long, having evidently once formed a part of the Nyanza. In one place they counted fourteen rhinoceros at once. No elephants, however, were seen, as the country was too open, and hyenas were rarely heard. The quills of porcupines were picked up in the woods. Serpents were rarely if ever seen. Beeswax was never met with, though hives of logs were seen. Amongst the commoner game-birds, which were the same as those which occurred before, Grant noticed a new kind of partridge. It had a curious way of running with the body thrown back, and a strange cry like the note of the Himalayan cheer-pheasant. It had orange-red on its throat and round the eyes. One specimen was double-spurred, and weighed 11⁄2 lb. Many pretty varieties of birds were observed during the detention in Usui. Three species of swallows were noticed; also small birds resembling black robins, water-wagtails, creepers, &c., and a peculiar bird with plain brown plumage and long tail was shot among the rushes. This unpretentious fellow was considered by the Seedis the king of birds, and called Mlinda, and he was said to move with a train of little birds, whose duty it is to tear to pieces every feather that drops from his wing, to prevent it being put upon an arrow. The skin of this Mlinda is as thick as that of a mouse, the feathers might be called hairy, the bill is stronger than a linnet's, and the feet are soft and red.

Among the people of this country, often called Wanyambo, whose general characteristics and costume resembled the Wezees, except that they were more active and had

more air about them, there were a curious class called the Walinga, who worked in iron, and dressed like the Watusi. Their furnaces were in the heart of the forest, the spots being usually marked by charcoal and clinkers. To reduce the metal, four lads, squatting under a grass roof each with a double-handed bellows, blew away at a mass of live charcoal with nodules of metal mixed with it, the melted matter running into a recess.

Having met with a surprisingly courteous reception at the entrance of one "bomah" in an out-of-the-way place, Grant followed into it the two men who had welcomed him, and found a most lady-like and beautiful Watusi woman sitting under a tree. She received him with gentle dignity, and invited him to partake of her hospitality. She wore the usual Watusi costume of a reversed cowskin, teased into a frieze with a needle, coloured brown, and wrapped round the body from the chest to the ankles. Lappels, showing zebra-like stripes of colours, formed a "turnover" round the waist; and, excepting that one arm was ornamented with a highly polished coil of thick brass wire, and the right wrist with two equally bright and massive rings, and the neck with a pendant of brass wire, the upper part of her person was bare. Her peculiarly formed head and graceful long neck, her fine eyes, mouth, and nose, her little hands and feet, were all faultless-the only exception being her large ears, here, however, considered a beauty. With arms and elbows rounded like an egg, sloping shoulders, and the small breasts of the crouching Venus, she was perfectly beautiful, though darker than a brunette. Her hut was formed of grass, flat-roofed, and too low to stand up in; three stones formed the fireplace; milk-vessels of wood, bright from scouring, were ranged on one side of the dwelling. A goodlooking woman sat churning butter in a gourd. Butter

milk and butter on a clean leaf were offered to the guest, who went away highly gratified with his visit to the Watusi queen, who seemed to have communicated her grace and gentleness more or less to all the women of the district.

The language of the country, as spoken by the Watusi, the dominant race, was quite unintelligible to the men of the expedition, but they picked up words and phrases, and pronounced it less difficult than the dialect of Unyamuézi. Notwithstanding Grant's trouble at Myonga's, he was enabled to observe a kind of dance. which seemed peculiar to the country. A circle being formed, singing and clapping of hands commenced, and either a woman came out and made her best curtsy to a favourite in the crowd, retiring skilfully backwards to her place, or a "cavalier seul” bounded to the centre, threw himself into attitudes, performed some gymnastic feat, bowed to the belle, and then made way for the next performer.

After Grant had joined Speke at Bogué, on the 7th of September 1861, a letter was received by him from Colonel Rigby at Zanzibar, dated 31st October 1860, advising the despatch of a number of delicacies, with a packet of letters. They were much disappointed that these never came to hand, and consequently for twentyseven months they had no news from the civilised world, till, in February 1863, they arrived at Gondokoro on the Nile.

M

CHAPTER III.

KARAGUÉ.

SCENERY ON THE WAY TO KARAGUE-BEAUTIFUL SITE OF RUMANIKA'S PALACE THE LITTLE WINDERMERE LAKE-HOSPITABLE RECEPTION -RUMANIKA AND HIS BROTHER NNANAJI-HIS FAT WIVES, HIS SONS, AND COURT-THE WANYAMBO-THE ROYAL MUSICIANS - SPORTING ADVENTURES- SPEKE'S CONVERSATIONS WITH RUMANIKA- HE IS SENT FOR BY THE KING OF UGANDA GRANT DETAINED BY ILLNESS-GENERAL REMARKS ON THE COUNTRY AND ITS PRODUCTIONS -GRANT'S DEPARTURE.

THE accounts of Karagué and Uganda read so like stories of strange kingdoms in the Arabian Nights or Gulliver's Travels, that they would appear scarcely credible did we not receive them on the unimpeachable testimony of two such eyewitnesses as Captains Speke and Grant. What a wide field these countries appear to open for commercial and missionary enterprise, if they could be only reached with any degree of comfort! But unfortunately they appear, as far as we can see as yet, to be surrounded by a cordon of the most implacable savages, who fancy rightly that the slave-trade would disappear before the influx of legitimate traffic, and are difficult to convince that such a loss would be a gain to them in the end, even in a material point of view. Of their respective kings, Rumanika and Mtésa, the former appears, for a savage, so perfect a character, that he seems to realise the definition of "all the