from their joints, and a great queen—a very
great queen—thinks it much to stand upon all
fours like a hog; to rise and stand on her two
hind legs only, is more than with two people to
help her she can always accomplish without
fainting. One princess measured within an
inch of two feet round the arm, and four feet
four inches round the chest; height about five
feet eight. King Rumanika put his hospitality
and goodwill into the best form, by assisting the
desire of the travellers to learn the geography of
his land, and the relation of the adjacent rivers
and lakes to the Mountains of the Moon.

Some parallels to such old pictures as one
finds in the Romance of Alexander, are to be
met with at Karague. We think of the spear
that none but the destined conqueror could
draw from the earth, when Rumanika tells how
one of his peasants found in the earth an iron
like a carrot, but dig as he might and pull as
he might, with others to help him, it would not
be drawn out of the ground, and yet when
Rumanika went he lifted it without the smallest
exertion. When Rumanika's father, the great
King Dagara, died, there was placed before his
three sons a small light drum loaded with charms.
Rumanika lifted it with his little finger; although
neither of his brothers could, with their whole
force, lift it from the ground. To this fable
Rumanika himself was a witness. He also told how
the body of the deceased King Dagara was sewn
in a cowskin and set afloat in a boat upon the
lake until it decomposed, and then three maggots
were taken from it and given in charge to the
heir elect. One maggot turned into a lion, one
into a leopard, and the other into a stick. Then
the royal body was shut up in a hut with five
living maidens and fifty cows, and the doorway
was made fast for ever.

Dagara's father, Rumanika's grandfather,
lived so long that it was supposed he would
never die, and at last he secured death for
himself by the use of charms. A young lion came out
of the heart of his corpse and gave birth to other
lions, who have been the defence of the land
of Karague. When countries to the north
threatened Dagara, he gathered together these
lions, who were all obedient to his will, and
swept the enemy away. Rumanika claimed
also to have been, on his accession, to that part
of the country where, if a prince sit down, the
earth rises with him, telescope fashion, till it
has hoisted him to the skies, whence, if he be
found a proper person to inherit Karague, he is
gently lowered again: if not, he is dropped and
smashed.

Dagara, his son told Speke, had wished to
know what the centre of the earth was made of:
so he dug into the ground behind his palace, a
deep ditch that led from the palace to the cavern,
but there he gave up the job of digging, and
spent many days in his cavern without eating
and drinking, turning himself sometimes into a
young man, sometimes into an old one. One of
Rumanika's scientific questions was whether
the moon made different faces to laugh at us
upon earth.

Leaving with Rumanika, his friend Captain
Grant, who was then too ill to travel, Captain
Speke passed on into Uganda, said to be named
after a poor sportsman who, eight generations
ago, came into that country with a pack of
dogs, a woman, a spear, and a shield, and killed
so much meat that he fed the people: who invited
him to be their king, for they said, " Of
what use is our present king, who lives so far
away that when we sent him the offering of a cow,
the cow gave birth to a calf on the journey, and
the calf becoming a cow became the mother,
grandmother, and great-grandmother of cows,
and the offering has not yet reached the king's
court!" So they made Uganda king, and gave
his name to the country, and called him by the
new name of Kimera. Kimera stood on a stone,
with a spear in his hand and a woman and a dog
sitting by his side, and his footprints and the
mark left by his spear-end, and the mark of the
seats of the woman and the dog, are yet to be
seen upon that stone. The great king of Unyoro
who was so far away, when he heard how a king
had been made in that corner of his dominions,
only said in his magnificence, " The poor creature
must be starving. Let him feed there, if
he likes."

Spears, shields, and dogs, are the Uganda
cognizance. These all must keep. The king
always appears in company with two spears, dog,
shield, and woman. He keeps strict court,
where untidiness of dress is sometimes punished
by decapitation. Whatever the king does, he
must be thanked for with grovelling, wriggling,
and whining. Court ceremonies are so numerous
that they take up the greater part of every
audience, the king having a sharp eye for every
sort of short-coming, when he condemns the
blunderer to lose his head, and takes in his
property the price of his head, if he can pay it, to
keep the royal exchequer in good order. If
not, all near the untidy man rise in an instant,
drums beat to drown his cries, a dozen bind
him with cords, and he is dragged off to instant
execution. The offence may be a tie made contrary
to court regulations, or an inch of leg
accidentally exposed while squatting. And yet
his majesty is waited on by naked women. As
for his wives, every slight offence or oversight
in their court manners is punishable by death.
Captain Speke reports, after a long residence at
the court of Uganda, that " nearly every day I
have seen one, two, or three of the wretched
palace women led away to execution, tied by
the hand and dragged along by one of the
bodyguard, crying out ' Oh, my lord!' ' My king!'
'My mother!' at the top of her voice in the
utmost despair." When the king of this
delightful court heard that the white men were
coming, he "caused fifty big men and four
hundred small ones to be executed, because he said
his subjects were so bumptious they would not
allow any visitors to come near him, else he
would have had white men before." The court
of this equatorial king, whose country, lying
under the equator, rounds the northern border
of the great lake Victoria N'yanza, covers a