Arrived
Near The End Of The Moga-Namirinzi Hill In The Second Lake, The
Paddlers Splashed Into Shore, Where A Large Concourse Of People,
Headed By Nnanaji, Were Drawn Up To Receive Me.
I landed with
all the dignity of a prince, when the royal band struck up a
march, and we all moved on to Rumanika's frontier palace, talking
away in a very complimentary manner, not unlike the very polite
and flowery fashion of educated Orientals.
Rumanika we found sitting dressed in a wrapper made of an nzoe
antelope's skin, smiling blandly as we approached him. In the
warmest manner possible he pressed me to sit by his side, asked
how I had enjoyed myself, what I thought of his country, and if I
did not feel hungry; when a pic-nic dinner was spread, and we all
set to at cooked plantains and pombe, ending with a pipe of his
best tobacco. Bit by bit Rumanika became more interested in
geography, and seemed highly ambitious of gaining a world-wide
reputation through the medium of my pen. At his invitation we
now crossed over the spur to the Ingezi Kagera side, when, to
surprise me, the canoes I had come up the lake in appeared before
us. They had gone out of the lake at its northern end, paddled
into, and then up the Kagera to where we stood, showing, by
actual navigation, the connection of these highland lakes with
the rivers which drain the various spurs of the Mountains of the
Moon. The Kagera was deep and dark, of itself a very fine
stream, and, considering it was only one - and that, too, a minor
one - of the various affluents which drain the mountain valleys
into the Victoria N'yanza through the medium of the Kitangule
river, I saw at once there must be water sufficient to make the
Kitangule a very powerful tributary to the lake.
On leaving this interesting place, with the widespread
information of all the surrounding countries I had gained, my
mind was so impressed with the topographical features of all this
part of Africa, that in my heart I resolved I would make Rumanika
as happy as he had made me, and asked K'yengo his doctor, of all
things I possessed what the king would like best. To my surprise
I then learnt that Rumanika had set his heart on the revolving
rifle I had brought for Mtesa - the one, in fact, which he had
prevented my sending on to Uganda in the hands of Kachuchu, and
he would have begged me for it before had his high-minded
dignity, and the principle he had established of never begging
for anything, not interfered. I then said he should certainly
have it; for as strongly as I had withheld from giving anything
to those begging scoundrels who wished to rob me of all I
possessed in the lower countries, so strongly now did I feel
inclined to be generous with this exceptional man Rumanika.
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