30th. - To Fulfil My Engagement With The Queen, I Walked Off To
Her Palace With Stomach Medicine, Thinking We Were
Now such warm
friends, all pride and distant ceremonies would be dispensed
with; but, on the contrary, I was kept
Waiting for hours till I
sent in word to say, if she did not want medicine, I wished to go
home, for I was tired of Uganda and everything belonging to it.
This message brought her to her gate, where she stood laughing
till the Wahuma girls she had promised me, one of twelve and the
other a little older, were brought in and made to squat in front
of us. The elder, who was in the prime of youth and beauty, very
large of limb, dark in colour, cried considerably; whilst the
younger one, though very fair, had a snubby nose and everted
lips, and laughed as if she thought the change in her destiny
very good fun. I had now to make my selection, and took the
smaller one, promising her to Bombay as soon as we arrived on the
coast, where, he said, she would be considered a Hubshi or
Abyssinian. But when the queen saw what I had done, she gave me
the other as well, saying the little one was too young to go
alone, and, if separated, she would take fright and run away.
Then with a gracious bow I walked of with my two fine specimens
of natural history, though I would rather have had princes, that
I might have taken them home to be instructed in England; but the
queen, as soon as we had cleared the palace, sent word to say she
must have another parting look at her son with his wives.
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