After This He Called Me Aside, And
Said, "Now, Bana, I Wish You Would Instruct Me, As You Have Often
Proposed doing, for I wish to learn everything, though I have
little opportunity for doing so." Not knowing what was
Uppermost
in his mind, I begged him to put whatever questions he liked, and
he should be answered seriatim - hoping to find him inquisitive
on foreign matters; but nothing was more foreign to his mind:
none of his countrymen ever seemed to think beyond the sphere of
Uganda.
The whole conversation turned on medicines, or the cause and
effects of diseases. Cholera, for instance, very much affected
the land at certain seasons, creating much mortality, and
vanishing again as mysteriously as it came. What brought this
scourge? and what would cure it? Supposing a man had a headache,
what should he take for it? or a leg ache, or a stomach-ache, or
itch; in fact, going the rounds of every disease he knew, until,
exhausting the ordinary complaints, he went into particulars in
which he was personally much interested; but I was unfortunately
unable to prescribe medicines which produce the physical
phenomenon next to his heart.
17th. - I called upon the king by appointment, and found a large
court, where the Wakungu caught yesterday, and sentenced to
execution, received their reprieve on paying fines of cattle and
young damsels - their daughters. A variety of charms, amongst
which were some bits of stick strung on leather and covered with
serpent-skin, were presented and approved of.
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