This officer gave me a cow and some plantains, and I in return gave him a wire and some beads.
Many mendicant women, called by some Wichwezi, by others Mabandwa, all wearing the most fantastic dresses of mbugu, covered with beads, shells, and sticks, danced before us, singing a comic song, the chorus of which was a long shrill rolling Coo-roo-coo-roo, coo-roo-coo-roo, delivered as they came to a standstill.

Their true functions were just as obscure as the religion of the negroes generally; some called them devil-drivers, other evil-eye averters; but, whatever it was for, they imposed a tax on the people, whose minds being governed by a necessity for making some self-sacrifice to propitiate something, they could not tell what, for their welfare in the world, they always gave them a trifle in the same way as the East Indians do their fakirs.
After crossing another low swampy flat, we reached a much larger group, or rather ramification, of hill-spurs pointing to the N'yanza, called Kisuere, and commanded by M'yombo, Rumanika's frontier officer.
Immediately behind this, to the northward, commenced the kingdom of Unyoro; and here it was, they said, Baraka would branch off my line on his way to Kamrasi.

Maula's home was one march distant from this, so the scoundrel now left me to enjoy himself there, giving as his pretext for doing so, that Mtesa required him, as soon as I arrived here, to send on a messenger that order might be taken for my proper protection on the line of march; for the Waganda were a turbulent set of people, who could only be kept in order by the executioner; and doubtless many, as was customary on such occasions, would be beheaded, as soon as Mtesa heard of my coming, to put the rest in a fright.

I knew this was all humbug, of course, and I told him so; but it was of no use, and I was compelled to halt.
On the 23d another officer, named Maribu, came to me and said, Mtesa, having heard that Grant was left sick behind at Karague, had given him orders to go there and fetch him, whether sick or well, for Mtesa was most anxious to see white men.

Hearing this I at once wrote to Grant, begging him to come on if he could do so, and to bring with him all the best of my property, or as much as he could of it, as I now saw there was more cunning humbug than honesty in what Rumanika had told me about the impossibility of our going north from Uganda, as well as in his saying sick men could not go into Uganda, and donkeys without trousers would not be admitted there, because they were considered indecent.
If he was not well enough to move, I advised him to wait there until I reached Mtesa's, when I would either go up the lake and Kitangule to fetch him away, or would make the king send boats for him, which I more expressly wished, as it would tend to give us a much better knowledge of the lake.
Maula now came again, after receiving repeated and angry messages, and I forced him to make a move.