I had no opportunity of incurring this responsibility; for while professing to prepare for the operation, the king went off it a fling.
When I got home I found Sangoro, whom we thought lost or murdered, quietly ensconced in camp.

He had been foraging by himself a long way from camp, in a neighbourhood where many of the king's women are kept; and it being forbidden ground, he was taken up by the keepers, placed in the stocks, and fed, until to-day, when he extricated his legs by means of his sword, and ran away.

My ever-grumbling men mobbed me again, clamouring for food, saying, as they eyed my goats, I lived at ease and overlooked their wants.

In vain I told them they had fared more abundantly than I had since we entered Uganda; whilst I spared my goats to have a little flesh of their cows as rapidly as possible, selling the skins for pombe, which I seldom tasted; they robbed me as long as I had cloth or beads, and now they had all become as fat as hogs by lifting food off the Waganda lands.

As I could not quiet them, I directed that, early next morning, Maula should go to the king and Nasib to the queen, while I proposed going to Kamraviona's to work them all three about this affair of food.
23d .-- According to the plan of last night, I called early on the Kamraviona.