In this territory there are small villages only at every fifth mile, for there is no road, and the lands run high again, whilst, from want of a guide, we often lost the track.

It now transpired that Budja, when he told at the palace that there was no road down the banks of the Nile, did so in consequence of his fear that if he sent my whole party here they would rob these church lands, and so bring him into a scrape with the wizards or ecclesiastical authorities.

Had my party not been under control, we could not have put up here; but on my being answerable that no thefts should take place, the people kindly consented to provide us with board and lodgings, and we found them very obliging.

One elderly man, half-witted--they said the king had driven his senses from him by seizing his house and family--came at once on hearing of our arrival, laughing and singing in a loose jaunty maniacal manner, carrying odd sticks, shells, and a bundle of mbugu rags, which he deposited before me, dancing and singing again, then retreating and bringing some more, with a few plantains from a garden, when I was to eat, as kings lived upon flesh, and "poor Tom" wanted some, for he lived with lions and elephants in a hovel beyond the gardens, and his belly was empty.

He was precisely a black specimen of the English parish idiot.
At last, with a good push for it, crossing hills and threading huge grasses, as well as extensive village plantations lately devastated by elephants--they had eaten all that was eatable, and what would not serve for food they had destroyed with their trunks, not one plantain or one hut being left entire--we arrived at the extreme end of the journey, the farthest point ever visited by the expedition on the same parallel of latitude as king Mtesa's palace, and just forty miles east of it.
We were well rewarded; for the "stones," as the Waganda call the falls, was by far the most interesting sight I had seen in Africa.