The men, however, were positive, and advised my going to king Mtesa's--a ridiculous proposition, at once rejected; for I had yet to receive Kamrasi's answer to our Queen, about opening a trade with England.

I must ascertain why he despised Englishmen without speaking with them, and I could not believe Kamrasi would prove less avaricious than either Rumanika or Mtesa, especially as Rumanika had made himself responsible for our actions.

We slept that night near Kari, the Waganda eating two goats which had been drowned in the Luajerri; and the messenger-page, having been a third time to the palace and back again, called to ask after our welfare, on behalf of his king, and remind us about the gun and brandy promised.
17th and 18th .-- The two following days were spent wandering about without guides, trying to keep the track Grant had taken after leaving us, crossing at first a line of small hills, then traversing grass and jungle, like the dak of India.

Plantain-gardens were frequently met, and the people seemed very hospitably inclined, though they complained sadly of the pages rudely rushing into every hut, seizing everything they could lay their hands on, and even eating the food which they had just prepared for their own dinners, saying, in a mournful manner, "If it were not out of respect for you we should fight those little rascals, for it is not the king's guest nor his men who do us injury, but the king's own servants, without leave or licence." I observed that special bomas or fences were erected to protect these villages against the incursions of lions.

Buffaloes were about, but the villagers cautioned us not to shoot them, holding them as sacred animals; and, to judge from the appearance of the country, wild animals should abound, were it not for the fact that every Mganda seems by instinct to be a sportsman.
At last, after numerous and various reports about Grant, we heard his drums last night, but we arrived this morning just in time to be too late.