.

Karague.
Relief from Protectors and Pillagers--The Scenery and Geology--Meeting with the Friendly King Rumanika--His Hospitalities and Attention--His Services to the Expedition--Philosophical and Theological Inquiries--The Royal Family of Karague--The M-Fumbiro Mountain--Navigation of "The Little Windermere"-- The New-Moon Levee--Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus Hunting--Measurement of a Fattened Queen--Political Polygamy--Christmas--Rumours of Petherick's Expedition--Arrangements to meet it--March to Uganda.
This was a day of relief and happiness.

A load was removed from us in seeing the Wasui "protectors" depart, with the truly cheering information that we now had nothing but wild animals to contend with before reaching Karague.

This land is "neutral," by which is meant that it is untenanted by human beings; and we might now hope to bid adieu for a time to the scourging system of taxation to which we had been subjected.
Gradually descending from the spur which separates the Lohugati valley from the bed of the Lueru lo Urigi, or Lake of Urigi, the track led us first through a meadow of much pleasing beauty, and then through a passage between the "saddle-back" domes we had seen from the heights above Lohugati, where a new geological formation especially attracted my notice.

From the green slopes of the hills, set up at a slant, as if the central line of pressure on the dome top had weighed on the inside plates, protruded soft slabs of argillaceous sandstone, whose laminae presented a beef-sandwich appearance, puce or purple alternating with creamy-white.