As it was, I feared my followers might take fright and refuse to advance with me.

I thought it good policy to talk of there being many roads leading through Africa, so that Rumanika might see he had not got, as he thought, the sole key to the interior.

I told him again of certain views I once held of coming to see him from the north up the Nile, and from the east through the Masai.

He observed that, "To open either of those routes, you would require at least two hundred guns." He would, however, do something when we returned from Uganda; for as Mtesa followed his advice in everything, so did Kamrasi, for both held the highest opinion of him.
The conversation then turning on London, and the way men and carriages moved up the streets like strings of ants on their migrations, Rumanika said the villages in Ruanda were of enormous extent, and the people great sportsmen, for they turned out in multitudes, with small dogs on whose necks were tied bells, and blowing horns themselves, to hunt leopards.

They were, however, highly superstitious, and would not allow any strangers to enter their country; for some years ago, when Arabs went there, a great drought and famine set in, which they attributed to evil influences brought by them, and, turning them out of their country, said they would never admit any of their like amongst them again.