RUMANIKA'S ACCESSION. 199 Dagara, that he took some magic powders and charmed away his own life. He was put to lie in state on the same hill as his son was afterwards; but, as an improvement on the maggot story, a young lion came out of the heart of the corpse and kept guard over the hill, and from him. sprang a race of lions whom Dagara used to assemble instead of an army for making war on neighbouring nations. Alluding to his own accession, he moreover said that a new test had been invented in his case besides the ordeal of lifting the drum. The supposed rightful heir had to plant himself on a certain spot, when the land on which he stood would rise up like a telescope drawn out till it reached the skies. If he was entitled to the throne, it would then let him down again without harm; but if otherwise, collapse and dash him to pieces. Of course, as he survived the trial, it was successful. On another occasion a piece of iron was found in the ground, about the shape and size of a carrot. This iron could not be extracted by any one but Rumanika himself, who pulled it up with the greatest ease. His father Dagara had picked up a thunderbolt in a storm, which he kept in the palace during his lifetime, but it vanished after his death as soon as the contention with Rogéro began. It is difficult to suppose, from Rumanika's character, that he was perfectly in earnest in telling these stories. Perhaps he only wished to be even with Speke, who had been telling him about the electric telegraph, steam-navigation, and railways. In many little matters Rumanika showed that he was above the superstitious fancies of his country; but habit was strong upon him, and when Speke asked him what he expected to get by sacrificing bullocks at his father's grave, he said he hoped to produce a good harvest. His mind, however, appeared to be quite open to conviction on these matters, and in a ripe state to receive the 200 VOYAGE ON LITTLE WINDERMERE. elements of Christianity, which Speke endeavoured to recommend by dwelling on his Abyssinian extraction and supposed descent from King Solomon. Amongst other pleasures which Rumanika invented for his guests was a canoe-party on the Little Windermere. He was desirous of combining with this a pilgrimage to his father's tomb on that Moga-Namirinzi hill, which is a spur of an eminence behind the lake overlooking the Ingézi Kagéra river, which separates Karagué from Kishakka, and commanding the small lakes and marshes that feed the Kitangulé river. He was himself to go by land, and his guests in canoes. At the further end of the lake they came to a small strait which led into another lake, drained at its northern end into a vast swampy plain, quite covered with tall rushes, excepting patches of open water and the passages cut by the main streams from the Ingézi and Luchuro valleys. The whole scenery was beautiful. The slopes were all covered with fresh green grass, with small clumps of soft cloudy-looking acacias growing at a few feet above the water, and above them, facing over the hills, fine detached trees, and here and there the gigantic medicinal aloe. On the shore of the second lake they were received by a concourse of officers, and led to Rumanika's frontier palace, where he sat waiting to receive them, clad in a robe made of skins of the curious marsh antelope called nzoé. After a picnic collation he led them over the spur to the Ingézi Kagéra side, where, to their surprise, they found their canoes waiting. These had gone out of the lake at its northern end, then into and up the Kagéra to where they stood, showing the connection of these highland lakes with the rivers which drain the various spurs of the Mountains of the Moon. The stream itself was deep and dark, and as it was only one of the many affluents of the RUMANIKA'S KINDNESS. 201 Kitangulé, Speke saw that the latter river must be a very powerful tributary to the Victoria Nyanza. When Speke was thinking about departure, Rumanika said that he wished to make him a large present of ivories in return for the honour of his visit, since, though his father Dagara had often entertained Arabs, he was the first king who had entertained a white man. This offer was gratefully declined; but Speke said he should be much obliged if Rumanika would enable him to recruit his exhausted treasury by selling ivories to the Arabs at Kufro, and getting beads, &c., in exchange, for which he would give him orders on Zanzibar. The exorbitant demands of the Arabs made him anxious to avoid direct dealings with them. Rumanika's unselfish kindness extorted many presents from Speke which he did not intend to have given at first, including a revolving rifle which he had meant for Mtésa; but the king gave him to understand that what would please him most, if other Europeans came, were gold and silver embroideries, and American clocks with the face in a man's stomach, whose eyes rolled with the pendulum, &c.-in fact, any curious toys. When Christmas came, their thoughtful host sent the British officers an ox, having heard that in England this great religious festival is chiefly celebrated by a great sacrifice of beef. He did all in his power to prevent their feeling home-sick, though by this time they were getting anxious about the possibility of returning by the north. The New Year, 1862, however, brought good news. An officer of Rumanika's, who had been sent four years before on a mission to Kamrasi, came back in the train of a trading party, with a vaunting message from the king of Unyoro, that he had foreign visitors as well as Rumanika. They were not actually with him, but in his dependency, the country of Gani, coming up the Nile in vessels. The |