366 UGANDA [ch. xiii 



purple, yellow, blue, and fiery crimson. Kampalla is 

 the native town, where the little King of Uganda, a 

 boy, lives, and his chiefs of State, and where the native 

 council meets ; and it is the headquarters of the missions, 

 both Church of England and Roman Catholic. 



Kampalla is an interesting place ; and so is all 

 Uganda. The first explorers who penetrated thither, 

 half a century ago, found in this heathen State, of 

 almost pure negroes, a veritable semi-civilization, or 

 advanced barbarism, comparable to that of the little 

 Arab-negro or Berber-negro sultanates strung along the 

 southern edge of the Sahara, and contrasting sharply 

 with the weltering savagery wliich surrounded it, and 

 which stretched away without a break for many hundreds 

 of miles in every direction. The people were industrious 

 tillers of the soil, who owned sheep, goats, and some 

 cattle ; they wore decent clothing, and hence were 

 styled *' womanish " by the savages of the Uppei Nile 

 region, who prided themselves on the nakedness of their 

 men as a proof of manliness ; they were unusually 

 intelligent and ceremoniously courteous ; and, most 

 singular of all, although the monarch was a cruel despot, 

 of the usual African (whether Mohammedan or heathen) 

 type, there were certain excellent governmental customs, 

 of binding observance, which in the aggregate might 

 almost be called an unwritten constitution. Alone 

 among the natives of tropical Africa the people of 

 Uganda have proved very accessible to Christian teach- 

 ing, so that the creed of Christianity is now dominant 

 among them. For their good fortune, England has 

 established a protectorate over them. JMost wisely the 

 English Government officials, and as a rule the mis- 

 sionaries, have bent their energies to developing them 

 along their own lines, in government, dress, and ways 



