BANTU NEGROES 685 



relates how Mutesa, in the earlier years of his reign, when excited by 

 banana wine and irritable from one cause and another, would slake his 

 wrath by rushing in amongst his women and slashing them right and 

 left with a spear. Speke gives numerous instances of Mutesa' s leopard- 

 like ferocity, though, like his vile son, Mwanga, he was a physical coward. 

 Speke describes on one occasion how, when Mutesa and his wives were on 

 a picnic with him, and one of the most beautiful among them in the 

 gaiety of her heart offered her royal husband a nice ripe fruit which she 

 had plucked, he turned on her savagely for her familiarity, and commenced 

 beating her to death with a club. Speke, at the risk of his own life, 

 intervened and saved the woman ; but his narrative abounds with similar 

 instances of reckless cruelty on the part of the Uganda despot. The Negro 

 worships force, and has a sneaking admiration for bloodshed. The kings 

 of Uganda came to be regarded at last as almost god-like, and the attitude 

 of their courtiers towards them was slavish to the last degree. Mwanga 

 might have been a Stuart for his debaucheries, his cruelties, and utter 

 faithlessness to those to whom he had passed his word. Perhaps he might 

 still have been king had not his vicious propensities taken a turn which 

 disgusted even his negro people, and made them fear that his precept and 

 example spreading widely among his imitative subjects might result in the 

 disappearance in time of the Uganda race. 



The cruelty of despots always seems to engender politeness. The 

 freest nations are generally the rudest in manners. An Indian official 

 once remarked to the present writer that the excessive, deep-seated, 

 elaborate politeness of the natives of India was due to the 2,000 years' 

 " whacking " they had received from dynasty after dynasty of cruel 

 despots. So it has been in Uganda. The chiefs and people became 

 fastidiously prudish on the subject of clothing, and regarded a nude man 

 as an object of horror. They preferred in their language not to call a 

 spade a spade, but to substitute for any plain noun dealing with sex or 

 sexual intercourse the politest and vaguest of paraphrases. Yet the nation 

 was profoundly immoral, and the dances in vogue even at the present day 

 can be exceedingly indecent. But the race became, and remains, the 

 politest in Africa. The earlier travellers in Uganda have often dilated on 

 the elaborateness of Uganda greetings and the exaggeration of their 

 thanks. If a chief or a notable European gives a present, large or small, 

 to a Muganda, or confers on him the least of benefits, the latter will at 

 once kneel down, press his hands together, and wave the clasped hands up 

 and down, gasping out a rapid repetition of '• Neyanzi-ge " ("I praise or 

 thank very much") ; or, if they are speaking for a number, " Tweyanzi-ge " 

 (•'We praise or thank exceedingly"'). This exaggerated spirit of thankfulness 

 sometimes displays itself rather charmingly. The people are full of keen 



