214 HISTOEY OP THE PROTECTORATE TERRITORIES 



and kingdoms which in comparison with most Negro states were powerful, 

 well organised, and endowed w'ith some degree of indigenous civilisation, 

 raising the peoples of Uganda, Unyoro, and the countries of the west coast 

 of the Victoria Nyanza to a position of comfort and refinement a good 

 deal superior to the life led by the naked folk to the east and north of 

 that lake, many of whom were still leading an existence no higher in 

 culture than that of predatory carniyorous man in the lowest Stone Age. 



So far as tradition goes, the Bahima of Ankole can trace the genealogy 

 of their kings for about 300 years back. The Baganda can recall their kings 

 of a period as far distant as the fifteenth century. The genealogy of the 

 Uganda sovereigns includes thirty-six names (prior to the present king) ; 

 and if the greater part of the earlier names are not myths, this genealogy, 

 reckoning an average fifteen years' reign to each monarch, would take 

 us back to the middle of the fourteenth century. These genealogies and 

 legends will be treated of further in Chapters XV. and XVI. Assuming 

 that they are to be reduced because they contain repetitions or imaginary 

 or concurrent names, one is still entitled to assume that Uganda, Unyoro, 

 and perhaps Ankole and Karagwe to the south, have been settled 

 kingdoms under dynasties of Hamitic (Gala ?) origin for 500 years. 



Though the Uganda dynasty, no doubt, belongs in its origin to this 

 Hima stock, which is Hamitic and of the same race from which most 

 of the earlier inhabitants of Egypt proceeded, nevertheless, as for 

 several hundred years it has married negro women of the indigenous 

 race, its modern representatives are merely negroes, with larger, clearer 

 eyes, and slightly paler skins. When these kingdoms on the Victoria 

 and Albert Nyanzas flourished, their utmost knowledge of the outer 

 world seems to have been a vague, a very vague, perception that there 

 was an Abyssinia, or a country to the north-east, which was a powerful 

 kingdom inhabited by people of palish complexion; while in other 

 directions their geography was bounded by the marshes of the Nile, the 

 Congo Forest, Tanganyika, the steppes of Ugogo and Masailand, the cold 

 Plateau of Nandi, and the mass of Mount Elgon. 



Muhammad Ali, the first great Viceroy of Egypt, extended Egyptian 

 rule to Khartum, and under his impulse the Nubian merchants began 

 to explore the Upper Nile and the Bahr-al-Ghazal for slaves and ivory ; 

 but no word of the powerful kingdoms of Uganda and Unyoro reached 

 Europe through the explorations of the White Nile which followed on 

 the action of Muhammad Ali. The spread of guns and gunpowder, the 

 replacement of Portuguese rule by Arab conquest on the east coast of 

 Africa, and the immense impulse given to trade with East Africa by the 

 firm establishment of the British Empire in India (one result of which 

 was the enormous increase of seaborne trade between India and Zanzibar), 



