272 THE CONGO FREE STATE 



which came within my own experience. At the 

 village of Muhokya, in Uganda, where the Ruwenzori 

 Expedition spent some months, there Hved a man 

 who had lost his nose, one hand, and one ear. Taking 

 a somewhat surgical interest in him, I asked him, 

 through an interpreter, how he had come to be 

 mutilated, and his story was that the parts had 

 slowly withered. So far as the hand was concerned 

 his tale was an obvious lie, but he was shrewd enough 

 to give an explanation which he thought would have 

 a professional interest for the dispenser of medicines. 

 Shortly afterwards he came with me to Toro — he 

 was exceedingly strong and a good porter in spite 

 of his deformity — and there I got two Europeans to 

 question him independently and on different occa- 

 sions. One of them he told that it had been cut off 

 by the soldiers of the big Englishman (Captain 

 Lugard, presumably) after the fight at Muhokya a 

 few years before. To the other he said (and this 

 was probably the truth) that it was done by the 

 people of Kabbarega, the King of Unyoro, who was 

 for a long time the terror of the country. Had I 

 been a Belgian in search of ' atrocities ' committed 

 in British territory, he would doubtless have told me 

 the story which was most likely to please me, and I 

 should have accepted it without hesitation. 



A curious instance of the way in which native 

 rumour spreads, and loses nothing in the telling, 

 occurred when the Ruwenzori Expedition left the 

 Congo on our return to Toro, At the first village 



