44 MRULI TO RUBAGA IN UGANDA. 



by a different route. Through grass and reeds the road winds 

 by a hundred curves up the steep mountain of Kyapisi, the 

 pass of which is marked by a single fig-tree visible from a long 

 distance. Unfortunately, gigantic grasses shut out every view. 

 Reaching the top of the pass, a very fruitful land spread itself 

 out before us. Extensive plantations of every kind hemmed in 

 the road. Heavily-laden cornfields awaited the reapers. Before 

 the huts great heaps of green tobacco and yellow maize were 

 drying, but no inhabitant was to be seen. No sound was heard 

 among the silent houses, not even the cackle of a hen. A 

 death-like silence hung over the whole land. Upon the enor- 

 mous square, outside Muambia's chief village, Degea, the grass 

 grew knee-high, and the extensive courtyards and houses were 

 deserted. In the burning midday sun rustled the bare branches 

 of a poisonous euphorbia. Lizards ran quickly over the road. 

 A poison-tree in a devastated land ! For this was the ex- 

 planation of the silence. Mtesa's emissaries had fallen upon 

 this district by night and carried off people and herds, stores, 

 and household goods, to pander to their ruler's covetousness. 

 Pieces of newly-made mhugu, half-finished and delicately-woven 

 grass mats, still lay before some of the houses ; the housewives 

 had been torn away from their work to increase the number of 

 slaves in the king's household. 



We marched on and reached the little district of Nasirie, 

 where human beings again made their appearance, and where 

 all seemed to be indulging in the full enjoyment of their own 

 possessions. Here a clear, flowing stream, journeying from west 

 to east, babbled along in its deep sandy bed, and soon after fol- 

 lowed one of those deep morasses that exist only in Uganda, and 

 about which E. Linant so bitterly complained. One sinks up 

 to the waist in the black, thick, stinking mud, and although 

 people have tried to erect a kind of bridge in some places with 

 the stems of the abundant date palm, those places are just 

 the most dangerous, because the stems, having no firm founda- 

 tion, invariably roll away from under the foot when one steps 

 on them. After sundry halts we happily regained dry ground, 

 and marching through clean reed fences we reached the thickly- 

 populated village Kitakuba, which belongs to my old acquaint- 

 ance Kyibrango, who unfortunately was absent. 



