NO COINAGE IN THE COUNTRY. 
229 
bold and insolent, walking into our hut, taking up 
anything they saw to examine it, or coming with the 
kings orders that our very beds, chairs, guns, shoes, 
&c, were wanted by the king, and saying there must 
be no delay about sending them. The union -jack 
which we had got from Admiral Keppel was also de- 
manded. All these indignities, added to the brutal 
treatment of the women, made us feel that Uganda 
was not the "garden of pleasure" we had heard it 
called, and that the conduct of the king was a worse 
form of plundering than we had experienced in the 
Ugogo and southern territories. Here, by robbing us 
of our ammunition, they had placed us in a defence- 
less position ; and though we did not want their 
offered hundreds of women and hundreds of cattle, it 
induced our Seedees to become mutinous, saying, " Al- 
though you don't take them, we will, for as yet we 
have received nothing but broken bones for the 2000 
dollars' worth of property given to M'tessa." They 
refused to march with us until they obtained sufficient 
ball-cartridge. This occurred just previous to our de- 
parture, up to which time our men had been gathering 
a precarious existence from what could be plundered 
from the gardens. 
No beads were allowed to be taken here by the na- 
tives, although privately they would always pur- 
chase sufficient provision for ourselves and men. 
Cowries were a more current coin, one hundred of 
these shells making one string = a bunch of a hundred 
plantain = the skin of a goat; and a single large gourd- 
ful of wine cost a sheet of bark-cloth. We fortunately 
received goats now and then from the king, and sweet 
potatoes from one of the gardeners in exchange for 
