UGANDA AND WEST SIDE OF VICTORIA NYANZA. 265 
few mouthfuls of grain, or potatoes, or muliogo (cassava), 
ancl, if you permit us, we shall depart as friends.” 
Our demeanour had a great effect. The riot and 
noise seemed to be subsiding, when some fifty new- 
comers rekindled the smouldering fury. Again the 
forest of spears swayed on the launch, again the knotty 
clubs were whirled aloft, again the bows were drawn, 
and again the barbed arrows seemed Hying. Safenj 
received a push which sent him tumbling, little Kirango 
received a blow on the head with a spear-staff, Saramba 
gave a cry as a club descended on his back. 
I sprang up this time to remonstrate, with the two 
revolvers in my left hand. I addressed myself to an 
elder, who seemed to be restraining the people from 
proceeding too far. I showed him beads, cloth, wire, 
and invoked the names of Mtesi, and Antari their king. 
The sight of the heaps of beads and cloth I exposed 
awakened, however, the more deliberate passions of 
selfishness and greed in each heart. An attempt at 
massacre, they began to argue, would certainly entail 
the loss of some of themselves. “ Guns might be seized 
and handled with terrible effect even by dying men, 
and who knows what those little iron things in the 
white man’s hands are ? ” they seemed to be asking 
themselves. The elder, whatever he thought, responded 
with an affectation of indignation, raised his stick, and 
to right and left of him drove back the demoniac crowd. 
Other prominent men now assisted this elder, whom 
we subsequently discovered to be Sliekka, the king 
of Bumbireh. 
Shekka then, having thus bestirred himself, beckoned 
to half-a-dozen men and walked away a few yards be- 
hind the mass. It was the ££ shauri,” dear to a free and 
independent African’s heart, that was about to be held. 
Half the crowd followed the king and his council, while 
the other half remained to indulge their violent, vitu- 
perative tongues on us, and to continually menace us 
with either club or spear. An audacious party came 
round the stern of the boat and, with superlatively 
hideous gestures, affronted me ; one of them even gave 
