300 AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
savage heights ancl ridges, and before whose indisputable 
sublimity his soul seems to shrink. Escaping from the 
vicinity of this mountain monarch, he would be swept 
over a brown parched plateau for a short hour, and then, 
all suddenly, come to a pause at the edge of an awful 
precipice some 1500 feet in depth. At the bottom of 
this, slumbering serenely, and reflecting the plateau 
walls on its placid surface, lies the blue Muta Nzige. 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
I have still to add some details of interest. Mtesa, 
in the preceding introduction to the reader, playing the 
part of Emperor at a public burzah, has still only a 
vague and indistinct personality, and so, to complete 
the portrait, I venture to append the following remarks. 
On first acquaintance, as I have already said, he 
strikes the traveller as a most fascinating and a pecu- 
liarly amiable man, and should the traveller ever think 
of saving this pagan continent from the purgatory of 
heathendom, the Emperor must occur to him as of all 
men in Africa the most promising to begin with. For 
his intelligence and natural faculties are of a very high 
order, his professions of love to white men great, and 
his hospitality apparently boundless. Had he been 
educated in Europe, there can be little doubt but that 
he would have become a worthy member of society ; 
but nursed in the lap of paganism, and graduated only in 
superstition and ignorance, he is to-day no more than 
an extraordinary African. 
Flattering as it may be to me to have had the honour 
of converting the pagan Emperor of Uganda to Christi- 
anity, I cannot hide from myself the fact that the con- 
version is only nominal, and that, to continue the good 
work in earnest, a patient, assiduous, and zealous mis- 
sionary is required. A few months’ talk about Christ 
and His blessed work on earth, though sufficiently 
attractive to Mtesa, is not enough to eradicate the evils 
which thirty-five years of brutal, sensuous indulgence 
have stamped on the mind : this only the unflagging 
zeal, the untiring devotion to duty, and the paternal 
