372 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
V 
is the native town, where the little King of Uganda, a boy, 
lives, and his chiefs of state, and where the native council 
meets; and it is the head-quarters of the missions, both 
Church of England and Roman Catholic. 
Kampalla is an interesting place; and so is all Uganda. 
The first explorers who penetrated thither, half a century 
ago, found in this heathen state, of almost pure negroes, a 
veritable semi-civilization, or advanced barbarism, compa¬ 
rable to that of the little Arab-negro or Berber-negro sul¬ 
tanates strung along the southern edge of the Sahara, and 
contrasting sharply with the weltering savagery which 
surrounded it, and which stretched away without a break 
for many hundreds of miles in every direction. The peo¬ 
ple were industrious tillers of the soil, who owned sheep, 
goats, and some cattle; they wore decent clothing, and 
hence were styled “womanish” by the savages of the Upper 
Nile region, who prided themselves on the nakedness of 
their men as a proof of manliness; they were unusually 
intelligent and ceremoniously courteous; and, most singu¬ 
lar of all, although the monarch was a cruel despot, of the 
usual African (whether Mohammedan or heathen) type, 
there were certain excellent governmental customs, of bind¬ 
ing observance, which in the aggregate might almost be 
called an unwritten constitution. Alone among the natives 
of tropical Africa the people of Uganda have proved very 
accessible to Christian teaching, so that the creed of Chris¬ 
tianity is now dominant among them. For their good for¬ 
tune, England has established a protectorate over them. 
Most wisely the English Government officials, and as a rule 
the missionaries, have bent their energies to developing 
them along their own lines, in government, dress, and ways 
