The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎195r] (60/172)

TWO YEARS’ TRAVEL IN UGANDA, UNYORO, AND ON THE UPPER NILE. 377
flows to the west, turning and twisting through the high rocky hills on
•each side of it. AVe could see the Nakabiraba fort, just built on a high
hill south of the Msisi by Mr. Foaker; and to my delight and astonish
ment, who should come down to meet me but my former adjutant and
brother officer, Captain Pulteney, whom I certainly did not expect to
meet in this wild part of Central Africa. Mr. Foaker said he had seen
the snow on Ruwenzori three times during the six weeks he had been
there, but I was unlucky enough not to get a good view of it.
The fort is in latitude 38' 24" north of the Equator, and is 4582 feet
above the sea, and it was naturally much colder and fresher. It is a
wild and rugged country, but there are a good many Wanyoro living in
the valleys among the hills. The Msisi in rain is very deep; it is crossed
by means of a causeway made by bundles of papyrus heaped one over
the other. I returned by a different route as far as Mwenda’s for the
purpose of surveying, leaving the granite hills at Bwyaga. Here we
were almost on the watershed The boundary between adjacent drainage basins. , and the ground sloped down to the
Albert Nyanza on the west and north-west.
The territory between Hoima and the Msisi river used to be under
the chiefs Rabadongo, Chikakule, Abaswese, and Mwenda, who have
been hostile so long; they have all come in to make peace now, and the
two former were at Kampala at the beginning of this year. The people
have settled down, and are making roads and cultivating their fields.
They are not so civilized as the Waganda, and their huts and villages
are not nearly so neat. They make the same bark cloth, and dye it
black by putting it into the mud of a swamp for one day, and then
leaving it in the sun. Their musical instruments consist of primitive
stringed instruments, drums, horns, and whistles. They believe in a
god called Rubanga, to whom they sacrifice goats, chickens, etc., in case
of severe illness or at the time of war, and there are medicine men
called Ubandwa, who perform magic by killing animals, or using the
leaves of plants. They used to try and bring disaster upon us by
burying a sheep with its throat cut and head just out of the ground,
also by leaving a chicken in an earthenware pot on the pathway; the
-Sudanese were always chary of going near these. After a funeral, the
relations of the dead man sacrifice a goat, and are supposed to remain in
‘the house for a period of seven days; and when a king died, there used
4o be a general slaughter lor one day, when most of the inhabitants hid
themselves as far away as possible. The men and the women are great
smokers, and make very good earthenware pipes, also very good pottery.
The jiggers were a perfect plague in this country, though they are
now making their way towards the East Coast of Africa. Besides var ious
kinds of grain, beans, sweet potatoes, bananas, yams, etc., sugar-cane is
grown in some places. Locusts form a certain food-supply, and vliite
ants are eagerly sought after. The natives prepare coverings of straw
■on the hillocks where they are to be found, and capture them by means