The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume IX, No. 4 [‎194r] (58/172)

TWO YEARS’ TRAVEL IN UGANDA, UNYORO, AND ON THE UPPER NILE. 375
and a large Waganda canoe was upset when trying to cross it, which
resulted in the drowning of a very nice chief and about ten men.
We recrossed the Victoria Nile at Foweira, about where Sir Samuel
Baker crossed in 1872, and although the river is about 500 yards broad
in the open, and there is a strong stream, nearly all our two thousand
cattle captured from Kabba Rega swam safely over. Navigation ends
soon after this, when the Nile begins to dash down over the Karuma
falls in a succession of rapids to the Albert Nyanza. In the angle
contained by the Nile here the vegetation is very thick, and there is
dense grass about 14 feet high, also what may be described as thin
forest. A most wonderful old woman, wife of Khamrasi, the former
MURCHISON FALLS, VICTORIA NILE.
king of Unyoro, and mother of Kabba Rega, was captured on this
expedition, with several members of the royal family, by Captain
Ashburnham. She had escaped being thrown with the remainder of
Khamrasi’s wives into his grave as described by Baker. She is enor
mously fat and unwieldy, and is always carried about on an angareb
(bedstead). She is reported to bo very bloodthirsty, and used to think
nothing of ordering fifty people to have their heads cut off in her own
district, which used to extend south from Hoima to Bugoma. The
royal family will not eat potatoes or bananas, and as women in Unyoro
will not eat chickens or sheep, she is rather difficult to feed. However,
as long as she gets plenty of pombe, which is the intoxicating spirit
made from bananas, and plenty of milk, she is quite xappy.
curious to see in what awe the Waganda people seemed to be of her, and