travel, and the hypersensitivity caused by repeated attacks of malaria, could sting the most patient of men into violent over-reaction.
While this row had been going on, N’yamgundu unexpectedly arrived and the caravan moved off soon afterwards. Two days later, several of the kabaka ’s shaven-headed pages turned up carrying three sticks representing the three charms or medicines,which Mutesa hoped the white man would give him. The first was a potion to free him from his dreams of a deceased relative; the second was a charm to improve his erections and his potency; and the third a charm to enable him to keep his subjects in awe of him. Though daunted by these outlandish requests, Speke’s confidence was boosted when a royal officer joined the caravan as it reached the northern shores of the lake and told Speke that ‘the king was in a nervous state of excitement, always asking after [him]’. 3 While the explorer’s principal interest still lay in locating the northern outlet of the Nyanza, he was also gripped by the drama of arriving at a unique feudal court and meeting a king whose ancestors had been monarchs since the fifteenth century.
As he came closer to the royal palace, Buganda itself began to charm him. ‘Up and down we went on again, through this wonderful country, surprisingly rich in grass, cultivation and trees.’ All the watercourses were bridged now with poles or palm trunks. Because the lake brought rain all the year round, the hills were as green as English downs, though larger, and their tops were grazed by long-horned cattle rather than sheep. Through banana plantations and woods, Speke caught tantalising glimpses of his shimmering lake.
On 18 February, the caravan was at last close to the kabaka’s palace. ‘It was a magnificent sight,’ enthused Speke in his journal. ‘A whole hill was covered with gigantic huts, such as I had never seen in Africa before.’ Indeed they were fifty-feet-tall conical structures, bound onto cane frames which were covered with tightly woven reeds. Speke had hoped to be summoned at once, but to his dismay was shown into a small and dirty hut to await the kabaka ’s pleasure. N’yamgundu explained gently that a levée could not take place till the following day because it had started to rain.
Speke began the manuscript of his book Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile with a first sentence that would be deleted by his publisher:
Our motto being: ‘Evil to him who evils thinks,’ the reader of these pages must be prepared to see and understand the negroes of Africa in their natural, primitive, or naked state; a state in which our forefathers lived before the forced state of civilization subverted it.
The road to the kabaka’s palace.
John Blackwood advised that this account of a ‘forced’ civilisation ‘subverting’ a more desirable and ‘natural’ way of life, should be replaced with a banal passage in which Speke could suggest that tribal faults and excesses might be viewed compassionately because Africans had been excluded from the Christian dispensation that gave Europeans their moral compass. 4 As will become apparent, the omitted sentence reflected his true feelings.
But to begin with, to gain respect, he planned to claim that he was a royal prince in his own country and therefore the kabaka ’s social equal. Personal vanity in part explains this pretence, though practical considerations were also involved. To enter a self-contained world – which had remained, despite the arrival of Arab slave traders two decades before, almost exactly as it had been four centuries earlier – offered Speke, as this world’s first white visitor, an extraordinary opportunity. As the first of his race ever to be seen by the kabaka and his courtiers, Speke knew he would seem a marvel – and this would not only be personally gratifying, but would also make it easier for him to gain the kabaka ’s support for his Nile mission. Or so he
While this row had been going on, N’yamgundu unexpectedly arrived and the caravan moved off soon afterwards. Two days later, several of the kabaka ’s shaven-headed pages turned up carrying three sticks representing the three charms or medicines,which Mutesa hoped the white man would give him. The first was a potion to free him from his dreams of a deceased relative; the second was a charm to improve his erections and his potency; and the third a charm to enable him to keep his subjects in awe of him. Though daunted by these outlandish requests, Speke’s confidence was boosted when a royal officer joined the caravan as it reached the northern shores of the lake and told Speke that ‘the king was in a nervous state of excitement, always asking after [him]’. 3 While the explorer’s principal interest still lay in locating the northern outlet of the Nyanza, he was also gripped by the drama of arriving at a unique feudal court and meeting a king whose ancestors had been monarchs since the fifteenth century.
As he came closer to the royal palace, Buganda itself began to charm him. ‘Up and down we went on again, through this wonderful country, surprisingly rich in grass, cultivation and trees.’ All the watercourses were bridged now with poles or palm trunks. Because the lake brought rain all the year round, the hills were as green as English downs, though larger, and their tops were grazed by long-horned cattle rather than sheep. Through banana plantations and woods, Speke caught tantalising glimpses of his shimmering lake.
On 18 February, the caravan was at last close to the kabaka’s palace. ‘It was a magnificent sight,’ enthused Speke in his journal. ‘A whole hill was covered with gigantic huts, such as I had never seen in Africa before.’ Indeed they were fifty-feet-tall conical structures, bound onto cane frames which were covered with tightly woven reeds. Speke had hoped to be summoned at once, but to his dismay was shown into a small and dirty hut to await the kabaka ’s pleasure. N’yamgundu explained gently that a levée could not take place till the following day because it had started to rain.
Speke began the manuscript of his book Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile with a first sentence that would be deleted by his publisher:
Our motto being: ‘Evil to him who evils thinks,’ the reader of these pages must be prepared to see and understand the negroes of Africa in their natural, primitive, or naked state; a state in which our forefathers lived before the forced state of civilization subverted it.
The road to the kabaka’s palace.
John Blackwood advised that this account of a ‘forced’ civilisation ‘subverting’ a more desirable and ‘natural’ way of life, should be replaced with a banal passage in which Speke could suggest that tribal faults and excesses might be viewed compassionately because Africans had been excluded from the Christian dispensation that gave Europeans their moral compass. 4 As will become apparent, the omitted sentence reflected his true feelings.
But to begin with, to gain respect, he planned to claim that he was a royal prince in his own country and therefore the kabaka ’s social equal. Personal vanity in part explains this pretence, though practical considerations were also involved. To enter a self-contained world – which had remained, despite the arrival of Arab slave traders two decades before, almost exactly as it had been four centuries earlier – offered Speke, as this world’s first white visitor, an extraordinary opportunity. As the first of his race ever to be seen by the kabaka and his courtiers, Speke knew he would seem a marvel – and this would not only be personally gratifying, but would also make it easier for him to gain the kabaka ’s support for his Nile mission. Or so he
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