The report among the slave companies asserted that Abou Saood had been in league with Raoul Bey to frustrate the expedition; thus the conspiracy of the officers headed by Raouf Bey, which I had checkmated, was the grand move to effect a collapse of the expedition, and to leave a clear field for the slave-traders. "Up to the present time, my arrangements have been able to overpower all opposition." The success of the corn collection at the moment of the conspiracy was fatal to the machinations of Raouf Bey, and secured me the confidence of the troops. "The success of every attack that I have personally commanded has clinched this confidence. "The trader's people are discontented with their leaders; they are without clothes or wages. "Their parties have been massacred in several directions by the natives. Nearly 500 loads of ivory have been burned, together with one of their stations, by a night attack of the Madi, in which the slave-hunters lost thirty-five killed, and the rest of the party only escaped in the darkness, and fled to the forests. "Thus I come upon them at a moment when they are divided in their feelings. A dread of the government is mingled with confidence in the arrival of a strong military force, which would be auxiliary in the event of a general uprising of the country." I found several of my old men engaged as slave-hunters. These people, who had behaved well on my former voyage, confided all the news, and were willing to serve the government. Kamrasi, the former king of Unyoro, was dead, and had been succeeded by his son, Kabba Rega. Some few of the people of Abou Saood had been on a visit to the king M'tese at Uganda. This powerful ruler had been much improved by his personal communication with the traders of Zanzibar. He had become a Mohammedan, and had built a mosque. Even his vizier said his daily prayers like a good Mussulman, and M'tese no longer murdered his wives. If he cut the throat of either man or beast, it was now done in the name of God, and the king had become quite civilized, according to the report of the Arab envoys. He kept clerks who could correspond, by letters, in Arabic, and he had a regiment armed with a thousand guns, in addition to the numerous forces at his command. The Arab envoys of Abou Saood had been treated like dogs by the great M'tese, and they had slunk back abashed, and were only glad to be allowed to depart. They declared that such a country would not suit their business: the people were too strong for them; and the traders from Zanzibar purchased their ivory from M'tese with cotton stuffs, silks, guns, and powder, brass-coil bracelets, beads, &c. The beads were exchanged by equal weight for ivory.