The royal band was sent down by His Majesty to play outside our house. It was composed of six drummers and twelve fifers, whose instruments are able to produce about five notes, and with these they produce indistinguishable tunes. Their appreciation of music seems to depend on the volume of sound produced, so in order to give us a proof of their welcome they blew to bursting pitch. All day long we were serenaded and at night, too. It went on into the second day, and thinking the bandsmen might prove to have stronger lung power than we had of endurance, we set a polite message to his Majesty asking that they might be allowed to rest at night till daylight. So at last we had reached our journey’s end. The sixteen weeks that had run out since leaving home had been long and eventful. As the evening fell on our first day in Toro, we gathered round our log fire and sang together “O God our help in ages past.” CHAPTER V The Country Toro is one of the four Kingdoms that comprise the Uganda Protectorate and lies on the North-west boundary. The present outlook would lead one to think that it will remain unaffected longer than the other three neighbouring States by the inroads that civilization is making in Uganda, which the railway has brought into such close proximity to the outside world, while traders pass along the splendid caravan roads through Bunyoro up to the Nile, and to the Southern cattle-rearing Kingdom of Ankole. There is nothing to attract them to Toro, as the journey is a real physical effort, and there is no commercial prospect of mineral wealth or remunerative industry to justify the long journey. The ivory that formerly brought the Arab traders into the country is now almost entirely preserved by the British Government. So, unless Toro is visited by more successful prospectors than those who have already casually looked round, who shall discover some hidden mine of wealth, in all probability it will remain undisturbed in its present state of rusticity. But it is a wonderful country, and one that must ever fascinate a lover of nature and its freaks. The mountains are in themselves a unique feature. One can scarcely reconcile the co-existence of an equatorial sun and eternal snows, yet so it is. Strange mountain tribes in quite primeval state live among its forests and creeks, while just on its other side extends Stanley’s Great Forest with its pigmy inhabitants. On all sides one sees the results of the operation of mighty unseen forces. Numbers of extinct volcanoes are visible from our hill, the craters of which form the beds of lakes now, with vegetation and forest growth stretching down their sides to the water’s edge.