“The next day, guided and escorted by the chief, we entered Ukafu, where we found a tall, handsome, young Mtongoleh in command of the district, before whom the Chief of Kiwa Island made obeisance as before a great lord. The young Mtongoleh, though professing an ardent interest in us, and voluble of promises, treated us only to Barmecide fare, after waiting twenty-four hours. Perceiving that his courtesies, though suavely proffered, failed to satisfy the cravings of our jaded stomachs, we left him still protesting enormous admiration for us, and still volubly assuring us that he was preparing grand hospitalities in our honor. “I was staggered when I understood in its full extent the perfect art with which we had been duped. ‘Could this be Central Africa,’ I asked myself, ‘wherein we find such perfect adepts in the art of deception?’ But two days ago the savagery of the land was intense and real, for every man’s hand was raised in ferocity against the stranger. In the land next adjoining we find a people agreeable, and professing the warmest admiration for the stranger, but as inhospitable as any hotel-keeper in London or New York to a penniless guest!” Stanley it seems, however, had been premature in his judgment, as he subsequently discovered on arriving at a little village in the bay of Buka. Here the Mtongoleh invited them to his village, spread out before them a feast of new as well as clotted milk, mellow and ripe bananas, a kid, sweet potatoes, and eggs, and despatched a messenger instantly to the _Kabaka_ Mtesa to announce the coming of a stranger in the land, declaring at the same time his intention not to abandon them until he had brought them face to face with the great Monarch of Equatorial Africa, in whom, he smilingly assured them, they should meet a friend, and under whose protection they might sleep secure.