“I felt inclined to stop here a month, everything was so very pleasant. The temperature was perfect. The roads, as indeed they were everywhere, were as broad as our coach roads, cut through the long grasses, straight over the hills and down through the woods in the dells,--a strange contrast to the wretched tracks in all adjacent countries. The huts were kept so clean and so neat, not a fault could be found with them; the gardens the same. Wherever I strolled I saw nothing but richness, and what ought to be wealth. The whole land was a picture of quiescent beauty, with a boundless sea in the background. Looking over the hills, it struck the fancy at once that at one period the whole land must have been at a uniform level with their present tops, but that, by the constant denudation it was subjected to by the frequent rains, it had been cut down and sloped into those beautiful hills and dales which now so much please the eye; for there were none of those quartz dykes I had seen protruding through the same kind of aqueous formations in Usui and Karagwe, nor were there any other sorts of volcanic disturbance to distort the quiet aspect of the scene.” [Illustration: A VIEW IN UGANDA.] Speke found an Uganda not much smaller in area than that Negro kingdom is to-day. It lacked the large slices of Unyoro which were cut off and added to Uganda after the commencement of the British Protectorate, but it probably wielded a political influence over Busoga on the east and Toro on the west, since denied to it. The population of this kingdom in those days was computed at not far under four millions. Its administrators at the present time are doubtful if the same kingdom possesses eight hundred thousand inhabitants. The roads then were as broad and as well kept as they are now. It is sad to think that the people were possibly happier. True, their despotic ruler--whom they regarded with almost religious veneration--slaughtered and tortured those who frequented his Court; but the people at large were little affected by these deeds of cruelty, even if they did not regard them with that disinterested admiration which the Negro always accords to a display of force. Syphilis had wrought but slight ravages amongst them; indeed, it was a disease of but recent introduction (coming from the Nile).[67] No religious feuds had begun. The people believed their monarch to be the mightiest on earth, and themselves to be the happiest folk, living in a real paradise. For beauty the land can hardly be matched elsewhere in Africa. The one indisputable flaw in the climate is the frequency of dangerous thunderstorms. But for these reminders of a harsher law the Baganda might well have looked back on their life under Mutesa and his predecessors as one of ideal happiness. They had plenty to eat. Their banana groves provided the staple of their diet unfailingly.