our voyage into Napoleon Channel and to examine the Ripon Falls.[11] On an uninhabited point of Usoga, near the falls, we encamped; and on the 29th of March crossed the channel, and coasted along Uganda between numerous islands, the largest of which are densely inhabited. At Kiwa Island we rested for the day, and were received with the greatest cordiality by the chief, who sent messengers to the island of Keréngé, a distance of three miles, to purchase bananas and jars of maramba wine, for the guest, as he said, of the _Kabaka_ Mtesa. As it was the first time for twenty-two days that we had lived with natives since leaving Kagehi we celebrated, as we were in duty bound, our arrival among friends. _March 30._—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 honour. 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 polite, 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!” At a little village in the bay of Buka we discovered we were premature in our judgment. The Mtongoleh at this place invited us to his village, spread out before us 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 us until he had brought us face to face with the great monarch of Equatorial Africa, in whom, he smilingly assured us, we should meet a friend, and under whose protection we might sleep secure.