In the afternoon we amused ourselves with target practice, at which an accident occurred that might have produced grave results. A No. 8 double-barrelled rifle was fractured in Mtesa’s hands at the second shot, but fortunately without injuring either him or the page on whose shoulder it rested. General alarm prevailed for a short time, until that, seeing it was about to be accepted as a bad omen, I examined the rifle and showed Mtesa an ancient flaw in the barrel, which his good sense perceived had led to the fracture. The gun was a very old one, and had evidently seen much service. _April 10._—On the 10th of April the court broke up its hunting lodges at Usavara, on Murchison Bay, and moved to the capital, whither I was strongly urged to follow. Mtesa, escorted by about two hundred musketeers and the great Wakungu and their armed retainers, travelled quickly, but owing to my being obliged to house my boat from the hot sun, I did not reach the capital until 1 P.M. The road had been prepared for his Imperial Majesty’s hunting excursion, and was 8 feet wide, through jungle and garden, forest and field. Beautiful landscapes were thus enjoyed of rolling land and placid lake, of gigantic tamarinds and gum-trees, of extensive banana groves and plantations of the ficus, from the bark of which the national dress or _mbugu_, is made. The peculiar dome-like huts, each with an attempt at a portico, were buried deep in dense bowers of plantains which filled the air with the odour of their mellow rich fruit. The road wound upward to the summits of green hills which commanded exquisite prospects, and down again into the sheltered bosoms of woody nooks, and vales, and tree-embowered ravines. Streams of clear water murmured through these depressions as they flowed towards Murchison Bay. The verdure was of a brilliant green, freshened by the unfailing rains of the Equator; the sky was of the bluest, and the heat, though great, was tempered by the hill breezes, and frequently by the dense foliage overhead. Within three hours’ march from Usavara, we saw the capital crowning the summit of a smooth rounded hill—a large cluster of tall conical grass huts, in the centre of which rose a spacious, lofty, barn-like structure. The large building, we were told, was the palace! the hill, Rubaga; the cluster of huts, the imperial capital!