If beautiful women of sable complexion are to be found in Africa, it must, I thought, be in the household of such a powerful despot as Mtesa, who has the pick of the flower of so many lands. Accordingly I looked sharply amongst the concubines, that I might become acquainted with the style of pure African beauty. Nor was I quite disappointed, though I had imagined that his wives would have all been of superior personal charms. But Mtesa apparently differs widely from Europeans in his tastes. There were not more than twenty out of all the five hundred worthy of a glance of admiration from a white man with any eye for style and beauty, and certainly not more than three deserving of many glances. These three, the most comely among the twenty beauties of Mtesa’s court, were of the Wahuma race, no doubt from Ankori. They had the complexion of quadroons, were straight-nosed and thin-lipped, with large lustrous eyes. In the other graces of a beautiful form they excelled, and Hafiz might have said with poetic rapture that they were “straight as palm-trees and beautiful as moons.” The only drawback was their hair—the short crisp hair of the negro race—but in all other points they might be exhibited as the perfection of beauty which Central Africa can produce. Mtesa, however, does not believe them to be superior, or even equal, to his well-fleshed, unctuous-bodied, flat-nosed wives: indeed, when I pointed them out to him one day at a private audience, he even regarded them with a sneer. Speke, if I remember rightly, declares that fatness in womankind is synonymous with beauty in Uganda. This may once have been the case, but it is certainly not so now, for in few women regarded with favour by Mtesa or his chiefs have I seen any gross corpulence of body. Naturally, where there is abundance of good digestible food, and the climate is agreeable, humanity of the respectable class will generally be found to be well clothed in flesh, be it in Uganda or in England, but it is somewhat unreasonable to state that the respectable class therefore considers superfluous rotundity to be an element of beauty. After the royal harem followed Mtesa’s uncle, ancient and well-featured Sabaganzi, whom, as regards the multitude of women that followed him, I looked upon for a long time as a very Solomon among the Waganda, until one day I learned that large possessions of womankind mean wealth in Uganda, for all of them have a market value, and are saleable for wares of any kind, be they cloth, cows, beads, or guns. Still I cannot quite acquit the old gentleman of the imputation of gallantry, for one night, at Nakaranga, he slew with his own hand a lover who had come to serenade one of his numerous Dulcineas. Besides the character I have credited him with, I must dub him as a jealous, vindictive, choleric old pagan, despite his fine features and smooth tongue.