Having arrived safely in Uganda, through most extraordinary and novel scenes, I may be permitted to leave the direct narrative of our travels and our life in Uganda in order to inform the reader on certain points of the history of Mtesa’s country, beginning with Kintu, Priest, Patriarch, and first King of Uganda. Whatever of the incredible or marvellous may be discovered by the learned critic in this chapter must not be debited against the author, but against Sabadu and the elders who are responsible for the tale of Kintu, the wars of Kamanya, Suna, and Mtesa, and the feats of Namujurilwa, Setuba, and Kasindula the heroes, while Mtesa himself furnished me with the names of the kings his forefathers, with many other facts contained in this chapter. For my part I regret only that want of space compels me to compress what I have gathered of the history of this interesting country into a few pages, but brief as it is, I venture to believe that it will not be without interest to a large class of readers. Uganda, then, was first peopled by immigrants from the north, about the thirteenth or fourteenth century. But the date at which I thus fix the arrival of the patriarch Kintu may be wrong; he may have arrived at a much earlier period, and the names of a large number of his successors may have sunk into oblivion. Tradition, as well as it has been able, has faithfully preserved the memory of the acts of the first of these immigrants, though it has contemptuously omitted the acts of his successors, and, as usual, has contrived to endow its favourites, here as elsewhere, with marvellous power and extraordinary attributes. Kintu, the first immigrant and the founder of Uganda, came from the north, and perhaps derived his descent from some African Arab or ancient Ethiopic family. He was a mild, humane, and blameless man, and from his character was probably a priest of some old and long forgotten order. He brought with him one wife, one cow, one goat, one sheep, one banana-root, and a sweet potato; and, journeying in search of a suitable land to dwell in, established himself finally on the western bank of the Mwerango river, at Magonga,[22] near the present frontier of Unyoro. He found the country uninhabited, for not a single soul then dwelt in all the land lying between the lakes Victoria and Albert and Muta Nzigé. Usoga was a wilderness, Ukedi a desolate plain, and the fertile valleys of Unyoro were unpeopled.