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Buganda a respect for women, and also showed that the king felt and knew that such conversation was really shameful and wrong.

I used generally to visit Mutesa once a month, and to his amusement, one day, I read him a fable which I had been told by one of the people, and which I had printed in a small press which we had. I used also to take up a translation of a few verses of the Bible, and he always most courteously allowed me to read it to him. The Arabs used to bring the Koran, and intone passages which neither they nor the king understood; still Mutesa's verdict was that the Arabs' rendering of the Koran was vastly superior to my poor translations into his own language. I have no doubt that if I had intoned the Litany in English for his edification, I should have run the Arabs very close in the competition.

I remember being present once at the king's levee when news arrived of a severe defeat which the Baganda had suffered on one of their raids, at the hands of a people called Bakede, to the north-east of Buganda. The news was received by the king and his nobles with the utmost composure. Mutesa could lose an army with as much outward equanimity, at any rate, as a chess-player would lose a pawn.

On this occasion the Baganda had raided the naked Bakede, they had taken them at a disadvantage, and had collected vast numbers of cattle and little children. The Bakede women would not accompany the successful warriors, and preferred death, be it said to their