It was in this region that the kingdom of Kitwara was founded by the Galla chief, Kintu.  About the beginning of the nineteenth century the empire was dismembered, the largest share falling to Uganda.  The ensuing history of Uganda is of great interest.  When King Mutesa came to the throne in 1862, he found Mohammedan influences in his land and was induced to admit English Protestants and French Catholics.  Uganda thereupon became an extraordinary religious battlefield between these three beliefs.  Mutesa’s successor, Mwanga, caused an English bishop to be killed in 1885, believing (as has since proven quite true) that the religion he offered would be used as a cloak for conquest.  The final result was that, after open war between the religions, Uganda was made an English protectorate in 1894.

The Negroes of Uganda are an intelligent people who had organized a complex feudal state.  At the head stood the king, and under him twelve feudal lords.  The present king, Daudi Chua, is the young grandson of Mutesa and rules under the overlordship of England.

Many things show the connection between Egypt and this part of Africa.  The same glass beads are found in Uganda and Upper Egypt, and similar canoes are built.  Harps and other instruments bear great resemblance.  Finally the Bahima, as the Galla invaders are called, are startlingly Egyptian in type; at the same time they are undoubtedly Negro in hair and color.  Perhaps we have here the best racial picture of what ancient Egyptian and upper Nile regions were in predynastic times and later.

Thus in outline was seen the mission of The People—­La Bantu as they called themselves.  They migrated, they settled, they tore down, and they learned, and they in turn were often overthrown by succeeding tribes of their own folk.  They rule with their tongue and their power all Africa south of the equator, save where the Europeans have entered.  They have never been conquered, although the gold and diamond traders have sought to debauch them, and the ivory and rubber capitalists have cruelly wronged their weaker groups.  They are the Africans with whom the world of to-morrow must reckon, just as the world of yesterday knew them to its cost.

FOOTNOTES: 

[30] Quoted in Bent:  Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, pp. 203 ff.

[31] Cf.  “Ethiopia Oriental,” by J. Dos Santos, in Theal’s Records of South Africa, Vol.  VII.

[32] Barbosa, quoted in Keane, II, 482.

[33] It was called Sofala, from an Arabic word, and may be associated with the Ophir of Solomon.  So, too, the river Sabi, a little off Sofala, may be associated with the name of the Queen of Sheba, whose lineage was supposed to be perpetuated in the powerful Monomotapa as well as the Abyssinians.

VII THE WAR OF RACES AT LAND’S END