Two Kings of Uganda. By R. P. Ashe. (Sampson Low
and Co.) —Mr. Ashe gives us a somewhat gloomy account of life on the Victoria Nyanza, which seems on the whole to have been one of unremitting watchfulness and suspense. The most interesting details are those relating to the two Kings, Mutesa and Mwanga, both fairly well known by name, through Stanley and other travellers. The court-life of these monarchs is not without much that is amusing as well as painful. Actual fact must always surpass fiction in the interest it excites ; but it is not entirely to this that the book owes its force. It is the simple yet often striking way in which Mr. Ashe describes his six years' residence in Uganda, and the direct manner in which he brings us into contact with the primitive savagery and ways of thinking in a country so unpro- gressive as Equatorial Africa. There is much that seems hopeless in the accounts of Mwanga's cruelty, the massacre of the African converts, and the story of Bishop Hannington's death ; though the fact that most of the converts died a martyr's death gives a bright gleam to an otherwise sad story.
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