"Very well said indeed, Saruti," cried Mtesa, laughing. "I understand.
The lid must share with the pot this time. Steward," he said, turning
to Kauta, "see that six head of cattle be driven to Saruti's
cattle-pen;" and Saruti twiyanzied (thanked with prostrations) so often
that his head swam.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE BOY KINNENEH AND THE GORILLA.

It is in such stories as the Fable of the Rabbit, the Leopard and the
Goat, the Dog and the little Chicken, the Leopard, the Sheep and the
Dove, the Crane, the Leopard and the Sheep, the Rabbit and the Lion, the
Cow and the Lion, the Lion and his mane, the Rabbit and the Leopard, and
the boy Kinneneh and the Gorilla, that Kadu, our accomplished relator of
legends, shone. It is not with a wish to be unkind to Kadu that I say
he showed only too well that according to him cunning was to be
preferred to strength. Perhaps he was right, though cunning is a word
in much discredit with us nowadays, because we are accustomed to ally it
with deception and fraud, but we will put the best possible construction
on it out of admiration for and gratitude to Kadu, and claim that his
cunning, which was the moral of most of his stories, was a kind of
illegitimate wisdom, or a permissible artfulness. None of us, at least,
but sympathised with Kadu's dumb heroes when, by a little pleasant cheat
or sly stratagem, the bullying buffalo got the worst of an encounter
with the sharp-witted rabbit, or when the dog got the better of his sour
mistress the leopardess, or when rabbit put to shame the surly elephant,
or when Kibatti conquered the kings of the animal tribes. The legend of
Kinneneh and the Gorilla was another story which evidently was meant by
Kadu and the unknown ancient of Uganda who invented it to illustrate
that cunning is mightier than strength. He told it in this wise:

In the early days of Uganda, there was a small village situate on the
other side of the Katonga, in Buddu, and its people had planted bananas
and plantains which in time grew to be quite a large grove, and produced
abundant and very fine fruit. From a grove of bananas when its fruit is
ripe there comes a very pleasant odour, and when a puff of wind blows
over it, and bears the fragrance towards you, I know of nothing so well
calculated to excite the appetite, unless it be the smell of roasted
meat. Anyhow, such must have been the feeling of a mighty big gorilla,
who one day, while roaming about alone in t