tGANDA JOURNAL.


occasions he appeared, in the nick of time, with his trusty warriors to rescue
the Commissioner or his assistants from an.awkward predicament. He also acted
as a super-spy in times alike of war and of peace and was a pioneer in road-making.
 There were of course, apart from chiefs, many law-abiding tribes and indiv-
 iduals in the Territories, and from such Sanders derived moral support. But
 they also in themselves constituted a problem. What should a Commissioner do
 when faced with this sort of complaint? "Lord Sandi, the Akasava have come
 down upon us, and taken our women and our goats, and our hearts are sore,
 because the goats are very valuable. In the old days we should have, etc. etc."
 In such cases, unless he could settle the palaver by peaceful means, Sanders could
 only counsel self-help. On another occasion an enthusiastic chief, interpreting
 his instructions, as Africans are apt to do. somewhat too literally, completely
 disarmed his tribe, and Sanders had to explain to him that disarmament, if unilat-
 eral only, was not without its dangers,-as indeed the event proved in this
 particular case.
 Perhaps that for which Sanders is most notorious is his rough and ready
 system of justice. Summary executions and summary floggings were admittedly
 a part of his regime. This is the sort of thing that happened. A native miscreant,
 as often as not a chief, is caught in flagrant delicto, or not long after. Sanders'
 words to the prisoner are few:-"O man, I think you have lived too long" or:-
 "O man, to-night you shall live with ghosts", and he glances significantly at the
 highest tree in the vicinity. Sergeant Abiboo of the King's Houssas steps forward
 with the length of rope. that he invariably carries about his person when on
 Yafari, and that is that! The condemned man usually shows a philosophical
 resignation, with some such remark as, "Lord, I have lived".
 A less extreme sentence was a severe flogging, administered by the sturdy
arm of the aforesaid Sergeant Abiboo, and there was also banishment, for a longer
or shorter time, to work in a chain-gang at the convict settlement somewhere
near headquarters. This place was known as the "Village of Irons," and was
situated on a peninsular, and guarded on three sides by water, infested with
crocodiles, and on the fourth by a barbed-wire fence. It must have been inhabited
very largely by ex-chiefs and ex-headmen. Incidentally there was a section of it
for the reception of female prisoners.
 Without pretending to have made an exhaustive check, I find in the tales
accounts of about 40 cases of summary execution and about 23 of summary
flogging, in addition to occasional exhibitions of frightfulness by the burning of
villages and crops, where mass-punishment was thought necessary.
 All this of course did not pass without protest from certain quarters. There
were sometimes Administrators who disapproved of such methods, who wanted
copies of the depositions in triplicate, and of the judgment in duplicate, and so on.
There were paragraphs in the English Press. There were questions in Parliament.
But Sanders went on his way unmoved and never appears to have got into
serious trouble over it, and on two occasions he even turned the tables on his
detractors by suing them for libel, and obtained handsome damages.(16)
 (16) See p. 7 above.