"Mwanga's action with respect to the letters forwarded him for Dr. Emin, was as disrespectful as possible to the British Government which had received with such kindness his father's envoys. We asked him merely to forward the letters in the first place until he should receive word from Emin as to whether or not he was prepared to come this way, but he detained your packet altogether."
In Mr. Mackay's letter to Sir John Kirk, June 28th, 1886, he says:--
"Dr. Fischer's difficulties would also only really begin after Kavirondo, as he then had the country of the dreaded Bakedi to cross, and Dr. Junker tells me that whole parties of Dr. Emin's soldiers have been repeatedly murdered by them."
Dr. Fischer, it will be remembered, was engaged to proceed to Equatoria in search of Dr. Junker by that traveller's brother, and chose the road _viâ_ East coast of the Victoria Lake. Arriving at the N.E. corner of the Lake he returned to the coast.
"Dr. Junker is living here with us. He brought me a letter from Emin Bey dated the 27th January (1886). He then proposed sending his people at once this way--some 4000--in small detachments. This policy would be fatal. He also asked me to go to meet him with a view to bringing here two steamers which otherwise he would have to abandon. One of them he meant for the King, and the other for the mission."
"Since then, however he finds that his people, officers and men, refuse to leave the Soudan, hence he is prepared to remain some years with them provided only he can get supplies of cloth, etc."
Mr. Mackay always writes sensibly. I obtained a great deal of solid information from these letters.
Naturally he writes in the full belief that Emin's troops are loyal. We all shared in this belief. We now see that we were grossly misled, and that at no time could Emin have cut his way to the coast through Uganda or any other country with men of such fibre as his ignorant and stolid Soudanese.
Mr. Joseph Thomson, in a letter to the _Times_, suggested a route through the Masai Land, and proposed to be responsible for the safe conduct of a Relief Expedition through that country.
Mr. J. T. Wills suggested that the Mobangi-Welle would prove an excellent way to Emin.