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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of My African Journey, by Winston Spencer Churchill
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-Title: My African Journey
-
-Author: Winston Spencer Churchill
-
-Release Date: June 25, 2013 [eBook #43035]
-[Most recently updated: October 24, 2020]
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43035 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of My African Journey, by Winston Spencer Churchill
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: My African Journey
-
-Author: Winston Spencer Churchill
-
-Release Date: June 25, 2013 [eBook #43035]
-[Most recently updated: October 23, 2020]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY AFRICAN JOURNEY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
-
-
-
-
-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
-      file which includes the original 61 photographic
-      illustrations and 3 maps.
-      See 43035-h.htm or 43035-h.zip:
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43035/43035-h/43035-h.htm)
-      or
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43035/43035-h.zip)
-
-
-      Images of the original pages are available through
-      Internet Archive. See
-      https://archive.org/details/myafricanjourney00churuoft
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
-
-      On page 6, "full tale of steamers" should possibly be
-      "full tail of steamers."
-
-
-
-
-MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA.
-      _Frontispiece._]
-
-
-MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-
-by
-
-THE RIGHT HON.
-WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL, M.P.
-
-Author of "The Story of the Malakand Field Force,"
-"The River War," "London to Ladysmith," "Ian Hamilton's March,"
-"Savrola," "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill"
-
-With Sixty-One Illustrations from Photographs by
-the Author and Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon Wilson,
-and Three Maps
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Toronto
-William Briggs
-1909
-
-Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
-Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
-Bungay, Suffolk.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-In so far as the collection of information is concerned, the
-advantages of travel may often be over-stated. So much has been
-written, so many facts are upon record about every country, even the
-most remote, that a judicious and persevering study of existing
-materials would no doubt enable a reader to fill himself with
-knowledge almost to repletion without leaving his chair. But for the
-formation of opinion, for the stirring and enlivenment of thought, and
-for the discernment of colour and proportion, the gifts of travel,
-especially of travel on foot, are priceless. It was with the design
-and in the hope of securing such prizes, that I undertook last year
-the pilgrimage of which these pages give account. I cannot tell
-whether I have succeeded in winning them; and still less whether, if
-won, they are transferable. I therefore view these letters with a
-modest eye. They were written mainly in long hot Uganda afternoons,
-after the day's march was done. The larger portion has already
-appeared in the _Strand Magazine_, and what has been added was
-necessary to complete the story.
-
-They present a continuous narrative of the lighter side of what was to
-me a very delightful and inspiring journey; and it is in the hope that
-they may vivify and fortify the interest of the British people in the
-wonderful estates they have recently acquired in the northeastern
-quarter of Africa, that I offer them in a connected form to the
-indulgence of the public.
-
-     WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
-
-_London_, 1908.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                              PAGE
-     CHAPTER I
-
-     THE UGANDA RAILWAY                                          1
-
-
-     CHAPTER II
-
-     AROUND MOUNT KENYA                                         19
-
-
-     CHAPTER III
-
-     THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA                               45
-
-
-     CHAPTER IV
-
-     THE GREAT LAKE                                             66
-
-
-     CHAPTER V
-
-     THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA                                      86
-
-
-     CHAPTER VI
-
-     KAMPALA                                                   104
-
-
-     CHAPTER VII
-
-     'ON SAFARI'                                               127
-
-
-     CHAPTER VIII
-
-     MURCHISON FALLS                                           148
-
-
-     CHAPTER IX
-
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                168
-
-
-     CHAPTER X
-
-     DOWN THE WHITE NILE                                       188
-
-
-     CHAPTER XI
-
-     THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT RAILWAY                           209
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-                                                    _To face page_
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA      _Frontispiece_
-
-     ON THE COW-CATCHER                                          7
-
-     THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA                                    12
-
-     GUARD OF HONOUR, KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES                     20
-
-     BREAKDOWN ON THE WAY TO THIKA CAMP                         22
-
-     SHOOTING PARTY AT THIKA CAMP                               24
-
-     THE BANDA AT THIKA CAMP                                    28
-
-     COLONEL WILSON'S LION                                      28
-
-     "DURBAR" AT KIAMBU                                         30
-
-     THE RIFT VALLEY FROM THE KIKUYU ESCARPMENT                 66
-
-     GOVERNMENT STOCK FARM AT NAIVASHA                          68
-
-     THE LAIBON'S WIVES                                         71
-
-     RAILHEAD AT KISUMU                                         71
-
-     KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU                               80
-
-     NANDI AND KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU                     84
-
-     KISUMU                                                     86
-
-     GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ENTEBBE                                  90
-
-     THE GOVERNOR WITH BAGANDA GROUP                           102
-
-     BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA                               106
-
-     KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA                          108
-
-     WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA                         109
-
-     ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA                                     110
-
-     ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA                        110
-
-     WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA--"THE BRAVEST MAN
-     IN THE ARMY"                                              112
-
-     WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA                                      112
-
-     THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA                     114
-
-     CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION,
-     KAMPALA                                                   114
-
-     INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL                           116
-
-     THE RIPON FALLS (SOURCE OF THE NILE)                      120
-
-     BETWEEN NIMULE AND GONDOKORO                              128
-
-     FOREST SCENE NEAR RIPON FALLS                             133
-
-     PALM TREE NEAR THE ASUA                                   134
-
-     BANDA WITH ESCORT OF KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES                134
-
-     AN ENCAMPMENT                                             136
-
-     LANDING AT MRULI                                          146
-
-     MURCHISON FALLS                                           159
-
-     FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US               160
-
-     FLOTILLA AT FAJAO                                         162
-
-     THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS                            164
-
-     UGANDA SCENERY                                            164
-
-     THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO                                169
-
-     EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO                        170
-
-     FAJAO                                                     170
-
-     APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO
-     HILLS IN THE DISTANCE                                     174
-
-     WADELAI                                                   174
-
-     THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
-     NEARING NIMULE                                            178
-
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                178
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                182
-
-     BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE                                 182
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS             186
-
-     COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT                                 187
-
-     THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
-     ON THE WHITE NILE                                         187
-
-     FORDING THE ASUA                                          192
-
-     THE BELGIAN OFFICIALS AT LADO                             196
-
-     GONDOKORO                                                 196
-
-     REVIEW AT KHARTOUM                                        198
-
-     SOUDAN GOVERNMENT STEAMER "DAL"                           198
-
-     A SHELUK AT KODOK (FASHODA)                               202
-
-     THE PALACE, KHARTOUM                                      204
-
-     GEORGE SCRIVINGS                                          207
-
-     PHILAE                                                    208
-
-
-MAPS
-
-     EASTERN AFRICA                                              2
-
-     BRITISH EAST AFRICA                                        16
-
-     UGANDA                                                     92
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE UGANDA RAILWAY
-
-
-The aspect of Mombasa as she rises from the sea and clothes herself
-with form and colour at the swift approach of the ship is alluring and
-even delicious. But to appreciate all these charms the traveller
-should come from the North. He should see the hot stones of Malta,
-baking and glistening on a steel-blue Mediterranean. He should visit
-the Island of Cyprus before the autumn rains have revived the soil,
-when the Messaoria Plain is one broad wilderness of dust, when every
-tree--be it only a thorn-bush--is an heirloom, and every drop of water
-is a jewel. He should walk for two hours at midday in the streets of
-Port Said. He should thread the long red furrow of the Suez Canal, and
-swelter through the trough of the Red Sea. He should pass a day among
-the cinders of Aden, and a week among the scorched rocks and stones of
-Northern Somaliland; and then, after five days of open sea, his eye
-and mind will be prepared to salute with feelings of grateful delight
-these shores of vivid and exuberant green. On every side is
-vegetation, moist, tumultuous, and varied. Great trees, clad in dense
-foliage, shrouded in creepers, springing from beds of verdure, thrust
-themselves through the undergrowth; palms laced together by flowering
-trailers; every kind of tropical plant that lives by rain and
-sunshine; high waving grass, brilliant patches of purple
-bougainvillea, and in the midst, dotted about, scarcely keeping their
-heads above the fertile flood of Nature, the red-roofed houses of the
-town and port of Mombasa.
-
-  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF
-    "MY AFRICAN JOURNEY"]
-
-The vessel follows a channel twisting away between high bluffs, and
-finds a secure anchorage, land-locked, in forty feet of water at a
-stone's throw from the shore. Here we are arrived at the gate of
-British East Africa; and more, at the outlet and debouchment of all
-the trade of all the countries that lap the Victoria and Albert Lakes
-and the head-waters of the Nile. Along the pier now being built at
-Kilindini, the harbour of Mombasa Island, must flow, at any rate for
-many years, the main stream of East and Central African commerce.
-Whatever may be the produce which civilized government and enterprise
-will draw from the enormous territories between Southern Abyssinia and
-Lake Tanganyika, between Lake Rudolf and Ruenzori, as far west as the
-head-streams of the Congo, as far north as the Lado enclave; whatever
-may be the needs and demands of the numerous populations comprised
-within those limits, it is along the unpretentious jetty of Kilindini
-that the whole traffic must pass.
-
-For Kilindini (or Mombasa, as I may be permitted to call it) is the
-starting-point of one of the most romantic and most wonderful railways
-in the world. The two iron streaks of rail that wind away among the
-hills and foliage of Mombasa Island do not break their smooth monotony
-until, after piercing Equatorial forests, stretching across immense
-prairies, and climbing almost to the level of the European snow-line,
-they pause--and that only for a time--upon the edges of the Great
-Lake. And thus is made a sure, swift road along which the white man
-and all that he brings with him, for good or ill, may penetrate into
-the heart of Africa as easily and safely as he may travel from London
-to Vienna.
-
-Short has been the life, many the vicissitudes, of the Uganda Railway.
-The adventurous enterprise of a Liberal Government, it was soon
-exposed, disowned, to the merciless criticism of its parents. Adopted
-as a cherished foundling by the Conservative party, it almost perished
-from mismanagement in their hands. Nearly ten thousand pounds a mile
-were expended upon its construction; and so eager were all parties to
-be done with it and its expense that, instead of pursuing its proper
-and natural route across the plateau to the deep waters of Port
-Victoria, it fell by the way into the shallow gulf of Kavirondo, lucky
-to get so far. It is easy to censure, it is impossible not to
-criticize, the administrative mistakes and miscalculations which
-tarnished and nearly marred a brilliant conception. But it is still
-more easy, as one traverses in forty-eight hours countries which ten
-years ago would have baffled the toilsome marches of many weeks, to
-underrate the difficulties in which unavoidable ignorance and
-astonishing conditions plunged the pioneers. The British art of
-"muddling through" is here seen in one of its finest expositions.
-Through everything--through the forests, through the ravines, through
-troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five
-years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the
-railway; and here at last, in some more or less effective fashion, is
-it arrived at its goal. Other nations project Central African railways
-as lightly and as easily as they lay down naval programmes; but here
-is a railway, like the British Fleet, "in being"--not a paper plan or
-an airy dream, but an iron fact grinding along through the jungle and
-the plain, waking with its whistles the silences of the Nyanza, and
-startling the tribes out of their primordial nakedness with
-"Americani" piece goods _made in Lancashire_.
-
-Let us, then, without waiting in Mombasa longer than is necessary to
-wish it well and to admire the fertility and promise of the coastal
-region, ascend this railway from the sea to the lake. And first, what
-a road it is! Everything is in apple-pie order. The track is smoothed
-and weeded and ballasted as if it were the London and North-Western.
-Every telegraph-post has its number; every mile, every hundred yards,
-every change of gradient has its mark; not in soft wood, to feed the
-white ant, but in hard, well-painted iron. Constant labour has
-steadily improved the grades and curves of the permanent-way, and the
-train--one of those comfortable, practical Indian trains--rolls along
-as evenly as upon a European line.
-
-Nor should it be supposed that this high standard of maintenance is
-not warranted by the present financial position of the line. The
-Uganda Railway is already doing what it was never expected within any
-reasonable period to do. It is paying its way. It is beginning to
-yield a profit--albeit a small profit--upon its capital charge.
-Projected solely as a political railway to reach Uganda, and to secure
-British predominance upon the Upper Nile, it has already achieved a
-commercial value. Instead of the annual deficits upon working expenses
-which were regularly anticipated by those most competent to judge,
-there is already a substantial profit of nearly eighty thousand pounds
-a year. And this is but the beginning, and an imperfect beginning; for
-at present the line is only a trunk, without its necessary limbs and
-feeders, without its deep-water head at Kilindini, without its full
-tale of steamers on the lake; above all, without its natural and
-necessary extension to the Albert Nyanza.
-
-  [Illustration: ON THE COW-CATCHER.
-    (Mr. Currie, Mr. Marsh, Col. Wilson, Sir J. Hayes-Sadler, Mr.
-    Churchill.)]
-
-We may divide the journey into four main stages--the jungles, the
-plains, the mountains, and the lake, for the lake is an essential part
-of the railway, and a natural and inexpensive extension to its length.
-In the early morning, then, we start from Mombasa Station, taking our
-places upon an ordinary garden seat fastened on to the cow-catcher of
-the engine, from which position the whole country can be seen. For a
-quarter of an hour we are still upon Mombasa Island, and then the
-train, crossing the intervening channel by a long iron bridge,
-addresses itself in earnest to the continent of Africa. Into these
-vast regions the line winds perseveringly upon a stiff up-grade, and
-the land unfolds itself ridge after ridge and valley after valley,
-till soon, with one farewell glance at the sea and at the
-fighting-tops of His Majesty's ship _Venus_ rising queerly amid the
-palms, we are embraced and engulfed completely. All day long the train
-runs upward and westward, through broken and undulating ground clad
-and encumbered with super-abundant vegetation. Beautiful birds and
-butterflies fly from tree to tree and flower to flower. Deep, ragged
-gorges, filled by streams in flood, open out far below us through
-glades of palms and creeper-covered trees. Here and there, at
-intervals, which will become shorter every year, are plantations of
-rubber, fibre, and cotton, the beginnings of those inexhaustible
-supplies which will one day meet the yet unmeasured demand of Europe
-for those indispensable commodities. Every few miles are little trim
-stations, with their water-tanks, signals, ticket-offices, and
-flower-beds complete and all of a pattern, backed by impenetrable
-bush. In brief one slender thread of scientific civilization, of
-order, authority, and arrangement, drawn across the primeval chaos of
-the world.
-
-In the evening a cooler, crisper air is blowing. The humid coast
-lands, with their glories and their fevers, have been left behind. At
-an altitude of four thousand feet we begin to laugh at the Equator.
-The jungle becomes forest, not less luxuriant, but distinctly
-different in character. The olive replaces the palm. The whole aspect
-of the land is more friendly, more familiar, and no less fertile.
-After Makindu Station the forest ceases. The traveller enters upon a
-region of grass. Immense fields of green pasture, withered and
-whitened at this season by waiting for the rains, intersected by
-streams and watercourses densely wooded with dark, fir-looking trees
-and gorse-looking scrub, and relieved by bold upstanding bluffs and
-ridges, comprise the new panorama. And here is presented the wonderful
-and unique spectacle which the Uganda Railway offers to the European.
-_The plains are crowded with wild animals._ From the windows of the
-carriage the whole zoological gardens can be seen disporting itself.
-Herds of antelope and gazelle, troops of zebras--sometimes four or
-five hundred together--watch the train pass with placid assurance, or
-scamper a hundred yards farther away, and turn again. Many are quite
-close to the line. With field-glasses one can see that it is the same
-everywhere, and can distinguish long files of black wildebeeste and
-herds of red kongoni--the hartebeeste of South Africa--and wild
-ostriches walking sedately in twos and threes, and every kind of small
-deer and gazelle. The zebras come close enough for their stripes to be
-admired with the naked eye.
-
-We have arrived at Simba, "The Place of Lions," and there is no reason
-why the passengers should not see one, or even half-a-dozen, stalking
-across the plain, respectfully observed by lesser beasts. Indeed, in
-the early days it was the custom to stop and sally out upon the royal
-vermin whenever met with, and many the lion that has been carried back
-to the tender in triumph before the guard, or driver, or any one else
-could think of timetables or the block system, or the other
-inconvenient restrictions of a regular service. Farther up the line,
-in the twilight of the evening, we saw, not a hundred yards away, a
-dozen giraffes lollopping off among scattered trees, and at Nakuru six
-yellow lions walked in leisurely mood across the rails in broad
-daylight. Only the rhinoceros is absent, or rarely seen, and after one
-of his species had measured his strength, unsuccessfully, against an
-engine, he has confined himself morosely to the river-beds and to the
-undisturbed solitudes which, at a distance of two or three miles,
-everywhere engulf the Uganda Railway.
-
-Our carriage stopped upon a siding at Simba Station for three days, in
-order that we might more closely examine the local fauna. One of the
-best ways of shooting game in this part of the world, and certainly
-the easiest, is to get a trolly and run up and down the line. The
-animals are so used to the passage of trains and natives along the one
-great highway that they do not, as a rule, take much notice, unless
-the train or trolly stops, when their suspicions are at once aroused.
-The sportsmen should, therefore, slip off without allowing the vehicle
-or the rest of the party to stop, even for a moment; and in this way
-he will frequently find himself within two hundred and fifty or three
-hundred yards of his quarry, when the result will be governed solely
-by his skill, or want of skill, with the rifle.
-
-There is another method, which we tried on the second day in the hopes
-of finding a waterbuck, and that is, to prowl about among the trees
-and undergrowth of the river-bed. In a few minutes one may bury
-oneself in the wildest and savagest kind of forest. The air becomes
-still and hot. The sun seems in an instant to assert his just
-prerogative. The heat glitters over the open spaces of dry sand and
-pools of water. High grass, huge boulders, tangled vegetation,
-multitudes of thorn-bushes, obstruct the march, and the ground itself
-is scarped and guttered by the rains into the strangest formations.
-Around you, breast-high, shoulder-high, overhead, rises the African
-jungle. There is a brooding silence, broken only by the cry of a bird,
-or the scolding bark of baboons, and the crunching of one's own feet
-on the crumbling soil. We enter the haunt of the wild beasts; their
-tracks, their traces, the remnants of their repasts, are easily and
-frequently discovered. Here a lion has passed since the morning. There
-a rhinoceros has certainly been within the hour--perhaps within ten
-minutes. We creep and scramble through the game paths, anxiously,
-rifles at full cock, not knowing what each turn or step may reveal.
-The wind, when it blows at all, blows fitfully, now from this quarter,
-now from that; so that one can never be certain that it will not
-betray the intruder in these grim domains to the beast he seeks, or to
-some other, less welcome, before he sees him. At length, after two
-hours' scramble and scrape, we emerge breathless, as from another
-world, half astonished to find ourselves within a quarter of a mile of
-the railway line, with its trolly, luncheon, soda-water, ice, etc.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA]
-
-But if one would seek the rhinoceros in his open pastures, it is
-necessary to go farther afield; and accordingly we started the next
-morning, while the stars were still shining, to tramp over the
-ridges and hills which shut in the railway, and overlook remoter
-plains and valleys beyond. The grass grows high from ground
-honeycombed with holes and heaped with lava boulders, and it was
-daylight before we had stumbled our way to a spur commanding a wide
-view. Here we halted to search the country with field-glasses, and to
-brush off the ticks--detestable insects which infest all the resorts
-of the game in innumerable swarms, ready to spread any poison among
-the farmers' cattle. The glass disclosed nothing of consequence.
-Zebra, wildebeeste, and kongoni were to be seen in troops and herds,
-scattered near and far over the plains, but never a rhinoceros! So we
-trudged on, meaning to make a wide circle. For an hour we found
-nothing, and then, just as we were thinking of turning homewards
-before the sun should get his full power, three beautiful oryx, great,
-dark-coloured antelope with very long, corrugated horns, walked over
-the next brow on their way to water. Forthwith we set off in pursuit,
-crouching and creeping along the valley, and hoping to intercept them
-at the stream. Two passed safely over before we could reach our point.
-The third, seeing us, turned back and disappeared over the hill,
-where, a quarter of an hour later, he was stalked and wounded.
-
-It is always the wounded beast that leads the hunter into adventures.
-Till the quarry is hit every one walks delicately, avoids going the
-windward side of unexplored coverts, skirts a reed-bed cautiously,
-notices a convenient tree, looks often this way and that. But once the
-prize is almost within reach, you scramble along after it as fast as
-your legs will carry you, and never trouble about remoter
-contingencies, be they what they may. Our oryx led us a mile or more
-over rocky slopes, always promising and never giving a good chance for
-a shot, until at last he drew us round the shoulder of a hill--and
-there, abruptly, was the rhinoceros. The impression was extraordinary.
-A wide plain of white, withered grass stretched away to low hills
-broken with rocks. The rhinoceros stood in the middle of this plain,
-about five hundred yards away, in jet-black silhouette; not a
-twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the
-Stone Age. He was grazing placidly, and above him the vast snow dome
-of Kilimanjaro towered up in the clear air of morning to complete a
-scene unaltered since the dawn of the world.
-
-The manner of killing a rhinoceros in the open is crudely simple. It
-is thought well usually to select the neighbourhood of a good tree,
-_where one can be found_, as the centre of the encounter. If no tree
-is available, you walk up as near as possible to him from any side
-except the windward, and then shoot him in the head or the heart. If
-you hit a vital spot, as sometimes happens, he falls. If you hit him
-anywhere else, he charges blindly and furiously in your direction, and
-you shoot him again, or not, as the case may be.
-
-Bearing all this carefully in mind, we started out to do battle with
-Behemoth. We had advanced perhaps two hundred yards towards him, when
-a cry from one of the natives arrested us. We looked sharply to the
-right. There, not a hundred and fifty paces distant, under the shade
-of a few small trees, stood two other monsters. In a few more steps we
-should have tainted their wind and brought them up with a rush; and
-suppose this had happened, when perhaps we were already compromised
-with our first friend, and had him wounded and furious on our hands!
-Luckily warned in time, to creep back to the shoulder of the hill, to
-skirt its crest, and to emerge a hundred and twenty yards from this
-new objective was the work of a few minutes. We hurriedly agree to
-kill one first before touching the other. At such a range it is easy
-to hit so great a target; but the bull's-eye is small. I fired. The
-thud of a bullet which strikes with an impact of a ton and a quarter,
-tearing through hide and muscle and bone with the hideous energy of
-cordite, came back distinctly. The large rhinoceros started, stumbled,
-turned directly towards the sound and the blow, and then bore straight
-down upon us in a peculiar trot, nearly as fast as a horse's gallop,
-with an activity surprising in so huge a beast, and instinct with
-unmistakable purpose.
-
-  [Illustration: BRITISH EAST AFRICA]
-
-Great is the moral effect of a foe who advances. Everybody fired.
-Still the ponderous brute came on, as if he were invulnerable; as if
-he were an engine, or some great steam barge impervious to bullets,
-insensible to pain or fear. Thirty seconds more, and he will close. An
-impalpable curtain seems to roll itself up in the mind, revealing a
-mental picture, strangely lighted, yet very still, where objects have
-new values, and where a patch of white grass in the foreground,
-four or five yards away, seems to possess astonishing significance. It
-is there that the last two shots that yet remain before the resources
-of civilization are exhausted must be fired. There is time to reflect
-with some detachment that, after all, we were the aggressors; we it is
-who have forced the conflict by an unprovoked assault with murderous
-intent upon a peaceful herbivore; that if there is such a thing as
-right and wrong between man and beast--and who shall say there is
-not?--right is plainly on his side; there is time for this before I
-perceive that, stunned and dazed by the frightful concussions of
-modern firearms, he has swerved sharp to the right, and is now moving
-across our front, broadside on, at the same swift trot. More firing,
-and as I reload some one says he is down, and I fire instead at his
-smaller companion, already some distance off upon the plain. But one
-rhinoceros hunt is like another, except in its details, and I will not
-occupy the reader with the account of this new pursuit and death.
-Suffice it to say that, in all the elements of neurotic experience,
-such an encounter seems to me fully equal to half an hour's brisk
-skirmish at six or seven hundred yards--and with an important
-addition. In war there is a cause, there is duty, there is the hope
-of glory, for who can tell what may not be won before night? But here
-at the end is only a hide, a horn, and a carcase, over which the
-vultures have already begun to wheel.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-AROUND MOUNT KENYA
-
-
-The town of Nairobi, the capital of the East Africa Protectorate,
-stands on the base of wooded hills at the three hundred and
-twenty-seventh mile of the railroad. Originally chosen as a convenient
-place for assembling the extensive depots and shops necessary to the
-construction and maintenance of the railway, it enjoys no advantages
-as a residential site. The ground on which the town is built is low
-and swampy. The supply of water is indifferent, and the situation
-generally unhealthy. A mile farther on, however, upon the rising
-ground a finer position could have been found, and this quarter is
-already being occupied sparsely by Government buildings, hospitals,
-and barracks. It is now too late to change, and thus lack of foresight
-and of a comprehensive view leaves its permanent imprint upon the
-countenance of a new country.
-
-Our train traverses the Athi plains, more crowded perhaps with game
-than any other part of the line, and approaches swiftly the long rows
-of one-storeyed tin houses which constitute the town. Nairobi is a
-typical South African township. It might be Pietermaritzburg or
-Ladysmith of twenty years ago, before blue gum-trees and stone
-buildings had waxed and multiplied. In its present stage perhaps it
-resembles Buluwayo most. The population is also South African in its
-character and proportions. There are five hundred and eighty whites,
-three thousand one hundred Indians, and ten thousand five hundred and
-fifty African natives. The shops and stores are, however, much more
-considerable than these figures would appear to warrant, and are fully
-capable of supplying the varied needs of settlers and planters over a
-wide area. Nairobi is also the headquarters of a brigade of the King's
-African Rifles, the central office and depot of the Uganda Railway,
-and the seat of the Administration, with its numerous official
-_personnel_. The dinner of the Colonists' Association, to which I was
-invited, afforded the familiar, yet in Central Africa not
-unimpressive, spectacle of long rows of gentlemen in evening dress;
-while the ball given by the Governor to celebrate the King's birthday
-revealed a company gay with uniforms, and ladies in pretty dresses,
-assembled upon a spot where scarcely ten years before lions hunted
-undisturbed.
-
-  [Illustration: GUARD OF HONOUR, KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES.]
-
-Every white man in Nairobi is a politician; and most of them are
-leaders of parties. One would scarcely believe it possible, that a
-centre so new should be able to develop so many divergent and
-conflicting interests, or that a community so small should be able to
-give to each such vigorous and even vehement expression. There are
-already in miniature all the elements of keen political and racial
-discord, all the materials for hot and acrimonious debate. The white
-man _versus_ the black; the Indian _versus_ both; the settler as
-against the planter; the town contrasted with the country; the
-official class against the unofficial; the coast and the highlands;
-the railway administration and the Protectorate generally; the King's
-African Rifles and the East Africa Protectorate Police; all these
-different points of view, naturally arising, honestly adopted,
-tenaciously held, and not yet reconciled into any harmonious general
-conception, confront the visitor in perplexing disarray. Nor will he
-be wise to choose his part with any hurry. It is better to see
-something of the country, of its quality and extent, of its promises
-and forfeits, of its realities and illusions, before endeavouring to
-form even a provisional opinion.
-
-The snow-clad peak of Mount Kenya, a hundred miles away, can on a
-clear morning be easily seen from the slopes above Nairobi--a sharp,
-serrated summit veined with gleaming white. A road--passable, albeit
-unmetalled, for wagons and even a motor-car--runs thitherward by Fort
-Hall and across the Tana River. On the way there is much to see. A
-wild, ragged-looking, but fertile region, swelling into successive
-undulations and intersected by numerous gorges whose streams are
-shaded by fine trees, unfolds itself to the eye. Scattered about upon
-spacious estates of many thousand acres are a score or two of
-colonists, each gradually making himself a home and a living in his
-own way. One raises stock; another plants coffee, which grows so
-exuberantly in this generous soil as to threaten the speedy exhaustion
-of the plant. Here are ostriches, sheep, and cattle standing
-placidly together in one drove under the guardianship of a native
-child of eleven. There is a complete dairy farm, admirably equipped.
-One of the streams has been dammed effectively, and turbines are
-already in position to light Nairobi with electricity. Upon the banks
-of another there is talk of building an hotel.
-
-  [Illustration: BREAKDOWN ON THE WAY TO THIKA CAMP.]
-
-At one place I found a family of good people from Hightown,
-Manchester, grappling courageously with an enormous tract of ten
-thousand acres. Hard by, an old Boer, who has trekked the length of
-Africa to avoid the British flag, sits smoking stolidly by his grass
-house, reconciled to British rule at last by a few months' experience
-of paternal government in a neighbouring Protectorate. He has few
-cattle and less cash, but he holds decided views as to the whereabouts
-of lions; there, moreover, stands the heavy tilted wagon of the Great
-Trek--an ark of refuge when all else fails; and for the rest there is
-plenty of game, few people, and the family grows from year to year. In
-short, one sees a sparse, heterogeneous population engaged in varied
-labours; but everywhere hard work, straitened resources, hopes
-persisting through many disappointments, stout hospitable hearts, and
-the beginnings, at any rate, of progress.
-
-A camp has been prepared for me in a very beautiful spot at the
-juncture of the Chania and Thika rivers. Tents are pitched and grass
-shelters are erected in a smooth meadow. Southwards, a hundred yards
-away, a fine waterfall plunges downwards over enormous boulders amid
-tall, interlacing trees. The muffled roar of another rises from a deep
-ravine an equal distance to the north; and the Philistine computes,
-with a frown, four thousand horse-power expending itself upon the
-picturesque.
-
-Nothing causes the East African colonist more genuine concern than
-that his guest should not have been provided with a lion. The
-knowledge preys upon his mind until it becomes a veritable obsession.
-He feels some deep reproach is laid upon his own hospitality and the
-reputation of his adopted country. How to find, and, having found, to
-kill, a lion is the unvarying theme of conversation; and every place
-and every journey is judged by a simple standard--"lions or no lions."
-At the Thika camp, then, several gentlemen, accomplished in this
-important sport, have come together with ponies, rifles, Somalis,
-and all the other accessories. Some zebras and kongoni have been
-killed and left lying in likely-looking places to attract the lions;
-and at 4 a.m., rain or shine, we are to go and look for them.
-
-  [Illustration: SHOOTING PARTY AT THIKA CAMP.
-    From left to right--Capt. Sadler, Major Riddell, Mr. Marsh,
-    Marquis Gandolfi-Hornyold, Hon. K. Dundas, Mr. Percival, Mr.
-    Churchill, Mr. D. J. Wilson.]
-
-The young Englishman, be he officer or settler in the East African
-Highlands, cuts a hardy figure. His clothes are few and far between: a
-sun hat, a brown flannel shirt with sleeves cut above the elbow and
-open to the chest, a pair of thin khaki knickerbockers cut short five
-inches--_at least_--above the knee, boots, and a pair of putties
-comprise the whole attire. Nothing else is worn. The skin, exposed to
-sun, thorns, and insects, becomes almost as dark as that of the
-natives, and so hardened that it is nothing to ride all day with bare
-knees on the saddle; a truly Spartan discipline from which at least
-the visitor may be excused.
-
-This is the way in which they hunt lions. First find the lion, lured
-to a kill, driven from a reed-bed, or kicked up incontinently by the
-way. Once viewed he must never be lost sight of for a moment. Mounted
-on ponies of more or less approved fidelity, three or four daring
-Britons or Somalis gallop after him, as in India they ride the
-pig--that is to say, neck or nothing--across rocks, holes, tussocks,
-nullahs, through high grass, thorn scrub, undergrowth, turning him,
-shepherding him, heading him this way and that until he is brought to
-bay. For his part the lion is no seeker of quarrels; he is often
-described in accents of contempt. His object throughout is to save his
-skin. If, being unarmed, you meet six or seven lions unexpectedly, all
-you need do--according to my information--is to speak to them sternly
-and they will slink away, while you throw a few stones at them to
-hurry them up. All the highest authorities recommend this.
-
-But when pursued from place to place, chased hither and thither by the
-wheeling horsemen, the naturally mild disposition of the lion becomes
-embittered. First he begins to growl and roar at his enemies, in order
-to terrify them, and make them leave him in peace. Then he darts
-little short charges at them. Finally, when every attempt at peaceful
-persuasion has failed, he pulls up abruptly and offers battle. Once he
-has done this, he will run no more. He means to fight, and to fight
-to the death. He means to charge home; and when a lion, maddened with
-the agony of a bullet-wound, distressed by long and hard pursuit, or,
-most of all, a lioness in defence of her cubs, is definitely committed
-to the charge, death is the only possible conclusion. Broken limbs,
-broken jaws, a body raked from end to end, lungs pierced through and
-through, entrails torn and protruding--none of these count. It must be
-death--instant and utter--for the lion, or down goes the man, mauled
-by septic claws and fetid teeth, crushed and crunched, and poisoned
-afterwards to make doubly sure. Such are the habits of this cowardly
-and wicked animal.
-
-It is at the stage when the lion has been determinedly "bayed" that
-the sportsman from London is usually introduced upon the scene. He
-has, we may imagine, followed the riders as fast as the inequalities
-of the ground, his own want of training, and the burden of a heavy
-rifle will allow him. He arrives at the spot where the lion is
-cornered in much the same manner as the matador enters the arena, the
-others standing aside deferentially, ready to aid him or divert the
-lion. If his bullet kills, he is, no doubt, justly proud. If it only
-wounds, the lion charges the nearest horseman. For forty yards the
-charge of a lion is swifter than the gallop of a racehorse. The
-riders, therefore, usually avoid waiting within that distance. But
-sometimes they do not; or sometimes the lion sees the man who has shot
-him; or sometimes all sorts of things happen which make good
-stories--afterwards.
-
-After this general description no particular example is required, and
-the reader need not be disappointed to learn that our lion escaped
-what, no doubt, would have been his certain destruction by the
-breaking of a single link in the regular chain of circumstances. He
-was not found upon the kill. His place was taken by a filthy hyena,
-and it was not until we had beaten thoroughly for two hours more than
-three miles of reed-bed that we saw him--a splendid great yellow cat,
-looking as big as a bullock--bounding away up the opposite hill. Off
-started our riders like falcons; but alas!--if "alas!" is the proper
-word--a deep and impassable nullah intervened, necessitating large
-circuits and long delays; so that the lion got clean away out of sight
-of all men, and we were reduced to the slow and tedious process of
-tracking him footprint by footprint through waving grass, breast-high,
-hour after hour, always expecting to tread on his tail, and
-always--disappointed!
-
-  [Illustration: THE BANDA AT THIKA CAMP.]
-
-  [Illustration: COLONEL WILSON'S LION.]
-
-In the afternoon I had to ride to Fort Hall, where there was to be a
-great gathering of Kikuyu chiefs and thousands of their warriors and
-women. The country is much the same as that traversed on the previous
-day, but greener, smoother, and more pleasant-looking. Fort Hall is
-not a fort in any military sense, but the Commissioner's house with a
-ditch round it, a jail, a few houses, and an Indian bazaar. The
-station is hardly well selected, being perched up on a hill out of the
-reach of any railway--and unhealthy nevertheless. The whole place was
-crowded with natives in their most highly ornamented and elaborate
-nudity, waiting for the war-dance.
-
-This ceremony was performed the next morning. Long before daylight the
-beating of drums, the blowing of horns, and the rhythm of loud, yet
-not altogether unmelodious chanting awakened the weariest sleeper; and
-when, at eight o'clock the _indaba_ began, the whole space in front of
-the fort was densely packed with naked, painted, plumed, and gyrating
-humanity, which seethed continually to and fro, and divided from time
-to time as particular chiefs advanced with their followers, or as
-gifts of struggling sheep and bulls were brought forward. In his war
-dress the Kikuyu, and, still more, the Masai warrior, is a striking,
-if not impressive, figure. His hair and body are smeared with the red
-earth of his native land, compounded into a pigment by mixture with
-the slimy juice of the castor-oil plant, which abounds. Fantastic
-headdresses, some of ostrich feathers, others of metal or leather;
-armlets and leglets of twisted wire; stripes of white clay rubbed
-across the red pigment; here and there an old pot-hat or some European
-garment, incongruously contrasted with leopard-skins and bulls' horns;
-broad, painted cow-hide shields, and spears with soft iron blades
-nearly four feet long, complete a grotesque and indecorous picture.
-Still, there is a sleek grace about these active forms--bronze statues
-but for their frippery--which defeats all their own efforts to make
-themselves hideous. The chiefs, however, succeed in reducing
-themselves to regular guys. Any old, cast-off khaki jacket or tattered
-pair of trousers; any fragment of weather-stained uniform, a
-battered sun-helmet with a feather stuck lamely into the top of it, a
-ragged umbrella, is sufficient to induce them to abandon the ostrich
-plume and the leopard-skin kaross. Among their warriors in ancient
-gear they look ridiculous and insignificant--more like the commonest
-kind of native sweeper than the hereditary rulers of some powerful and
-numerous tribe.
-
-  [Illustration: "DURBAR" AT KIAMBU.]
-
-It is unquestionably an advantage that the East African negro should
-develop a taste for civilized attire. In no more useful and innocent
-direction could his wants be multiplied and his desires excited, and
-it is by this process of assimilation that his life will gradually be
-made more complicated, more varied, less crudely animal, and himself
-raised to a higher level of economic utility. But it would surely be
-worth while to organize and guide this new motive force within
-graceful and appropriate limits. A Government runs risks when it
-intrudes upon the domain of fashion; but when a veritable abyss of
-knowledge and science separates the rulers from the ruled, when
-authority is dealing with a native race still plunged in its primary
-squalour, without religion, without clothes, without morals, but
-willing to emerge and capable of emerging, such risks may fairly be
-accepted; and the Government might well prescribe or present suitable
-robes for ceremonial occasions to the chiefs, and gradually encourage,
-and more gradually still enforce, their adoption throughout the
-population.
-
-After the dance it had been arranged that I should go as far as the
-bank of the Tana River to see the view of Mount Kenya, and then return
-to the Thika camp before night. But when the whole splendid panorama
-of the trans-Tana country opened upon us, I could not bring myself to
-stop short of the promised land; and, casting away material cares of
-luncheon and baggage, I decided to ride through to Embo, twenty-eight
-miles from Fort Hall, and our most advanced post in this direction. We
-crossed the Tana by a ferry which travels along a rope under the
-impulsion of the current. The ponies swam the deep, strong, sixty-yard
-stream of turbulent red water. On the farther bank the country is
-really magnificent in quality and aspect. The centre of the picture is
-always Mount Kenya; but there never was a mountain which made so
-little of its height. It rises by long gentle slopes, more like a
-swelling of ground than a peak, from an immense upland plain, and so
-gradual is the acclivity that, but for the sudden outcrop of snow-clad
-rock which crowns the summit, no one would believe it over eighteen
-thousand feet high. It is its gradual rise that imparts so great a
-value to this noble mountain; for about its enormous base and upon its
-slopes, traversed by hundreds of streams of clear perennial water,
-there grows, or may grow, in successive, concentric belts, every kind
-of crop and forest known in the world, from the Equator to the Arctic
-Circle. The landscape is superb. In beauty, in fertility, in verdure,
-in the coolness of the air, in the abundance of running water, in its
-rich red soil, in the variety of its vegetation, the scenery about
-Kenya far surpasses anything I have ever seen in India or South
-Africa, and challenges comparison with the fairest countries of
-Europe. Indeed, looking at it with an eye fresh from Italy, I was most
-powerfully reminded of the upper valleys of the Po.
-
-We rode on all day through this delicious country, along a well-kept
-native road, smooth enough for a bicycle, except where it crossed
-stream after stream on primitive bridges. On every side the soil was
-cultivated and covered with the crops of a large and industrious
-population. It is only a year since regular control was established
-beyond the Tana, not without some bloodshed, by a small military
-expedition. Yet so peaceful are the tribes--now that their intertribal
-fighting has been stopped--that white officers ride freely about among
-their villages without even carrying a pistol. All the natives met
-with on the road were armed with sword and spear, and all offered us
-their customary salutations, while many came up smiling and holding
-out long, moist, delicate-looking hands for me to shake, till I had
-quite enough of it. Indeed, the only dangers of the road appear to be
-from the buffaloes which infest the country, and after nightfall place
-the traveller in real peril. We were very glad for this reason, and
-also because we had eaten nothing but a banana each since early
-morning, to see at last on the top of the next hill the buildings of
-Embo just as the sun sank beneath the horizon.
-
-Embo is a model station, only five months old--one small, three-roomed
-house for the District Commissioner, one for the military officer, an
-office, and a tiny jail, all in good dressed stone; two Indian shops
-in corrugated iron; and seven or eight long rows of beehive grass huts
-for a hundred and fifty soldiers and police. Two young white
-officers--a civilian and a soldier--preside from this centre of
-authority, far from the telegraph, over the peace and order of an area
-as large as an English county, and regulate the conduct and fortunes
-of some seventy-five thousand natives, who have never previously known
-or acknowledged any law but violence or terror. They were uncommonly
-surprised to see four horsemen come riding up the zigzag path to their
-dwelling; but their astonishment was no bar to their hospitality, and
-we were soon rewarded for our journey and our fasting in most
-excellent fashion.
-
-I had just time before the darkness flooded the land and blotted out
-the mighty mountain and its wreaths of fire-tipped cloud to walk round
-this station. The jail consisted of a single room, barred and bolted.
-Inside not a prisoner was to be seen. I inquired where they were, and
-was shown two little groups seated round fires in the open. They were
-chained together by a light running chain, and after a hard day's
-miscellaneous work about the station they chatted peacefully as they
-cooked and ate their evening meal. The prison was only their shelter
-for the night--primitive arrangements, no doubt, but are they more
-barbarous than the hideous, long-drawn precision of an English convict
-establishment?
-
-The African protectorates now administered by the Colonial Office
-afford rare scope for the abilities of earnest and intelligent youth.
-A man of twenty-five may easily find himself ruling a large tract of
-country and a numerous population. The Government is too newly
-established to have developed the highly centralized and closely
-knit--perhaps too closely knit--hierarchy and control of the Indian
-system. It is far too poor to afford a complete Administration. The
-District Commissioner must judge for himself, and be judged upon his
-actions. Very often--for tropical diseases make many gaps in the
-ranks, and men must often return to England to recruit their
-health--the officer is not a District Commissioner at all, but a
-junior acting in his stead or in some one's stead, sometimes for a
-year or more. To him there come day by day the natives of the
-district with all their troubles, disputes, and intrigues. Their
-growing appreciation of the impartial justice of the tribunal leads
-them increasingly to carry all sorts of cases to the District
-Commissioner's Court. When they are ill they come and ask for
-medicine. When they are wounded in their quarrels it is to the white
-man they go to have the injuries dressed. Disease and accident have to
-be combated without professional skill. Courts of justice and forms of
-legality must be maintained without lawyers. Taxes have to be
-collected by personal influence. Peace has to be kept with only a
-shadow of force.
-
-All these great opportunities of high service, and many others, are
-often and daily placed within the reach of men in their twenties--on
-the whole with admirable results. It was most pleasant to hear with
-what comprehension and sympathy the officers of the East Africa
-Protectorate speak about their work; and how they regard themselves as
-the guardians of native interests and native rights against those who
-only care about exploiting the country and its people. No one can
-travel even for a little while among the Kikuyu tribes without
-acquiring a liking for these light-hearted, tractable, if brutish
-children, or without feeling that they are capable of being instructed
-and raised from their present degradation. There are more than four
-million aboriginals in East Africa alone. Their care imposes a grave,
-and I think an inalienable, responsibility upon the British
-Government. It will be an ill day for these native races when their
-fortunes are removed from the impartial and august administration of
-the Crown and abandoned to the fierce self-interest of a small white
-population. Such an event is no doubt very remote. Yet the speculator,
-the planter, and the settler are knocking at the door. There are many
-things which ought to be done--good, wise, scientific, and justly
-profitable. If the Government cannot find the money to develop the
-natural economic strength of the country, to make its communications,
-to start its industries, can it with any reason bar the field to
-private enterprise? Can it prevent the ingress of a white population?
-Ought it to do so, and for how long? What is to happen when there are
-thirty thousand white people in East Africa, instead of the three
-thousand or so who make so much stir at the present time? Perhaps the
-course of these chapters will lead us back again to these questions.
-I am very doubtful whether it will supply their answers.
-
-We have a discussion in the evening on a much more manageable subject.
-The District Commissioner at Embo has been ordered by the High Court
-of the Protectorate to retry a criminal case which he had settled some
-months before, on account of an informality in the report of the
-proceedings, which had excited the attention of the revising
-authority. It is pointed out that neither the accused nor his
-fellow-natives understand, or can ever be made to understand, the
-meaning of this repetition of a trial; that they are bewildered; that
-their confidence in their personal ruler may be weakened; that endless
-practical difficulties--for instance, the collection of witnesses
-scattered about in distant villages, and the disquietude caused to
-them by a second summons from the strange, mysterious power called
-"Government"--arise out of an error which only a lawyer could detect,
-and which only appears upon a piece of paper. "Some one," quaintly
-says a young civil officer, who has ridden over with us, "forgot to
-say 'Bo!' in the right place." I ask the nature of the "Bo!" It is
-certainly substantial. No mention was made in the report of the trial
-that the accused was given the opportunity of cross-examining the
-hostile witnesses. Therefore, although this was in fact done, the
-trial is held to be no trial, and ordered anew.
-
-Now, here is again a balancing of disadvantages; but without here
-examining whether a simple release would not have been better than a
-retrial, I find myself plainly on the side of the "Bo!" There is
-scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the
-exact--I will even say the pedantic--observance of the regular forms
-by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.
-Those forms are designed to protect the prisoner, not merely from the
-consequences of honest forgetfulness in his judges, but from
-systematic carelessness and possible oppression. Once they are allowed
-to be loosely construed the whole system of civilized jurisprudence
-begins to crumble, and in its place there is gradually erected a
-rough-and-ready practice dependent entirely for its efficiency and
-fairness upon the character and intelligence of the individual
-responsible. Necessary as it is to trust to personal authority in the
-control of native races of the lowest standard, it is not less
-necessary to assign well-marked limits to that authority, and, above
-all, to place the simple primary rights of accused persons to what we
-at home are accustomed to call a "fair trial" outside its scope. Nor
-does the administrator really suffer in native eyes from the
-apparition into his domain of superior authority. The tribesmen see
-that their ruler--to them all-powerful, the man of soldiers and
-police, of punishment and reward--is himself obedient to some remote
-external force, and they wonder what that mysterious force can be and
-marvel dimly at its greatness. Authority is enhanced and not impaired
-by the suggestion of immense reserves behind and above the immediate
-ruler--strong though he be. But upon this, as upon other matters, it
-is not necessary for every one to be of the same opinion; and even
-lawyers are not always wise.
-
-On our homeward ride in the early morning we passed a Swahili village.
-These Mohammedans have penetrated deeply and established themselves
-widely in the Eastern parts of Africa. Armed with a superior religion
-and strengthened with Arab blood, they maintain themselves without
-difficulty at a far higher level than the pagan aboriginals among
-whom they live. Their language has become a sort of _lingua franca_
-over all this part of the world. As traders they are welcomed, as
-fighting men they are respected, and as sorcerers they are feared by
-all the tribes. Their Khan had supplied us with bananas on the
-previous day with many expressions of apology that, as we were
-unexpected, he had no "European food." To-day all this was repaired.
-The men of the village, to the number of perhaps fifty, walked
-sedately out to meet us, their long white smocks in striking contrast
-to the naked, painted barbarians who surrounded them. The Khan led up
-a white Arab stallion, of vicious temper and tripling gait, to replace
-my wearied pony; and then produced tea and a familiar tin of mixed
-biscuits, which he had over-night sent runners to procure, that his
-hospitality might incur no reproach.
-
-While we were eating and parleying with the Khan there arrived on the
-scene a mounted Kikuyu chief, with chair, umbrella, khaki helmet, and
-other insignia, and attended by about a hundred warriors in full
-feather. In order to show their respect they began at once their
-war-dance, and we left them a quarter of an hour later still circling
-and hopping to and fro with quivering spears and nodding plumes to
-their monotonous chorus, while the white-robed Swahilis stood gravely
-by and bade us farewell in the dignified manners of the East. I
-reflected upon the interval that separates these two races from each
-other, and on the centuries of struggle that the advance had cost, and
-I wondered whether that interval was wider and deeper than that which
-divides the modern European from them both; but without arriving at
-any sure conclusion.
-
-Our journey to Embo had been so delightful that I was not inclined to
-hanker after rejected alternatives. But when we drove in to the Thika
-camp as the sun was setting, tired out by fifty miles of road, the
-first spectacle which saluted my eyes was a lion's skin spread out
-upon the ground and Colonel Wilson engaged in sprinkling it with
-arsenical powder. Then we were told the tale, which in brief was that
-they were driving a long reed-bed, when the lion sprang out and ran
-obliquely across the line of beaters. Wilson fired and the lion
-bounded back into the reeds, whence stones, fires, shoutings, shots,
-and all other disturbances failed to move him. Whereupon, after two
-hours, being impatient and venturesome, they had marched in upon him
-shoulder to shoulder, to find him, fortunately, quite dead.
-
-My friends endeavoured to console me by the news that lions had now
-been heard of in two other places, and that we should be sure to find
-one in the morning; and next day, after we had driven three miles of
-reeds, it seemed that their hopes were well founded, for a large
-animal of some kind could be seen moving swiftly to and fro under
-cover, and every one declared this must be the lion. At last only one
-more patch of reeds remained to beat, and we took up our positions,
-finger on trigger, about sixty yards from the farther edge of it,
-while the beaters, raising an astonishing tumult with yells and the
-beating of tin cans, plunged boldly in. _Parturiunt montes_--out
-rushed two enormous wart-hogs. Let no one reproach the courage of the
-pig. These great fierce boars, driven from their last shelter, charged
-out in gallant style--tusks gleaming, tails perpendicular--and met a
-fate prepared for a king. With these and another which we galloped
-down and pistolled on the way home I had to be content, and can now,
-so far as I am concerned, sadly write, in the expressive words of
-Reuter, "No lions were 'bagged.'"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA
-
-
-"Colour" is already the dominant question at Nairobi. "We mean to make
-East Africa a white man's country," cries, in strident tones, the
-Colonists' Association on every occasion. Truly a respectable and
-impressive policy; but one which seems, at first sight, rather
-difficult to achieve in a land where there are, so far, fewer than two
-thousand five hundred whites and more than four million black
-aboriginals. Can East Africa ever become a white man's country? Can
-even the Highlands, with their cool and buoyant breezes and temperate,
-unchanging climate, become a white man's country? Never, certainly, in
-the sense that Canada, or, indeed, the United Kingdom, are white men's
-countries--that is to say, countries inhabited wholly by white people
-and subsisting upon an economic basis of white unskilled labour.
-
-It is scarcely worth while even to imagine the Highlands of East
-Africa denuded of their native inhabitants and occupied solely by
-Europeans. Such an idea is utterly impossible. Whatever may be the
-increase in the white population in the future, it is safe to say that
-it will be far more than counter-balanced by the multiplication of the
-natives, as they are guarded against famine and prevented from civil
-war. But were such a solution possible, it would be almost the last
-thing in the world desired by those who clamour for "a white man's
-country." For observe it is not against the black aboriginal that the
-prejudices and interests of the white settler or trader are arrayed.
-The African, it is conceded, is welcome to stay in his own country. No
-economic competition has yet arisen or is likely to arise between him
-and the new-comers. Their spheres of activity lie wholly apart, for
-the white man absolutely refuses to do black man's work; not for that
-harsh toil does he exile himself from the land of his birth; while the
-native could not, in his present state of development, displace the
-white man in skilled employments and the superintendence and the
-organization of industry--even if he would--and nothing is farther
-from his ambitions.
-
-It is the brown man who is the rival. The European has neither the
-wish nor the power to constitute a white proletariat in countries like
-East Africa. In his view the blacks should be the private soldiers of
-the army, but the non-commissioned officers and the commanders must be
-white. This should not be dismissed as a mere assertion of racial
-arrogance. It is an obstinate fact. It is already a grave defect for a
-community to found itself upon the manual labour of an inferior race,
-and many are the complications and perils that spring therefrom. But
-what of the second storey? If there is to be any kind of white society
-dwelling together year after year within the standards of life and
-comfort to which Europeans have universally been accustomed to aspire,
-and largely to attain, this middle stage in the economic system must
-provide that white society with the means of earning--as professional
-men, as planters, merchants, traders, farmers, bankers, overseers,
-contractors, builders, engineers, accountants, clerks--a living for
-themselves and their families. And here strikes in the Asiatic. In
-every single employment of this class, his power of subsisting upon a
-few shillings a month, his industry, his thrift, his sharp business
-aptitudes give him the economic superiority, and if economic
-superiority is to be the final rule--as it has never been and never
-will be in the history of the world--there is not a single employment
-of this middle class, from which he will not, to a very large extent,
-clear the white man, as surely and as remorselessly as the brown rat
-extirpated the black from British soil.
-
-Then what remains? What sort of social organizations shall we be
-building up with so much thought and labour in these new lands under
-the British Crown? There is already no white working class. There is
-to be no white middle class. Room is left only for the capitalist
-_pure and simple_--if one may so describe him. A vast army of African
-labourers, officered by educated Indians or Chinese, and directed by a
-few individuals of diverse nationalities employing cosmopolitan
-capital--that is the nightmare which haunts the white population of
-South Africa, and at which what there is of a white population in East
-Africa is already shrieking vigorously.
-
-Yet hear the other side. How stands the claim of the British Indian?
-His rights as a human being, his rights as a British subject, are
-equally engaged. It was the Sikh soldier who bore an honourable part
-in the conquest and pacification of these East African countries. It
-is the Indian trader who, penetrating and maintaining himself in all
-sorts of places to which no white man would go or in which no white
-man could earn a living, has more than any one else developed the early
-beginnings of trade and opened up the first slender means of
-communication. It was by Indian labour that the one vital railway on
-which everything else depends was constructed. It is the Indian banker
-who supplies perhaps the larger part of the capital yet available for
-business and enterprise, and to whom the white settlers have not
-hesitated to recur for financial aid. The Indian was here long before
-the first British official. He may point to as many generations of
-useful industry on the coast and inland as the white settlers--especially
-the most recently-arrived contingents from South Africa (the loudest
-against him of all)--can count years of residence. Is it possible for
-any Government with a scrap of respect for honest dealing between man
-and man, to embark upon a policy of deliberately squeezing out the
-native of India from regions in which he has established himself under
-every security of public faith? Most of all must we ask, is such a
-policy possible to the Government which bears sway over three hundred
-millions of our Indian Empire?
-
-We are in presence of one of those apparently hopeless antagonisms of
-interests which baffle and dispirit all who are concerned in their
-adjustment. And these questions are not confined to East Africa or to
-South Africa. A whole series of new problems has arisen, and will grow
-graver and larger as the immediate history of the British Empire
-unfolds. They erect themselves upon a field almost wholly unstudied,
-and familiar only by the prejudices which in every direction obstruct
-movement and view. The entry of the Asiatic as labourer, trader, and
-capitalist into competition in industry and enterprise not only
-_with_, but _in_, the Western world is a new fact of first importance.
-Cheap, swift, easy means of communication, the establishment of peace
-and order over land and sea, the ever-growing inter-dependence of all
-men and all countries upon one another, have given wings to Asiatic
-commercial ambition and rendered Asiatic manual labour fluid, as it
-has never before been fluid since the beginning of things.
-
-Unless these new elements in the economic life of mankind can be
-scientifically and harmoniously controlled and assimilated, great and
-novel dangers menace alike the Asiatic and the European he supplants.
-On the one hand we see the possible exploitation under various
-unhealthy conditions of immense masses of Asiatic labour, to the moral
-injury of the employer and to the degradation and suffering of the
-employed; on the other the overturn of the standards of living
-laboriously achieved or long obstinately battled for among Europeans.
-Superadded to these we must foresee the confusion of blood, of
-manners, of morals, amounting, where operative upon any extensive
-scale, almost to the disintegration of the existing order of society.
-And behind--very close behind--lie the appeals to force, by mobs or
-Empires, to decide in a brutal fashion the brutal question which of
-two sets of irreconcilable interests shall prevail. It is not easy to
-measure the degree of political instability that will be introduced
-into international relations, when the subjects of a powerful
-military and naval State are continually exposed to penal legislation
-and open violence, and into private life when the white artisan is
-invited to acquiesce in his own extinction, in virtue of laws which he
-himself controls, by a competitor whom, he believes, he could strike
-down with his hands.
-
-Yet the Asiatic, and here I also include the African native, has
-immense services to render and energies to contribute to the happiness
-and material progress of the world. There are spacious lands whose
-promise can never be realized, there are unnumbered harvests which can
-never be garnered, without his active co-operation. There are roads
-and railways and reservoirs which only he can make. There are mines
-and forests which will slumber for ever without his aid. The mighty
-continent of tropical Africa lies open to the colonizing and
-organizing capacities of the East. All those new products which modern
-industry insistently demands are offered in measureless abundance to
-the West--if only we could solve the Sphinx's riddle in its newest
-form.
-
-And is it after all beyond our reach to provide, if not a perfect, at
-any rate a practical answer? There ought to be no insuperable
-difficulty, in the present state of political knowledge and social
-organization, in assigning different spheres to the external activity
-of different races. The Great Powers have partitioned Africa
-territorially; is it beyond the wit of man to divide it economically?
-The co-operation of many different kinds of men is needed for the
-cultivation of such a noble estate. Is it impossible to regulate in
-full and intricate detail the conditions under which that co-operation
-shall take place? Here white men can live and thrive; there they
-cannot. Here is a task for one, there the opportunity of another. The
-world is big enough. [I write as the stream of the Nile bears me
-between the immense spaces of beautiful, fertile, unpopulated country
-that lie north of the Albert Lake.] There is plenty of room for all.
-Why cannot we settle it fairly?
-
-It must be noted that the question of Asiatic immigration presents
-itself to the Imperial point of view in several quite distinct forms.
-There are, first of all, colonies which stand on the basis of a white
-proletariat, and whose inhabitants, rich and poor, employers and
-employed, are all Europeans. The right of such colonies to forbid the
-entry of large numbers of Asiatics, and to preserve themselves from
-the racial chaos and economic disturbance inseparable from such
-immigration, cannot be denied, although its exercise ought no doubt to
-be governed by various prudential and other considerations. But these
-colonies differ markedly from those where the mass of the population
-is not white, but black. Again, there are colonies which possess
-responsible government, and where the number of the white middle-class
-inhabitants very largely exceeds the Asiatic community. It is evident
-that these stand in a wholly different position from that of places
-like the tropical Protectorates of East and West Africa.
-
-Indeed, it may be contended that the very fact that the native of
-British India will undoubtedly, wisely or unwisely, rightly or
-wrongly, be refused access in any large numbers to several South
-African and all Australian Colonies by their respective Governments,
-makes it all the more desirable that the Imperial Government should
-afford in the tropical Protectorates outlet and scope to the
-enterprise and colonizing capacity of Hindustan. And, as I have
-written, these countries are big enough for all. There is no reason
-why those Highland areas which promise the white man a home and a
-career, and where alone he can live in comfort, should not, as a
-matter of practical administration, be in the main reserved for him.
-Nor, on the other hand, why the Asiatic, if only he does not teach the
-African natives evil ways--a contingency which must not be
-forgotten--should not be encouraged to trade and settle as he will in
-the enormous regions of tropical fertility to which he is naturally
-adapted. Somewhere in this direction--I do not wish to dogmatize--the
-immediate course of sound policy would seem to lie, and, guided by the
-lights of science and tolerance, we may easily find it.
-
-But the course of these reflections has carried me a good deal farther
-than the politics of Nairobi would seem to justify; and I hasten to
-return to the question with which I started: "Can the Highlands of
-East Africa be made 'a white man's country'?" Let us examine this by a
-fresh process. As one rides or marches through the valleys and across
-the wide plateaux of these uplands, braced by their delicious air,
-listening to the music of their streams, and feasting the eye upon
-their natural wealth and beauty, a sense of bewilderment overcomes the
-mind. How is it they have never become the home of some superior race,
-prosperous, healthy, and free? Why is it that, now a railway has
-opened the door and so much has been published about them, there has
-not been one furious river of immigration from the cramped and
-insanitary jungle-slums of Europe? Why, most of all, are those who
-have come--the pioneers, the men of energy and adventure, of large
-ambitions and strong hands--why are they in so many cases only just
-keeping their heads above water? Why should complaint and discontent
-and positive discouragement be so general among this limited class?
-
-I have always experienced a feeling of devout thankfulness never to
-have possessed a square yard of that perverse commodity called "land."
-But I will confess that, travelling in the East African Highlands for
-the first time in my life, I have learned what the sensation of
-land-hunger is like. We may repress, but we cannot escape, the desire
-to peg out one of these fair and wide estates, with all the rewards
-they offer to industry and inventiveness in the open air. Yet all
-around are men possessing thousands of fertile acres, with mountains
-and rivers and shady trees, acquired for little or nothing, all
-struggling, all fretful, nervous, high-strung, many disappointed, some
-despairing, some smashed.
-
-What are the true lineaments concealed behind the veil of boundless
-promise in which this land is shrouded? Are they not stamped with
-mockery? Is not the eye that regards you fierce as well as bright?
-"When I first saw this country," said a colonist to me, "I fell in
-love with it. I had seen all the best of Australia. I had prospered in
-New Zealand. I knew South Africa. I thought at last I had struck
-'God's own country.' I wrote letters to all my friends urging them to
-come. I wrote a series of articles in the newspapers praising the
-splendours of its scenery and the excellence of its climate. Before
-the last of the articles appeared my capital was nearly expended, my
-fences had been trampled down by troops of zebra, my imported stock
-had perished, my title-deeds were still blocked in the Land Office,
-and I myself had nearly died of a malignant fever. Since then I have
-left others to extol the glories of East Africa."
-
-These second thoughts err, no doubt, as much on the side of
-extravagant depression as the first impression was over-sanguine. But
-that there is a rude reverse to the East African medal is a fact which
-cannot be disputed, and which ought not, in the interests either of
-the immigrant or of the country to be concealed. It is still quite
-unproved that a European can make even the Highlands of East Africa
-his permanent home--that is to say, that he can live there without
-sensible degeneration for fifteen or twenty years at a stretch without
-ever returning to the temperate zones; still less that he can breed
-and rear families through several generations. The exhilaration of the
-air must not lead people to forget that an altitude of from five to
-eight thousand feet above the sea-level is an unusual condition,
-producing results, not yet ascertained, upon the nervous system, the
-brain, and the heart. Its coolness can never remove the fact that we
-are upon the Equator. Although the skies look so familiar and kindly
-with their white fleecy clouds and passing showers, the direct ray of
-the sun--almost vertical at all seasons of the year--strikes down on
-man and beast alike, and woe to the white man whom he finds
-uncovered! Although sheep and oxen multiply so rapidly, although
-crossing them with imported stock produces in each generation
-astonishing improvements in quality, they are subject to many perils
-little understood and often fatal. And if the landscape recalls to the
-pensive traveller the peaceful beauties of gentler climes at home, let
-him remember that it nurses with blithe fecundity poisonous reptiles,
-and pest-spreading insects, and terrible beasts of prey.
-
-There is no reason, however, for doubting that modern science
-possesses, or will discover, the means of eradicating or mitigating
-many of these evils. As the development of the country and the
-scientific investigation of tropical agriculture and tropical disease
-proceed, the difficulties which beset the early settler will gradually
-be removed. He will learn how to clothe and house himself; what to
-plant, what to breed, and what to avoid. The spread of East Coast
-fever, now carried by the ticks from one animal to another, and
-carried by the infected animals from one district to another, will be
-arrested, and controlled by a proper system of wire-fencing and
-quarantine. Remedies will be discovered against the various diseases
-which attack sheep or horses. Zebra, rhinoceros, buffalo, and other
-picturesque and fascinating nuisances will be driven from or
-exterminated within the settled areas, and confined to the ample
-reserves of uninhabited land. The slow but steady growth of a white
-population will create a market for local agricultural produce. The
-powerfully equipped Scientific Departments, the Veterinary and
-Forestry Departments, and the Department of Agriculture newly
-established on a considerable scale, will be able to guide and assist
-the enterprise of the new-comer, and save him from repeating the
-ill-starred experiments of the pioneer. Roads will improve, and
-railways and mono-rail tramways will extend. Step by step life and the
-means of living will become easier and more secure. Still it will not
-be proved that the pure-bred European can rear his children under the
-Equatorial sun and at an elevation of more than six thousand feet; and
-till that is proved "the white man's country" will remain a white
-man's dream.
-
-I have written of Europeans and Asiatics. What of the African? About
-four millions of these dark folk are comprised within the districts
-of the East Africa Protectorate which are actually or partially
-administered. Many more lie beyond those wide and advancing
-boundaries. What is to be their part in shaping the future of their
-country? It is, after all, _their_ Africa. What are they going to do
-for it, and what is it going to do for them? "The natives," says the
-planter, "evince a great reluctance to work, especially to work
-regularly." "They must be made to work," say others. "Made to work for
-whom?" we innocently ask. "For us, of course," is the ready answer;
-"what did you think we meant?" And here we run into another herd of
-rhinoceros questions--awkward, thick-skinned, and horned, with a short
-sight, an evil temper, and a tendency to rush blindly up wind upon any
-alarm. Is the native idle? Does he not keep himself and pay his taxes?
-Or does he loll at his ease while his three or four wives till the
-soil, bear the burden, and earn his living? And if idle, has he a
-right to remain idle--a naked and unconscious philosopher, living "the
-simple life," without cares or wants,--a gentleman of leisure in a
-panting world? Is that to be the last word? Is civilization to say
-definitely that when the African native has kept himself, or made his
-women keep him, she has no further claim upon him? The white man shall
-do the rest. He shall preserve the peace, that the tribes may prosper
-and multiply. His watchful and foreseeing eye, strained and weary with
-the effort, shall still make provision against famine; his science,
-though he himself goes down in the struggle, shall grapple with
-pestilence and cure disease. Far from his home or from his family he
-shall hew the trees and dig the wells, shall dam the streams and build
-the roads, with anxious heart and "in the sweat of his brow,"
-according to the curse laid upon the child of many wants, while the
-child of few wants watches him from the shade and thinks him mad.
-
-And to compare the life and lot of the African aboriginal--secure in
-his abyss of contented degradation, rich in that he lacks everything
-and wants nothing--with the long nightmare of worry and privation, of
-dirt and gloom and squalour, lit only by gleams of torturing knowledge
-and tantalizing hope, which constitutes the lives of so many poor
-people in England and Scotland, is to feel the ground tremble under
-foot. "It would never do to have a lot of 'mean whites' in this
-country," I heard one day a gentleman say. "It would destroy the
-respect of the native for the white man, if he saw what miserable
-people we have got at home." So here, at any rate, the boot is on the
-other leg, and Civilization is ashamed of her arrangements in the
-presence of a savage, embarrassed lest he should see what lies behind
-the gold and purple robe of State, and begin to suspect that the
-all-powerful white man is a fraud. But this is an irrelevancy!
-
-I am clearly of opinion that no man has a right to be idle, whoever he
-be or wherever he lives. He is bound to go forward and take an honest
-share in the general work of the world. And I do not except the
-African native. To a very much larger extent than is often recognized
-by some who discuss these questions, the natives are industrious,
-willing to learn, and capable of being led forward. Live for a few
-weeks, as I have done, in close association with the disciplined
-soldiers of the King's African Rifles, or with the smart sailors of
-the Uganda Marine, and it seems wonderful to contrast them with the
-population from which they have emerged. How strong, how good-natured,
-how clever they are! How proud their white officers are of them! What
-pains they take to please the travellers whom they escort; how frankly
-they are delighted by a word of praise or thanks! Just and honourable
-discipline, careful education, sympathetic comprehension, are all that
-is needed to bring a very large proportion of the native tribes of
-East Africa to a far higher social level than that at which they now
-stand. And why should men only be taught to be soldiers? Is war always
-to have the best of everything? Cannot peaceful industry be made as
-attractive, be as highly organized, as carefully studied as the
-combined use of deadly weapons? "Why," as Ruskin asks, "cannot men
-take pride in _building_ villages instead of only _carrying_ them?"
-
-I wonder why my pen slips off into these labyrinths, when all I set
-out to do was to give some general idea of politics at Nairobi? But in
-truth the problems of East Africa are the problems of the world. We
-see the social, racial, and economic stresses which rack modern
-society already at work here, but in miniature; and if we choose to
-study the model when the whole engine is at hand, it is because on the
-smaller scale we can see more clearly, and because in East Africa and
-Uganda the future is still uncompromised. The British Government has
-it in its hands to shape the development and destiny of these new
-countries and their varied peoples with an authority and from an
-elevation far superior to that with which Cabinets can cope with the
-giant tangles at home. And the fact stirs the mind. But by this time
-the reader will have had as much of East African politics as I had
-when, after three days of deputations and disputations, the train
-steamed out of Nairobi to take us to the Great Lake and beyond.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE GREAT LAKE
-
-
-We are off again on the Uganda Railway. Interesting and beautiful as
-is the country through which the line passes from Mombasa to Nairobi,
-it is surpassed by the magnificent scenery of the journey to the Lake.
-First in order and in rank is the Great Rift. This curious fault in
-the earth's surface, which geologists trace across the four thousand
-miles of land and sea which separate us from Palestine, and onward
-still to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, is traversed by the
-Uganda Railway at one of its most remarkable stages. For sixty miles
-the Highland plateau has been rising steadily by a succession of
-wooded undulations to a level of over six thousand feet. Now it falls
-abruptly, almost precipitously, more than two thousand feet. This
-frowning wall of rock and forest, which extends straight as a ruler
-farther than eye can see, is the Kikuyu Escarpment. As the train
-claws its way downwards by slant and zigzag along its face, a majestic
-panorama breaks upon the view. Far below, bathed in sunshine,
-stretching away to misty purple horizons, lie the broad expanses of
-the Rift Valley. Its level surface is broken by strangely moulded
-volcanic hills and shattered craters. The opposite mountain wall looms
-up in the far distance, brown and blue. We gaze down upon the plain as
-from a balloon, mistaking forests for patches of green grass, and
-mighty trees for thorn-scrub.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RIFT VALLEY FROM THE KIKUYU ESCARPMENT.]
-
-Another hour or so and Lake Naivasha comes into view. This sheet of
-water is about ten miles square, and the rim of a submerged crater
-makes an odd, crescent-shaped island in its midst. Its brackish waters
-repel the inhabitants, but afford shelter to numberless wild-fowl and
-many hippopotami. At Naivasha there is the Government stock farm. One
-may see in their various flocks the native sheep, the half-bred
-English, the three-quarter-bred, etc. The improvement is amazing. The
-native sheep is a hairy animal, looking to the unpractised eye more
-like a goat than a sheep. Crossed with Sussex or Australian blood,
-his descendant is transformed into a woolled beast of familiar
-aspect. At the next cross the progeny is almost indistinguishable from
-the pure-bred English in appearance, but better adapted to the African
-sun and climate. It is the same with cattle. In the first generation
-the hump of the African ox vanishes. In the second he emerges a
-respectable British Shorthorn. The object of this farm is twofold:
-first, to find the type best adapted to local conditions; secondly, to
-supply the settlers and the natives with a steadily broadening
-fountain of good blood by which their flocks and herds may be trebled
-and quadrupled in value. The enthusiasm and zeal of those in charge of
-this work were refreshing. At present, however, their operations are
-restricted by insufficient funds and by the precautions which must be
-taken against East Coast fever. The first of these impediments may be
-removed; the second is less tractable.
-
-East Coast fever came across the German border a year and a half ago,
-and since then, in spite of such preventive measures as our scanty
-means allow, it has been gradually and slowly spreading through the
-Protectorate. A diseased cow may take thirty days to die. In the
-meantime wherever it goes the swarming ticks are infected. They hold
-their poison for a year. If, during that time, other cattle pass over
-the ground the ticks fasten upon them and inoculate them with the
-sickness. And each new victim wanders off to spread the curse to new
-ticks, who cast it back to new cattle, and so on till the end of the
-story. At each point fresh areas of ground become distempered, and
-fresh cows begin to drop off one by one, leaving their evil
-inheritance to the ravening insects.
-
-  [Illustration: GOVERNMENT FARM AT NAIVASHA.]
-
-So here we see the two principles of Nature at work
-simultaneously--the blood-stock rams and bulls spreading their
-healthy, fruitful life in ever-widening circles through the land; the
-infected cattle carrying their message of death in all directions.
-Every point that either attains, becomes at once a new centre of
-vitality or dissolution. Both processes march deliberately forward to
-limitless multiplications. The native is helpless in the face of
-advancing ruin. Left to itself the evil would assuredly devour the
-good, till the cattle were exterminated and the sickness starved to
-death for lack of prey. But at this moment the white biped with
-faculties of ratiocination intervenes from the tin-roofed Department
-of Agriculture; discovers, for instance, that ground may be purified
-by putting upon it sheep, into whom the ticks discharge their poison
-harmlessly and are thereafter purged; erects hundreds of miles of wire
-fencing to cut the country up into compartments, as a warship is
-divided by bulkheads; encloses infected areas; destroys suspected
-animals; searches methodically and ever more hopefully for
-prophylactics and remedies; with one hand arrests the curse, with the
-other speeds the blessing, and in so doing is surely discharging
-rather an important function from a good many points of view.
-
-My friends and I took four days in travelling to the Victoria Nyanza,
-although the distance can be covered in twenty-four hours; for we
-turned aside every day for sport or business, while our train waited
-obligingly in a siding. Of the latter, indeed, there was no lack, for
-the Governor and the heads of several departments were in the train,
-and we laboured faithfully together at many prickly things. Then at
-the stations came farmers, surveyors, and others, with words of
-welcome or complaint, and a deputation of Boer settlers with many
-expressions of loyalty to the Crown, and the chiefs of the Lumbwa and
-Nandi tribes, with a crowd of warriors, and their Laibon with his four
-wives, all in a row, till I was as tired of making "brief and
-appropriate" speeches as my companions must have been of hearing them.
-
-  [Illustration: THE LAIBON'S WIVES.]
-
-  [Illustration: RAILHEAD AT KISUMU.]
-
-But Elmenteita was all holiday. Lord Delamere met us at the station
-with Cape carts, ponies, and hog-spears, and we drove off in search of
-pig over an enormous plain thickly peopled with antelope and gazelle.
-I cannot pretend to the experience of both countries necessary to
-compare the merits of pig-sticking in India and in East Africa in
-respect of the fighting qualities of the animal, nor the ground over
-which he is pursued. But I should think the most accomplished member
-of the Meerut Tent Club would admit that the courage and ferocity of
-the African wart-hog, and the extreme roughness of the country, heaped
-as it is with boulders and pitted with deep ant-bear holes concealed
-by high grass, make pig-sticking in East Africa a sport which would
-well deserve his serious and appreciative attention. At present it is
-in its infancy, and very few even of the officers of the King's
-African Rifles can boast the proficiency of the Indian expert.
-But everything in East Africa is at its first page; and besides,
-the wart-hog is, at present at any rate, regarded as dangerous
-vermin who does incredible damage to native plantations, and whose
-destruction--by any method, even the most difficult--is useful as well
-as exciting.
-
-Our first pig was a fine fellow, who galloped off with his tail
-straight up in the air and his tusks gleaming mischievously, and
-afforded a run of nearly three miles before he was killed. The risk of
-the sport consists in this--that the pig cannot be overtaken and
-effectively speared except by a horse absolutely at full gallop. The
-ground is so trappy that one hardly cares to take one's eyes off it
-for a moment. Yet during at least a hundred yards at a time the whole
-attention of the rider must be riveted on the pig, within a few yards
-of whom he is riding, and who may be expected to charge at any second.
-A fall at such a climax is necessarily very dangerous, as the wart-hog
-would certainly attack the unhorsed cavalier; yet no one can avoid the
-chance. I do not know whether Anglo-India will shudder, but I should
-certainly recommend the intending hunter in East Africa to strap a
-revolver on his thigh in case of accidents. "You do not want it
-often," as the American observed; "but when you do, you want it
-badly."
-
-We passed a jolly morning riding after these brutes and shooting a few
-_Gazella Granti_ and _Gazella Thomsoni_, or "Grants" and "Tommies" as
-they are familiarly called, and in looking for eland in the intervals.
-At the end of Lake Elmenteita, a beautiful sheet of water, unhappily
-brackish, a feast had been prepared, to which a number of gentlemen
-from Lord Delamere's estates and the surrounding farms had been
-bidden. A long array of flocks and herds was marshalled on both sides
-of the track in due order, native-bred, half-bred, three-quarter-bred,
-pure. Through these insignia of patriarchal wealth, which would have
-excited the keenest interest in any traveller less hungry and more
-instructed in such matters than I, we made our way to an excellent
-luncheon, which, be sure, was not unaccompanied by the usual
-discussion on East African politics.
-
-It was late in the afternoon when we started back to the train, which
-lay eight miles off in a siding. On the way we fell in with a most
-fierce and monstrous pig, who led us a nice dance through bush and
-grass and boulder. As he emerged into a patch of comparatively smooth,
-open ground I made up my mind to spear him, urged my pony to her top
-speed, and was just considering how best to do the deed when, without
-the slightest provocation, or, at any rate, before he had been even
-pricked, the pig turned sharp round and sprang at me, as if he were a
-leopard. Luckily, my spear got in the way, and with a solid jar, which
-made my arm stiff for a week, drove deep into his head and neck before
-it broke, so that he was glad to sheer off with eighteen inches of it
-sticking in him, and after a dash at my companion he took refuge in a
-deep hole, from which no inducements or insults could draw him.
-
-Later we rode and killed another pig and chased a fourth
-unsuccessfully, and it was nearly dark before the railway was reached.
-As I was getting into my carriage they calmly told me that _six lions_
-had walked across the line a quarter of a mile away and a quarter of
-an hour before. A settler who had been to lunch at Elmenteita was
-loading a hastily-borrowed revolver before starting on his homeward
-ride to Nakuru, and as I gave him some cartridges, I reflected that,
-whatever may be the shortcomings of East Africa, the absence of an
-interesting and varied fauna is certainly not among them.
-
-Next day our train is climbing through dense and beautiful forests to
-the summit of the Mau Escarpment. Admiration of the wealth and
-splendour of the leafy kingdom is mingled with something very like awe
-at its aggressive fertility. The great trees overhang the line. The
-creepers trail down the cuttings, robing the red soil with cloaks of
-flowers and foliage. The embankments are already covered. Every
-clearing is densely overgrown with sinuous plants. But for the
-ceaseless care with which the whole line is scraped and weeded it
-would soon become impassable. As it is, the long fingers of the
-encroaching forest are everywhere stretching out enviously towards the
-bright metals. Neglect the Uganda Railway for a year, and it would
-take an expedition to discover where it had run.
-
-At Nyoro station nearly nine hundred natives were at work cutting
-timber for the railway, which is entirely dependent on wood fuel. The
-contractor in charge, a young English gentleman, who was described to
-me as being a model employer of native labour in Government contracts,
-had taken the trouble to cut a path through the forest across a loop
-of the line in order that I might see what it was like inside. Through
-this leafy tunnel, about a mile and a half long, we all accordingly
-dived. There was nothing sinister in the aspect of this forest, for
-all its density and confusion. The great giants towered up
-magnificently to a hundred and fifty feet. Then came the ordinary
-forest trees, much more thickly clustered. Below this again was a
-layer of scrub and bushes; and under, around, and among the whole
-flowed a vast sea of convolvulus-looking creeper. Through all this
-four-fold veil the sunlight struggled down every twenty yards or so in
-gleaming chequers of green and gold.
-
-On the way the method of fuel-cutting is explained. So far as the
-labourer is concerned, it is an elaborate system of piece-work, very
-accurately and fairly adjusted, and, as is so often the case where the
-white employer takes personal care of his men, there appeared to be no
-difficulty in finding any number of natives. But they are a plaguey
-company. Few will stay for more than a month or two, however
-satisfied they may be with their work and its rewards; and just as
-they begin to get skilful, off they go to their villages to cultivate
-their gardens and their families, promising to come back another year,
-or after the harvest, or at some other remote and indefinite date. And
-meanwhile the railway must have its fuel every day and day after day,
-with the remorseless monotony of the industrial machine.
-
-But what a way to cut fuel! A floating population of clumsy barbarians
-pecking at the trees with native choppers more like a toy hoe than an
-axe, and carrying their loads when completed a quarter of a mile on
-their heads to the wood-stack, while the forest laughs at the
-feebleness of man. I made a calculation. Each of the nine hundred
-natives employed costs on the whole six pounds a year. The price of a
-steam tree-felling plant, with a mile of mono-rail tram complete, is
-about five hundred pounds. The interest and sinking fund on this
-capital outlay represent the wages of four natives, to which must be
-added the salary of a competent white engineer, equal to the wage of
-forty natives, and the working expenses and depreciation roughly
-estimated at the wage of twenty natives more; in all the wage of
-sixty-five natives. Such a plant, able to cut trees six feet in
-diameter through in four or five minutes, to cut timber as well as
-fuel, to saw it into the proper lengths for every purpose with the
-utmost rapidity, and to transport it by whole truck-loads when sawn to
-the railway siding, would accomplish a week's work of the sixty-five
-natives it replaced in a single day, and effect a sevenfold
-multiplication of power. It is no good trying to lay hold of Tropical
-Africa with naked fingers. Civilization must be armed with machinery
-if she is to subdue these wild regions to her authority. Iron roads,
-not jogging porters; tireless engines, not weary men; cheap power, not
-cheap labour; steam and skill, not sweat and fumbling: there lies the
-only way to tame the jungle--more jungles than one.
-
-On this we talked--or at least I talked--while we scrambled across the
-stumps of fallen trees or waded in an emerald twilight from one
-sunbeam to another across the creeper flood. It is of vital importance
-that these forests should not be laid waste by reckless and
-improvident hands. It is not less important that the Uganda Railway
-should have cheap fuel. For a long time fuel alone was the object, but
-now that an elaborate Forestry Department has been established on the
-most scientific lines, there is a danger that forestry will be the
-only object, and the cost of fuel so raised by regulations, admirable
-in themselves, that the economy of the Uganda Railway may be impaired.
-And let us never forget that the Uganda Railway is the driving-wheel
-of the whole concern. What is needed here, as elsewhere, is a
-harmonious compromise between opposite and conflicting interests. That
-is all.
-
-Presently our guide began to tell us of the strange creatures who live
-in the forest, and are sometimes seen quite close by the
-fuel-cutters--very rare antelope, enormous buffaloes, and astonishing
-birds and butterflies beyond imagination. He had managed to make
-friends with the Wandorobo--a tribe of forest-dwelling natives who
-live plunged in these impenetrable shades, who are so shy that, if
-once a stranger does but set eye upon their village, forthwith they
-abandon it; yet who are at the same time so teased by curiosity that
-they cannot resist peeping, peeping ever nearer and nearer to the
-fuel-cutters, until one day commercial relations are established on
-the basis of sugar for skins. I was just becoming interested in these
-wood-squirrels when we broke into the hot blaze of the noonday sun
-beating down on the polished railway track, and had to climb up on to
-our cowcatcher in order to hurry on to a real steam saw-mill ten miles
-farther up the line.
-
-As the journey advances, the train mounts steadily higher and the
-aspect of the country changes. The forest, which has hitherto lapped
-the line closely on every side, now makes fair division with rolling
-hills of grass. And there is this extraordinary feature about it:
-where the forest areas end, they end abruptly. There is no ragged belt
-of trees less thickly grown; no transition. Smooth slopes of grass run
-up to the very edge of virgin forest, just as in England the meadow
-runs to the edge of the covert. The effect is to make the landscape
-surprisingly homelike. It is like travelling through a series of
-gigantic parks, where the hand of man has for hundreds of years
-decided exactly where trees shall grow and where they shall not.
-
-  [Illustration: KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU.]
-
-Towards the west great plains are visible, in misty apparition,
-through rifts in the plateau. At length we arrive at the summit of the
-escarpment, and stop for luncheon by an indicator, which registers
-eight thousand two hundred and ninety feet above the sea-level.
-Southward rises a hill perhaps five hundred feet above us, from the
-top of which the waters of the Great Lake can be seen, like the waters
-of a distant ocean.
-
-Geographically we have now reached the culminating point in this long
-journey. Henceforward, to find our way home, we have only to descend,
-guided by the force of gravity, first swiftly along the railroad to
-the Victoria Lake, then sedately with the stream of the Nile to the
-Mediterranean. The lofty table-lands of East Africa, with their crisp,
-chill air and English aspect, must now be left behind--not without
-many regrets--and the traveller will alight upon a middle world spread
-at a level of about four thousand feet, in which an entirely different
-order of conditions prevails. Downward then at thirty miles an hour,
-along the side of spacious valleys, around the shoulders of the hills,
-across thin-spun iron bridges, through whose girders one glances down
-at torrents flashing far below, onward to the Lake. Within an hour the
-temperature has sensibly altered. An overcoat is no longer necessary,
-even if you ride in front of the engine. In two hours the climate is
-warm and damp with the steamy heat of the Tropics. The freshness has
-gone out of the air, and in its place is that sense of sultry
-oppression which precedes the thunderstorms so common at this season
-of the year.
-
-In order to avoid a hot night on the Lake shore we stopped at Fort
-Ternan, a placeless name, some forty miles from Kisumu, and rather
-more than a thousand feet above it. And here the storm which had been
-brooding all the afternoon over the western face of the Mau Escarpment
-burst upon us. Even after ten months on the South African veldt I was
-astonished by its fury. For nearly two hours the thunder crashed and
-roared in tremendous peals--
-
-     "Like water flung from some high crag,
-     The lightning fell with never a jag,
-         A river steep and wide,"
-
-while the rain dashed down in sheets of water, one single gust of
-which would drench you to the skin. But our train is an effective
-shelter. We dine comfortably in the midst of the tempest, and
-afterwards in a cooler atmosphere look up towards repentant stars and
-a tear-stained sky.
-
-At dawn we are at Kisumu. There is a stir of men, a crowded platform,
-soldiers in order, groups of Indian traders, hundreds of Kavirondo
-natives in their fullest undress, bunting, and introductions. Large
-white steamers lie alongside the jetty, and beyond these the waters of
-the Lake gleam their broad welcome to the sunrise. Kisumu, or Port
-Florence as it is sometimes called, is the western terminus of the
-Uganda Railway and the chief port on Lake Victoria. It possesses what
-I am told is the highest dockyard in the world, and is the place at
-which all the steamers now plying on the Lake have been put together.
-One eight-hundred-ton cargo boat is actually in process of
-construction, and will be launched in a few months' time to meet the
-growing traffic of the Nyanza. The station itself is pretty; its trim
-houses and shady trees, backed against the hills, overlook the wide
-expanse of Kavirondo Bay and its encircling promontories. Unluckily,
-it is unhealthy, for the climate is depressing and the sewage
-accumulates in the tideless and shallow inlet. Some day one of two
-things will happen: either the waters of the Victoria Nyanza will be
-raised by a dam across the Ripon Falls and Kavirondo Bay will be
-proportionately deepened and cleansed, or the railway will be
-deflected and prolonged to its natural terminus on the deep waters of
-the lake at Port Victoria.
-
-The Kavirondo tribe, the greatest in this part of the country, had
-organized an imposing demonstration. In dense array they lined the
-road from the station to the Commissioner's house, and our party
-walked through their midst in a perfect hubbub of horns and drums and
-shrill salutations. All the warriors carried their spears, shields,
-and war-paint, and most of them wore splendid plumes of ostrich
-feathers. The Kavirondo are naked and unashamed. Both sexes are
-accustomed to walk about in the primitive simplicity of Nature. Their
-nudity is based not upon mere ignorance but reasoned policy. They have
-a very strong prejudice against the wearing of clothes, which they
-declare lead to immorality; and no Kavirondo woman can attire herself
-even in the most exiguous raiment without sullying her reputation.
-They are said to be the most moral of all the tribes dwelling on the
-Lake shore. It is a pity that Herr Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, of the
-University of Weissnichtwo, did not meet them in his rugged
-wanderings, for they would surely have enabled him to add another page
-to his monumental work on the functions of the tailor.
-
-  [Illustration: NANDI AND KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU.]
-
-I wake up the next morning to find myself afloat on a magnificent
-ship. Its long and spacious decks are as snowy as those of a pleasure
-yacht. It is equipped with baths, electric light, and all modern
-necessities. There is an excellent table, also a well-selected
-library. Smart bluejackets--with ebon faces--are polishing the
-brasswork; dapper, white-clad British naval officers pace the bridge.
-We are steaming ten miles an hour across an immense sea of fresh water
-as big as Scotland, and uplifted higher than the summit of Ben Nevis.
-At times we are in a complete circle of lake and sky, without a sign
-of land. At others we skirt lofty coasts covered with forest and
-crowned with distant blue-brown mountains, or thread our course
-between a multitude of beautiful islands. The air is cool and fresh,
-the scenery splendid. We might be yachting off the coast of Cornwall
-in July. We are upon the Equator, in the heart of Africa, and crossing
-the Victoria Nyanza, four thousand feet above the sea!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA
-
-
-The East Africa Protectorate is a country of the highest interest to
-the colonist, the traveller, or the sportsman. But the Kingdom of
-Uganda is a fairy tale. You climb up a railway instead of a beanstalk,
-and at the end there is a wonderful new world. The scenery is
-different, the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and,
-most of all, the people are different from anything elsewhere to be
-seen in the whole range of Africa. Instead of the breezy uplands we
-enter a tropical garden. In the place of naked, painted savages,
-clashing their spears and gibbering in chorus to their tribal chiefs,
-a complete and elaborate polity is presented. Under a dynastic King,
-with a Parliament, and a powerful feudal system, an amiable, clothed,
-polite, and intelligent race dwell together in an organized monarchy
-upon the rich domain between the Victoria and Albert Lakes. More
-than two hundred thousand natives are able to read and write. More
-than one hundred thousand have embraced the Christian faith. There is
-a Court, there are Regents and Ministers and nobles, there is a
-regular system of native law and tribunals; there is discipline, there
-is industry, there is culture, there is peace. In fact, I ask myself
-whether there is any other spot in the whole earth where the dreams
-and hopes of the negrophile, so often mocked by results and stubborn
-facts, have ever attained such a happy realization.
-
-  [Illustration: KISUMU.]
-
-Three separate influences, each of them powerful and benevolent,
-exercise control over the mass of the Baganda nation. First, the
-Imperial authority, secular, scientific, disinterested, irresistible;
-secondly, a native Government and feudal aristocracy, corrected of
-their abuses, yet preserving their vitality; and thirdly, missionary
-enterprise on an almost unequalled scale. Under the shelter of the
-British Flag, safe from external menace or internal broil, the
-child-King grows to a temperate and instructed maturity. Surrounded by
-his officers of State, he presides at the meetings of his council and
-Parliament, or worships in the huge thatched cathedral which has been
-reared on Namirembe Hill. Fortified in their rights, but restrained
-from tyrannical excess, and guided by an outside power, his
-feudatories exercise their proper functions. The people, relieved from
-the severities and confusions of times not long ago, are apt to learn
-and willing to obey. And among them with patient energy toils a large
-body of devoted Christian men of different nations, of different
-Churches, but of a common charity, tending their spiritual needs,
-enlarging their social and moral conceptions, and advancing their
-education year by year.
-
-An elegance of manners springing from a naïve simplicity of character
-pervades all classes. An elaborate ritual of friendly salutations
-relieves the monotony of the wayfarer's journey. Submission without
-servility or loss of self-respect is accorded to constituted
-authority. The natives evince an eagerness to acquire knowledge and a
-very high observant and imitative faculty. And then Uganda is from end
-to end one beautiful garden, where the staple food of the people grows
-almost without labour, and where almost everything else can be grown
-better and easier than anywhere else. The planter from the best
-islands in the West Indies is astonished at the richness of the soil.
-Cotton grows everywhere. Rubber, fibre, hemp, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee,
-tea, coca, vanilla, oranges, lemons, pineapples are natural or thrive
-on introduction. As for our English garden products, brought in
-contact with the surface of Uganda they simply give one wild bound of
-efflorescence or fruition and break their hearts for joy. Does it not
-sound a paradise on earth? Approach and consider it more closely.
-
-The good ship _Clement Hill_, named after a well-known African
-explorer, has carried us smoothly and prosperously across the northern
-corner of the Victoria Nyanza, and reaches the pier of Entebbe as the
-afternoon draws towards its close. The first impression that strikes
-the eye of the visitor fresh from Kavirondo is the spectacle of
-hundreds of natives all dressed in long clean white garments which
-they wear with dignity and ease. At the landing-place a sort of
-pavilion has been erected, and here come deputations from the Chamber
-of Commerce--a limited body of Europeans--from the Goanese community,
-and from the numerous Indian colony of merchants. A tonga drawn by
-two mules takes me to Government House, and from a wide
-mosquito-proof veranda I am able to survey a truly delightful
-prospect. The most beautiful plants and trees grow in profusion on all
-sides. Beyond a blaze of violet, purple, yellow, and crimson blossoms,
-and an expanse of level green lawns, the great blue lake lies in all
-its beauty. The hills and islands on the horizon are just beginning to
-flush to the sunset. The air is soft and cool. Except that the picture
-actually looks more English in its character, one would imagine it was
-the Riviera. It must be too good to be true.
-
-It _is_ too good to be true. One can hardly believe that such an
-attractive spot can be cursed with malignant attributes. Yet what is
-true of the East Africa Protectorate is even more true of Uganda. The
-contrast between appearance and reality is more striking and more
-harsh. Behind its glittering mask Entebbe wears a sinister aspect.
-These smiling islands which adorn and diversify the scenery of the
-lake supported a few years ago a large population. To-day they are
-desolate. Every white man seems to feel a sense of undefinable
-oppression. A cut will not heal; a scratch festers. In the third
-year of residence even a small wound becomes a running sore. One day a
-man feels perfectly well; the next, for no apparent cause, he is
-prostrate with malaria, and with malaria of a peculiarly persistent
-kind, turning often in the third or fourth attack to blackwater fever.
-In the small European community at Entebbe there have been quite
-recently two suicides. Whether, as I have suggested in East Africa, it
-be the altitude, or the downward ray of the Equatorial sun, or the
-insects, or some more subtle cause, there seems to be a solemn veto
-placed upon the white man's permanent residence in these beautiful
-abodes.
-
-  [Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ENTEBBE.]
-
-There are many who advocate the abandonment of Entebbe as the
-administrative capital and the restoration of the seat of Government
-to Kampala. But the expense of transferring public offices and
-buildings lately erected to another site is altogether beyond the
-slender resources and not among the most urgent needs of the Uganda
-Protectorate. Great improvements have been effected recently in the
-sanitation of Entebbe. The bush and trees, which added so greatly to
-its picturesque appearance, have been ruthlessly cut down; and with
-them, _mirabile dictu_, have vanished the mosquito and the
-sleeping-sickness tsetse-fly. Half a mile away on either side of the
-settlement are groves which it might easily be death to enter; but the
-inhabited area is now quite clear.
-
-Besides, the general unhealthiness of the country so far as the
-European is concerned is not local to Entebbe. It is widely spread in
-slightly different degrees throughout the whole of Uganda; and Kampala
-is certainly not exempt. Finally, there is a reason of a different
-character which ought to impose a final bar on any return of the
-Imperial Government to the native city. Uganda is a native state. Much
-of our success in dealing with its population arises from the fact
-that we work through and by the native Government. And that Government
-could not fail to lose much, if not all, of its separate and natural
-identity if it were overwhelmed by the immediate proximity of the
-supreme Administration.
-
-  [Illustration: UGANDA
-    Founded by permission of the War Office on the Map of Africa
-    No 1539.]
-
-For a new station in an almost unknown land, Entebbe certainly
-presents many remarkable evidences of progress. The slopes of the lake
-shore are covered with pretty villas, each standing in its own
-luxuriant garden. There is an excellent golf course, and a very
-bright and pleasant society. Guardian over all this stands the Sikh.
-There are two companies of these soldiers, one at Entebbe and the
-other at Kampala, who, being entirely immune to local influences of
-all kinds, constitute what Mr. Gladstone used to call the "motor
-muscle" of Imperial authority. I have always admired the Sikh in
-India, both in his cantonments and in the field. But somehow his
-graceful military figure and grave countenance under the turban as he
-stands erect beside his rifle on guard over British interests six
-thousand miles from the Punjab, impresses the eye and the imagination
-with an added force. He is a picked volunteer from all the Sikh
-regiments, who delights in Uganda, thrives under its, to him, milder
-sun, lives on nothing, saves his doubled pay, and returns to India
-enriched and proud of his service across the sea. If at any time
-considerations of expense, or the desire to obtain a complete
-homogeneity in the military forces of the Protectorate, should lead to
-the disbandment or withdrawal of these two companies, those who take
-the decision will have incurred a responsibility which few would care
-to share with them.
-
-So far as human force is concerned, the British power in these regions
-is at present beyond challenge. No man can withstand it. But a new
-opponent has appeared and will not be denied. Uganda is defended by
-its insects. It would even seem that the arrival of the white man and
-the increased movement and activity which his presence has engendered
-have awakened these formidable atoms to a realization of their powers
-of evil. The dreaded _Spirillum_ tick has begun to infest the roads
-like a tiny footpad, and scarcely any precautions avail with certainty
-against him. This tick is a dirty, drab-coloured creature the size and
-shape of a small squashed pea. When he bites an infected person he
-does not contract the Spirillum fever himself, nor does he transmit it
-directly to other persons. By a peculiarly malevolent provision of
-Nature this power is exercised not by him but by his descendants, who
-are numbered in hundreds. So the poison spreads in an incalculable
-progression. Although this fever is not fatal, it is exceptionally
-painful in its course and distressing in its consequences. There are
-five or six separate and successive attacks of fever, in which the
-temperature of the victim may rise even to 107 degrees; and
-afterwards the eyes and hearing are temporarily affected by a kind of
-facial paralysis. Road after road has been declared infected by this
-scourge, and officer after officer struck down as he moves on duty
-from place to place. The only sure preventive seems to be the
-destruction of all old grass-huts and camping-grounds, and the
-erection along the roads of a regular system of stone-built, properly
-maintained and disinfected rest-houses, in which the traveller may
-take refuge from the lurking peril. And this will have to be done.
-
-But a far more terrible shadow darkens the Uganda Protectorate. In
-July, 1901, a doctor of the Church Missionary Society Hospital at
-Kampala noticed eight cases of a mysterious disease. Six months later
-he reported that over two hundred natives had died of it in the Island
-of Buvuma, and that thousands appeared to be infected. The pestilence
-swiftly spread through all the districts of the lake shore, and the
-mortality was appalling. No one could tell where it had come from or
-what it was caused by. It resisted every kind of treatment and
-appeared to be universally fatal. Scientific inquiries of various
-kinds were immediately set on foot, but for a long time no results
-were obtained, and meanwhile the disease ran along the coasts and
-islands of the great lake like fire in a high wind. By the middle of
-1902 the reported deaths from _Trypanosomiasis_, or "sleeping
-sickness," as it has come to be called, numbered over thirty thousand.
-It was still spreading rapidly upon all sides, and no clue whatever to
-its treatment or prevention had been obtained. It seemed certain that
-the entire population of the districts affected was doomed.
-
-On April 28th, 1903, Colonel Bruce, whose services had been obtained
-for the investigation of "sleeping sickness" through the
-instrumentality of the Royal Society, announced that he considered the
-disease to be due to a kind of trypanosome, conveyed from one person
-to another by the bite of a species of tsetse-fly called _Glossina
-palpalis_. His theory was strongly supported by the fact that the
-disease appeared to be confined to the localities infested by the fly.
-The fly-belt also could be defined with precision, and was rarely
-found to extend more than a mile or two from water. The news that
-Europeans could no longer consider themselves immune from the
-infection caused, as might be imagined, much consternation in the
-white community. Nearly everybody had been bitten by tsetses at one
-time or another, but whether by this particular species when actually
-infected, remained in suspense. Moreover, tsetse-flies abounded in
-such numbers on all parts of the lake shore that their wholesale
-destruction seemed quite impossible. What then?
-
-For a time Colonel Bruce's discovery almost paralyzed all preventive
-and restrictive measures. The scourge fell unchecked. By the end of
-1903 the reported deaths numbered over ninety thousand, and the lake
-shores were becoming fast depopulated. Whole villages were completely
-exterminated, and great tracts in Usoga, which had formerly been famed
-for their high state of cultivation, relapsed into forests. The
-weakness of the victims and the terror or apathy of the survivors
-permitted a sudden increase in the number of leopards, and these
-fierce animals preyed with daring and impunity upon the living, the
-dying, and the dead.
-
-Further investigations, which were anxiously pushed on in many
-directions, revealed the existence of the tsetse-fly over widespread
-areas. In the interior of Usoga, on the banks of many rivers, in
-swamps on the shores of the Albert Lake and Lake Albert Edward, these
-swarming emissaries of death were found to be awaiting their message.
-All that was needed to arm them with their fatal power was the arrival
-of some person infected with the microbe. The Albert shores and
-several parts of the Upper Nile soon became new centres of pestilence.
-Thousands of deaths occurred in Unyoro. By the end of 1905
-considerably more than two hundred thousand persons had perished in
-the plague-stricken regions, _out of a population_ in those regions
-_which could not have exceeded three hundred thousand_.
-
-Any decrease in the mortality in any district up to the present time
-is due, not to any diminution in the virulence of the disease, but
-simply to the reduction of possible victims, owing to the
-extermination of the inhabitants. Buvuma, a few years ago one of the
-most prosperous of all the islands, contains fewer than fourteen
-thousand out of thirty thousand. Some of the islands in the Sesse
-group have lost every soul, while in others a few moribund natives,
-crawling about in the last stages of the disease, are all that are
-left to represent a once teeming population.
-
-"It might have been expected," writes Sir H. Hesketh Bell, the
-Governor of Uganda, to whom I am indebted for much valuable
-information on this subject, "that, even though the negroes showed
-inability to grasp the theory of the transmission of disease by the
-agency of insects, the undeniable deadliness of the countries
-bordering on the lake shore would have induced them to flee from the
-stricken land and to have sought in the healthier districts inland a
-refuge from the pestilence that was slaying them by thousands. An
-extraordinary fatalism, however, seems to have paralyzed the natives,
-and, while deploring the sadness of their fate, they appear to have
-accepted death almost with apathy."
-
-The police of science, although arrived late on the scene of the
-tragedy, were now following many converging clues. Therapeutic
-investigation into the treatment and origin of the disease,
-entomological examination of the resorts, habits, dangers, and
-life-history of the fly, and thirdly administrative measures of
-drastic authority are now being driven sternly forward. Knowledge has
-accumulated. Fighting the sleeping sickness is like laying a vampire.
-To make the spell work, five separate conditions must be
-present--water, bushes, trees, the tsetse-fly (_Glossina palpalis_),
-and one infected person. Remove any one of these and the curse is
-lifted. But let them all be conjoined, and the sure destruction of
-every human being in the district is only a matter of time.
-
-The Government of Uganda is now pursuing a policy based on the
-appreciation of these facts. Wherever it is necessary to come to the
-lake shores, as at Entebbe, Munyonyo, Ripon Falls, Fajao, etc., the
-tsetse-fly is banished or eliminated by cutting down the trees,
-clearing away the bush, and planting in its place the vigorous,
-rapid-growing _citronella_ grass, which, once firmly established,
-holds its own against invading vegetation. Wherever it is not possible
-to clear the shores of tsetse-flies, they must be cleared of
-inhabitants. And the extraordinary operation of moving entire
-populations from their old homes to new places--often against their
-will--has been actually accomplished within the last year by a
-combined dead-lift effort of these three tremendous forces of
-Government which regulate from such different points of view the
-lives and liberties of the Baganda.
-
-It does not follow that the lake shores will have to be abandoned for
-ever. In a very short time--some say two days, some eleven hours--the
-infected tsetse is free from poison and can no longer communicate it;
-and once the disease has been eradicated from the population, healthy
-people might return and be bitten with impunity. Nor, on the other
-hand, can we hope, unless some cure capable of being applied on a
-large scale can be perfected, that the mortality in the immediate
-future will sensibly diminish. For there are many thousands of persons
-still affected, and for these segregation, nursing, and compassion
-comprise the present resources of civilization.
-
-One thing is, however, above all things important. There must be no
-losing heart. At any moment the researches which are being conducted
-in so many laboratories, and in which Professor Koch has taken a
-leading part, may produce an absolute therapeutic remedy. By the
-administrative measures now vigorously enforced it is believed that
-the fatal contact between infected persons and uninfected flies,
-between infected flies and uninfected persons, will have been
-effectively broken. We cannot fail to learn more of the tsetse. The
-humble black horse-fly, indistinguishable to the casual observer from
-harmless types, except that his wings are folded neatly like a pair of
-shut scissors, instead of splaying out on either side of his back, is
-now under a bright, searching, and pitiless eye. Who are his enemies?
-What are his dangers? What conditions are essential to his existence?
-What conditions are fatal or inimical? International Commissions
-discuss him round green tables, grave men peer patiently at him
-through microscopes, active officers scour Central Africa to plot him
-out on charts. A fine-spun net is being woven remorselessly around
-him. And may not man find allies in this strange implacable warfare?
-There are fishes which destroy mosquitoes, there are birds which prey
-upon flies, there are plants whose scent or presence is abhorrent or
-injurious to particular forms of insect life. In what places and for
-how long will the tsetse continue to fly, as he is wont, over the
-smooth, gleaming water, just above the reeds and bushes, just below
-the branches of the overhanging trees? _Glossina palpalis contra
-mundum!_
-
-  [Illustration: THE GOVERNOR WITH BAGANDA GROUP.]
-
-I have not sought to conceal the perils in describing the riches and
-the beauties of Uganda. The harsh contrasts of the land, its noble
-potentialities, its hideous diseases, its fecundity alike of life and
-death, are capable of being illustrated by many more facts and
-examples than I can here set down. But what an obligation, what a
-sacred duty is imposed upon Great Britain to enter the lists in person
-and to shield this trustful, docile, intelligent Baganda race from
-dangers which, whatever their cause, have synchronized with our
-arrival in their midst! And, meanwhile, let us be sure that order and
-science will conquer, and that in the end John Bull will be really
-master in his curious garden of sunshine and deadly nightshade.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-KAMPALA
-
-
-Two days after I had arrived at Entebbe the Governor took me over to
-Kampala. The distance between the ancient and the administrative
-capital is about twenty-four miles. The road, although unmetalled,
-runs over such firm, smooth sandstone, almost polished by the rains,
-that, except in a few places, it would carry a motor-car well, and a
-bicycle is an excellent means of progression. The Uganda Government
-motor-cars, which are now running well and regularly, had not then,
-however, arrived, and the usual method was to travel by rickshaw.
-Mounted in this light bicycle-wheeled carriage, drawn by one man
-between the shafts and pushed by three more from behind, we were able
-to make rather more than six miles an hour in very comfortable style.
-
-The rickshaw-boys, who were neatly dressed in white tunics and red
-caps, were relieved every eight miles. They have their own way of
-doing business. From the moment when the travellers are seated in the
-rickshaw and their labour begins, they embark upon an ever-varying but
-absolutely interminable antiphony, which, if it exhausts their breath,
-serves undoubtedly to keep their spirits up. "Burrulum," cry the
-pushers; "Huma," says the puller. "Burrulum," say the pushers again,
-and so on over and over again for a very long time. All these chaunts
-have their meanings, and if the traveller is found to be heavy or
-known to be ignorant of the language, he would not always be
-complimented by a correct translation. The phrase I have quoted means
-"iron upon wood"; and its signification is that the iron of European
-strength and skill, however superior, yet cannot get along without the
-wood of native labour and endurance. With such unexceptionable
-sentiments no one would quarrel. Yet even these lose their flavour by
-repetition, and after half an hour of "Burrulum" and "Huma" I was
-constrained to ask the singers whether they could not possibly manage
-to convey us in silence. They tried their best, but I could see they
-were unhappy, and after a while, out of compassion and to improve the
-pace, I withdrew the ban, and the chorus was joyfully resumed in a new
-and more elaborate form.
-
-The manners of the Baganda are ceremonious to a degree. They well
-deserve Sir Harry Johnston's description of them as "the Japanese of
-Africa." If you say "Good morning" to a stranger on an English road,
-it is as like as not that his surprise will throw him into a posture
-of self-defence; but when two Baganda meet they begin to salute each
-other as soon as they come within earshot. "How are you?" cries the
-one. "Who am I that you should care to know?" replies the other.
-"Humble though I be, yet I have dared," rejoins the first. "But say
-first how are _you_," continues the second. "The better for the honour
-you have done me," is the answer. By this they have already passed
-each other, and there is only time for the Parthian affability, "The
-honour is mine, and I shall treasure it," and a quavering of
-delicately-modulated, long-drawn "A--a--a's" of contentment and
-goodwill which gradually die away in the distance, leaving neither of
-them the worse circumstanced, nor the better informed. I must add,
-for the reader's caution, that the aforesaid dialogue is not an
-invariable ritual. The phrases may be varied _ad infinitum_ to suit
-the occasion; but it will suffice as an illustration of these roadside
-courtesies.
-
-  [Illustration: BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA.]
-
-If you wish to make a Baganda perfectly happy, all you need to do is
-to say, "Way wally," which means a sort of supremely earnest "Well
-done." The moment this talismanic expression has left your lips, the
-native to whom it is addressed will probably fall on his knees, and,
-clasping his two hands together, will sway them from side to side, as
-if he were playing a concertina, while all the time his face beams
-with a most benignant and compulsive smile, and he purrs, "A--o, a--o,
-a--o," as much as to say, "My cup of joy is overflowing." It is not in
-accordance with our ideas that man should kneel to man, and one feels
-uncomfortable to see it done. Yet it should not be thought that the
-action, as performed by the Baganda, involves or implies any
-servility. It is their good manners--and meant to be no more. Nor,
-once you are used to it, do they seem to lose at all in dignity. Only
-they win your heart.
-
-The road from Entebbe to Kampala passes through delicious country.
-Along its whole length a double avenue of rubber trees has just been
-planted, and behind these on each side are broad strips of cotton
-plants, looking beautiful with their yellow flowers or pinky-white
-bolls. American upland cotton grown in Uganda actually commands a
-higher price in the Manchester market than when it is grown in the
-United States. There appears to be practically no natural difficulty
-in its cultivation throughout the larger part of Uganda. A great
-development is only a question of organization and--money.
-
-But I have forgotten that we have been moving swiftly along the
-Kampala road, and now we are almost in sight of the city. Almost, but
-not quite; for, to tell the truth, no one has ever seen Kampala. The
-traveller sees the Government buildings and residences neat and prim
-on one hill; he sees the King's house and his Ministers' houses on
-another. Upon a third, a fourth, or a fifth hill he may discern
-successively the Protestant Cathedral, the Catholic Mission, and the
-White Father's Monastery. But Kampala, the home of sixty thousand
-persons, is permanently invisible. The whole town is buried under the
-leaves of innumerable banana plantations, which afford shade and
-food to its people, and amid which their huts are thickly scattered
-and absolutely concealed.
-
-  [Illustration: KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA.
-    (Major Jenkins, Mr. Churchill, King Daudi, Sir H. Hesketh Bell.)]
-
-We were still three miles out of this "garden city" when the native
-reception began, and we travelled for a quarter of a mile between
-lines of white-robed Baganda, all mustered by their chiefs, and
-clapping their hands in sign of welcome. At last our procession of
-rickshaws reached a hillock by the roadside, at the top of which stood
-a pavilion, beautifully constructed of stout elephant grass like thin
-polished canes woven together with curious art. Down from this
-eminence, over a pathway strewn with rushes, came to meet us the King
-and his notables in a most imposing array. Daudi Chewa, the King or
-Kabaka of Uganda, is a graceful, distinguished-looking little boy,
-eleven years old. He was simply dressed in a flowing black robe edged
-with gold, and a little white gold-rimmed cap. Around him were the
-Council of Regency; and at his right hand stood the Prime Minister,
-Sir Apolo Kagwar, a powerful, determined-looking man, wearing a
-crimson, gold-laced robe, on which shone many decorations, several
-British war medals, and the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
-
-We all shook hands, and were then led up into the pavilion, where we
-took our seats on wicker chairs and ate sweet jellies while we
-conversed. The King, who is being most carefully educated by an
-English tutor, understands and speaks English quite well, but on this
-occasion he seemed too shy to say much more than "Yes" or "No," in a
-low, sweet drawl, and this formal interview soon came to an end.
-
-The afternoon was consumed in ceremony; for the Commissioner of Uganda
-had to be sworn in the rank of Governor, to which he has been lately
-raised; and there was a parade of troops, in which some five or six
-hundred very smart-looking soldiers took part, headed by the Kampala
-company of Sikhs. It was not until the shadows began to lengthen that
-we visited the Kabaka on the Royal Hill. He received us in his
-Parliament House. In this large and beautifully-constructed grass
-building about seventy chiefs and Baganda notables were assembled. The
-little Kabaka sat on his throne, and his subjects grouped themselves
-around and before him. We were given seats at his side, and the
-Prime Minister explained that the Baganda would show us the ceremony
-of swearing a chief. One of the most portly and dignified of the
-councillors thereupon advanced into the centre of the room, threw
-himself face downward on the ground, and poured out a torrent of
-asseverations of loyalty. After a few minutes he rose and began
-brandishing his spears, chaunting his oath all the while, until he had
-created an extraordinary appearance of passion. Finally he rushed from
-the building to go and slay the King's enemies outside. It was not
-until he returned a moment later, calm, sedate, and respectable, that
-I realized, from the merry smile on his face and from the mirth of the
-company, that he was "only pretending," and that the ceremony was
-merely a representation given to interest us.
-
-  [Illustration: ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA.]
-
-The incident is remarkable because it illustrates the rapidity with
-which the Baganda people are leaving their past behind them. Already
-they laugh at their old selves. Ceremonies which twenty years ago had
-a solemn and awful significance, are to-day reproduced by this
-reflective people in much the same spirit as the citizens of Coventry
-revive the progress of Lady Godiva. The same thing happened at the
-war-dance the next day. Two or three thousand men, naked and painted
-for war, rushed frantically to and fro to the beating of drums and
-barbaric music, with every sign of earnestness and even frenzy. Yet a
-few minutes later they were laughing sheepishly at one another, and
-bowing to us like actors before the curtain, and the Prime Minister
-was making a speech to explain that this was meant to be a pageant of
-the bad old times reproduced for our benefit. Indeed, so unaccustomed
-to carry arms had the warriors become that not one in ten could find a
-spear to arm himself with, and they had to come with sticks and other
-stage-properties.
-
-Even a comic element was provided in the shape of a warrior painted
-all over in a ridiculous manner, and held by two others with a rope
-tied round his middle. This, we were told, was "the bravest man in the
-army," who had to be restrained lest he should rush into battle too
-soon. It is not easy to convey the air of honest fun and good humour
-which pervaded these curious performances, or to measure the
-intellectual progress which the attitude of the Baganda towards them
-implied.
-
-  [Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.
-    "The bravest man in the army."]
-
-  [Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.]
-
-The Kabaka gave us tea in his house. It is a comfortable European
-building, quite small and modest, but nicely furnished, and adorned
-with familiar English prints and portraits of Queen Victoria and King
-Edward. Gradually he got the better of his shyness, and told me that
-he liked football more than anything else, and that his mathematical
-studies had advanced as far as "G.C.M.," initials which never fail to
-stir disagreeable school-day memories in my mind. He can write a very
-good letter in English, rides well on a nice pony, and will probably
-become a well-educated and accomplished man. Altogether it is a very
-pleasing spectacle to find in the heart of Africa, and amid so much
-barbarism, squalour, and violence, this island of gentle manners and
-peaceful civilization.
-
-The next day was one unending pilgrimage. I have described how Kampala
-lies under the leaves of the plantain groves about the slopes of many
-hills. Each hill has its special occupants and purpose. Each of the
-different Christian missions has a hill to itself, and in the bad old
-days a Maxim gun was not thought at all an inappropriate aid to
-Christian endeavour. It would, however, be very unfair to charge the
-missionaries with having created the feuds and struggles which
-convulsed Uganda twelve years ago. The accident that the line of
-cleavage between French and British influence was also the line of
-cleavage between Catholic and Protestant converts, imparted a
-religious complexion to what was in reality a fierce political
-dispute. These troubles are now definitely at an end. The arrival upon
-the scene of an English Catholic mission has prevented national
-rivalries and religious differences from mutually embittering one
-another. The erection of a stable Government and the removal of all
-doubts about the future of Uganda have led to an entire abatement of
-strife among devoted men engaged in a noble work. Not only is there
-peace among the different Christian missions themselves, but the
-Government of Uganda, so far from watching missionary enterprise with
-sour disfavour, is thoroughly alive to the inestimable services which
-have been and are daily being rendered by the missions to the native
-population, and excellent relations prevail.
-
-  [Illustration: THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION, KAMPALA.]
-
-In duty bound I climbed one hill after another and endeavoured to make
-myself acquainted with the details of mission work in Kampala. It
-comprises every form of moral and social activity. Apart from their
-spiritual work, which needs no advocacy here, the missionaries have
-undertaken and are now maintaining the whole educational system of the
-country. They have built many excellent schools, and thousands of
-young Baganda are being taught to read and write in their own
-language. The whole country is dotted with subsidiary mission
-stations, each one a centre of philanthropic and Christian effort.
-There are good hospitals, with skilful doctors and nurses or sisters
-of charity, in connection with all the missions. The largest of these,
-belonging to the Church Missionary Society, is a model of what a
-tropical hospital for natives ought to be. Technical education is now
-being added to these services, and in this, it is to be hoped, the
-Government will be able to cooperate. I do not know of any other part
-of the world where missionary influence and enterprise have been so
-beneficently exerted, or where more valuable results have been
-achieved.
-
-On Namirembe Hill, where the Church Missionary Society have their
-head-quarters, a really fine cathedral, with three tall, quaint,
-thatched spires, has been built out of very primitive materials; and
-this is almost the only building in Uganda which offers the slightest
-attempt at architectural display. Under the shadow of this I found
-myself on the afternoon of the 20th of November engaged in opening a
-high school for scholars who are more advanced than can be instructed
-in the existing establishments. A large and well-dressed audience,
-native and European, filled a good-sized room. The scholars crowded
-together in a solid mass of white-dressed youths upon the floor. The
-Kabaka and Sir Apolo Kagwar, who has himself five sons at the school,
-were upon the platform. The Governor presided. The Bishop made a
-speech. The schoolboys sang English songs and hymns in very good tune
-and rhythm. It was astonishing to look at the map of the British
-Empire hanging on the wall and to realize that all this was taking
-place near the north-western corner of the Victoria Nyanza.
-
-  [Illustration: INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL.]
-
-It is eight miles from Kampala to Munyonyo, its present port on the
-lake, and this distance we covered in rickshaws over a shocking road.
-Munyonyo is itself little more than a jetty and a few sheds, but it
-affords a very good example of the salutary effects of cutting down
-the bush and forest. Mosquitoes and tsetses have been absolutely
-banished from the cleared area, and a place which a year ago was a
-death-trap is now perfectly safe and healthy. Plans are now on foot to
-make a new port a little farther along the coast at a point only five
-miles away from Kampala; and when this has been connected with the
-capital, as it must be, by a line of mono-rail tramway, there is every
-reason to expect a substantial and growing trade.
-
-The _Sir William Mackinnon_, a venerable vessel of the Uganda Marine,
-awaited our party, and we steamed off on the smooth waters of the
-lake, through an archipelago of beautiful islands--each one more
-inviting than the other--and all depopulated by sleeping sickness. All
-day long we voyaged in these sheltered waters, and in the evening the
-lights of Jinja guided us to our destination. One cannot help admiring
-the luck which led Speke to his thrilling discovery of the source of
-the Nile. There are five hundred gulfs and inlets on the northern
-shore of Lake Victoria, and nothing distinguishes this one from the
-rest. No current is perceptible to the ordinary mariner until within a
-few miles of the rapids, and although the presumption that so vast a
-body of fresh water would have an overflow somewhere had behind it a
-backing of strong probability, the explorer might have searched for a
-year without finding the spot. Instead of which he drifted and paddled
-gently along until all of a sudden the murmur of a distant cataract
-and the slight acceleration in the pace of his canoe drew him to the
-long-sought birthplace of the most wonderful river in the world.
-
-It was dark when we landed at Jinja, and I could not properly see the
-preparations made for our reception by the local chiefs and the Indian
-traders, of whom there was a considerable crowd. The darkness,
-otherwise a cause of disappointment, afforded the opportunity for just
-the sort of brave act one so often finds a British officer ready to
-do. As the baggage was being landed from the steamer on to the jetty,
-a poor coolie slipped under his load, and in an instant was engulfed
-in the deep black waters below. Whereupon, as a matter of course, a
-young civilian in the Political Department jumped in after him in the
-darkness and among the crocodiles, and fished him out safe and sound,
-an act of admirable behaviour which has since received the recognition
-of the Royal Humane Society. I am not quite sure that in all parts of
-Africa so high a standard of honour and respect for the life of the
-humble native would prevail.
-
-Jinja is destined to become a very important place in the future
-economy of Central Africa. Situated at the point where the Nile flows
-out of the Great Lake, it is at once on the easiest line of water
-communication with Lake Albert and the Soudan, and also where great
-water-power is available. In years to come the shores of this splendid
-bay may be crowned with long rows of comfortable tropical villas and
-imposing offices, and the gorge of the Nile crowded with factories and
-warehouses. There is power enough to gin all the cotton and saw all
-the wood in Uganda, and it is here that one of the principal emporia
-of tropical produce will certainly be created. In these circumstances
-it is a pity to handicap the town with an outlandish name. It would be
-much better to call it Ripon Falls, after the beautiful cascades which
-lie beneath it, and from whose force its future prosperity will be
-derived.
-
-The Ripon Falls are, for their own sake, well worth a visit. The Nile
-springs out of the Victoria Nyanza, a vast body of water nearly as
-wide as the Thames at Westminster Bridge, and this imposing river
-rushes down a stairway of rock from fifteen to twenty feet deep, in
-smooth, swirling slopes of green water. It would be perfectly easy to
-harness the whole river and let the Nile begin its long and beneficent
-journey to the sea by leaping through a turbine. It is possible that
-nowhere else in the world could so enormous a mass of water be held up
-by so little masonry. Two or three short dams from island to island
-across the falls would enable, at an inconceivably small cost, the
-whole level of the Victoria Nyanza--over an expanse of a hundred and
-fifty thousand square miles--to be gradually raised six or seven feet;
-would greatly increase the available water-power; would deepen the
-water in Kavirondo Bay, so as to admit steamers of much larger
-draught; and, finally, would enable the lake to be maintained at a
-uniform level, so that immense areas of swampy foreshore, now
-submerged, now again exposed, according to the rainfalls, would be
-converted either into clear water or dry land, to the benefit of
-man and the incalculable destruction of mosquitoes.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RIPON FALLS (Source of the Nile).]
-
-As one watches the surging waters of the Ripon Falls and endeavours to
-compute the mighty energies now running to waste, but all within the
-reach of modern science, the problem of Uganda rises in a new form on
-the mind. All this water-power belongs to the State. Ought it ever to
-be surrendered to private persons? How long, on the other hand, is a
-Government, if not prepared to act itself, entitled to bar the way to
-others? This question is raised in a multitude of diverse forms in
-almost all the great dependencies of the Crown. But in Uganda the
-arguments for the State ownership and employment of the natural
-resources of the country seem to present themselves in their strongest
-and most formidable array. Uganda is a native State. It must not be
-compared with any of those colonies where there is a white population
-already established, nor again with those inhabited by tribes of
-nomadic barbarians. It finds its counterparts among the great native
-States of India, where Imperial authority is exercised in the name and
-often through the agency of a native prince and his own officers.
-
-This combination of the external brain and the native hand results in
-a form of government often highly acceptable to the general body of
-the inhabitants, who are confronted with no sudden or arbitrary
-changes in the long-accustomed appearances of things. But it involves
-all the administration of affairs in a degree of complexity and
-delicacy which is absent from simpler and cruder systems. In such
-circumstances there cannot be much opening for the push and drive of
-ordinary commercial enterprise. The hustling business man--admirably
-suited to the rough and tumble of competitive production in Europe or
-America--becomes an incongruous and even a dangerous figure when
-introduced into the smooth and leisurely development of a native
-State. The Baganda will not be benefited either morally or materially
-by contact with modern money-making or modern money-makers. When a man
-is working only for the profits of his company and is judged by the
-financial results alone, he does not often under the sun of Central
-Africa acquire the best method of dealing with natives; and all sorts
-of difficulties and troubles will follow any sudden incursion of
-business enterprise into the forests and gardens of Uganda. And even
-if the country is more rapidly developed by these agencies, the
-profits will not go to the Government and people of Uganda, to be used
-in fostering new industries, but to divers persons across the sea, who
-have no concern, other than purely commercial, in its fortunes. This
-is not to advocate the arbitrary exclusion of private capital and
-enterprise from Uganda. Carefully directed and narrowly controlled
-opportunities for their activities will no doubt occur. But the
-natural resources of the country should, as far as possible, be
-developed by the Government itself, even though that may involve the
-assumption of many new functions.
-
-Indeed, it would be hard to find a country where the conditions were
-more favourable than in Uganda to a practical experiment in State
-Socialism. The land is rich; the people pacific and industrious. There
-are no great differences between class and class. One staple article
-of food meets the needs of the whole population, and produces itself
-almost without the aid of man. There are no European vested interests
-to block the way. Nowhere are the powers of the Government to
-regulate and direct the activities of the people more overwhelming or
-more comprehensive. The superiority of knowledge in the rulers is
-commanding. Their control upon the natives is exerted through almost
-every channel; and besides the secular authorities--native and
-Imperial--there is the spiritual and educative influence of the
-missionaries to infuse human sympathy and moral earnestness into the
-regular machinery of State.
-
-The first, and perhaps the greatest, difficulty which confronts the
-European Socialist is the choosing of Governors to whom the positively
-awful powers indispensable to a communistic society are to be
-entrusted. If a race of beings could be obtained when and as required
-from a neighbouring planet, whose practical superiority in virtue,
-science, wisdom, and strength was so manifest as to be universally
-acclaimed, this difficulty would disappear, and we might with
-composure await the decision of popular elections with all their
-defects and advantages. But in the absence of this dispensation the
-problem of how rulers are to be selected, and how, having been
-selected, they are to be controlled or changed, remains the first
-question of politics, even in days when the functions of government
-are, in general, restricted to the modest limits of _laissez-faire_.
-
-In Uganda, however, this difficulty does not exist. A class of rulers
-is provided by an outside power as remote from and, in all that
-constitutes fitness to direct, as superior to the Baganda as Mr.
-Wells's Martians would have been to us. The British administration is
-in its _personnel_ absolutely disinterested. The officials draw their
-salaries, and that is all. They have no end to serve, except the
-improvement of the country and the contentment of its people. By that
-test and that test alone are they judged. In no other way can they win
-approbation or fame. They are furthermore controlled in the exercise
-of their functions by a superior authority, specially instructed in
-this class of administration, and itself answerable to a Parliament
-elected on a democratic franchise. At no point in the whole chain of
-command is there any room for corruption, usurpation, or gross
-inefficiency.
-
-It is clear that larger powers could be entrusted to the State in
-regard to the labour of its citizens than would ever be accorded to
-private employers. The subjects of every European Power have accepted
-the obligation of military service to defend their respective
-countries from external attack. The Baganda, relieved from this harsh
-obsession, have no higher duty than to cultivate and develop the
-beautiful land they live in. And if it were desired to organize
-scientifically, upon a humane and honourable basis, the industry of an
-entire population, and to apply the whole fruits of their labour to
-their own enrichment and elevation, no better conditions are likely to
-be discovered than those which now exist in Uganda.
-
-It might at any rate be worth while to make such an experiment, if
-only as a prelude to those more general applications of the principles
-of Socialism which are held in some quarters to be so necessary.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-'ON SAFARI'
-
-
-Now the reader must really look at the map. To this point we have
-proceeded by train and steamer with all the power and swiftness of
-modern communication. If we have traversed wild and lonely lands, it
-has been in a railway carriage. We have disturbed the lion with the
-locomotive, and all our excursions have but led back to the iron road.
-But at Ripon Falls we are to let go our hold upon machinery. Steam and
-all it means is to be shut off. We are "to cut the painter," and,
-losing the impulsion of the great ship, are for a while to paddle
-about upon a vast expanse in a little cock-boat of our own. Back
-towards Mombasa, three days' journey will cover nine hundred miles.
-Forward, you will be lucky to make forty in the same time. Return at
-this moment is swift and easy. In a week it will be perhaps
-impossible. Going on means going through.
-
-Everywhere great pathways are being cut into Africa. We have followed
-for nearly a thousand miles one leading from the East towards the
-centre. Far away from the North another line has been thrust forward
-by British efforts in peace and war. From Alexandria to Cairo, from
-Cairo to Wady Halfa, from Halfa to Berber, from Berber to Khartoum,
-from Khartoum to Fashoda, from Fashoda to Gondokoro, over a distance
-of nearly three thousand miles, stretches an uninterrupted service of
-trains and steamers. But between the landing-stage at Jinja and the
-landing-stage at Gondokoro there opens a wide gulf of yet unbridged,
-unconquered wilderness and jungle, across which and through which the
-traveller must crawl painfully and at a foot's pace, always amid
-difficulty and never wholly without danger. It is this gulf which we
-are now to traverse.
-
-  [Illustration: BETWEEN NIMULE AND GONDOKORO.
-    Capt. Read. Mr. Marsh. Dr. Goldie. Mr. Ormsby.
-    Col. Wilson. Mr. Churchill. Capt. Dickinson. Lieut.
-    Fishbourne, R.E.]
-
-The distance from the Victoria to the Albert Nyanza is about two
-hundred miles in the direct line, and it is all downhill. The Great
-Lake is hoisted high above the highest hill-tops of England. From this
-vast elevated inland sea the descending Nile water flows through a
-channel of three thousand five hundred miles into the Mediterranean.
-The first and steepest stage of its journey is to the Albert Lake.
-This second body of water, which, except in comparison with the
-Victoria Nyanza, would be impressive--it is more than a hundred miles
-long--lies at an altitude of two thousand three hundred feet above the
-sea. So that in its first two hundred miles the Nile exhausts in the
-exuberant improvidence of youth about a third of the impulse which is
-to carry it through its venerable career. Yet this considerable
-descent of twelve hundred feet is itself accomplished in two short
-steps. There is one series of rapids, thirty miles long, below the
-Ripon Falls, and another of equal extent above the Murchison Falls.
-Between these two declivities long reaches of open river and the wide,
-level expanse of Lake Chioga afford a fine waterway.
-
-Our journey from one great lake to the other divided itself therefore
-into three stages. Three marches through the forest to Kakindu, the
-first point where the Victoria Nile is navigable after the rapids;
-three days in canoes along the Nile and across Lake Chioga; and,
-lastly, five marches from the western end of Lake Chioga to the Albert
-Nyanza. Beyond this, again, four days in canoes and steel
-sailing-boats, towed by a launch, would carry us to Nimule, where the
-rapids on the White Nile begin, and in seven or eight marches from
-there we should reach the Soudan steamers at Gondokoro. About five
-hundred miles would thus be covered in twenty days. It would take
-about the same time, if trains and steamers fitted exactly, to return
-by Mombasa and Suez to London.
-
-Early in the morning of November 23rd our party set off upon this
-journey. Travelling by marches from camp to camp plays a regular part
-in the life of the average Central African officer. He goes "on
-Safari" as the Boer "on trek." It is a recognized state of being,
-which often lasts for weeks, and sometimes for months. He learns to
-think of ten days' "Safari" as we at home think of going to Scotland,
-and twenty days' "Safari" as if it were less than the journey to
-Paris. "Safari" is itself a Swahili word of Arabic origin, meaning an
-expedition and all that pertains to it. It comprises yourself and
-everybody and everything you take with you--food, tents, rifles,
-clothing, cooks, servants, escort, porters--but especially porters.
-Out of the range of steam the porter is the primary factor. This
-ragged figure, tottering along under his load, is the unit of
-locomotion and the limit of possibility. Without porters you cannot
-move. With them you move ten or twelve miles a day, if all is well.
-How much can he carry? How far can he carry it? These are the
-questions which govern alike your calculations and your fate.
-
-Every morning the porters are divided into batches of about twenty,
-each under its headman. The loads, which are supposed to average about
-sixty-five pounds, are also roughly parcelled out. As each batch
-starts off, the next rushes up to the succeeding heap of loads, and
-there is a quarter of an hour of screaming and pushing--the strongest
-men making a bee-line for the lightest-looking loads, and being beaten
-off by the grim but voluble headman, the weakest weeping feebly beside
-a mountainous pile, till a distribution has been achieved with rough
-justice, and the troop in its turn marches off with indescribable
-ululations testifying and ministering to the spirit in which they mean
-to accomplish the day's journey.
-
-While these problems were being imperfectly solved, I walked down
-with the Governor and one of the Engineer officers to the Ripon Falls,
-which are but half a mile from the Commissioner's house, and the sound
-of whose waters filled the air. Although the cataract is on a moderate
-scale, both in height and volume, its aspect--and still more its
-situation--is impressive. The exit or overflow of the Great Lake is
-closed by a natural rampart or ridge of black rock, broken or worn
-away in two main gaps to release the waters. Through these the Nile
-leaps at once into majestic being, and enters upon its course as a
-perfect river three hundred yards wide. Standing upon the reverse side
-of the wall of rock, one's eye may be almost on a plane with the
-shining levels of the Lake. At your very feet, literally a yard away,
-a vast green slope of water races downward. Below are foaming rapids,
-fringed by splendid trees, and pools from which great fish leap
-continually in the sunlight. We must have spent three hours watching
-the waters and revolving plans to harness and bridle them. So much
-power running to waste, such a coign of vantage unoccupied, such a
-lever to control the natural forces of Africa ungripped, cannot but
-vex and stimulate imagination. And what fun to make the immemorial
-Nile begin its journey by diving through a turbine! But to our tale.
-
-  [Illustration: FOREST SCENE NEAR RIPON FALLS.]
-
-The porters had by now got far on their road, and we must pad after
-them through the full blaze of noon. The Governor of Uganda and his
-officers have to return to Entebbe by the steamer, so it is here I bid
-them good-bye and good luck, and with a final look at Ripon Falls,
-gleaming and resounding below, I climb the slopes of the river bank
-and walk off into the forest. The native path struck north-east from
-the Nile, and led into a hilly and densely wooded region. The
-elephant-grass on each side of the track rose fifteen feet high. In
-the valleys great trees grew and arched above our heads, laced and
-twined together with curtains of flowering creepers. Here and there a
-glade opened to the right or left, and patches of vivid sunlight
-splashed into the gloom. Around the crossings of little streams
-butterflies danced in brilliant ballets. Many kinds of birds flew
-about the trees. The jungle was haunted by game--utterly lost in its
-dense entanglements. And I think it a sensation all by itself to walk
-on your own feet, and staff in hand, along these mysterious paths,
-amid such beautiful, yet sinister, surroundings, and realize that one
-is really in the centre of Africa, and a long way from Piccadilly or
-Pall Mall.
-
-Our first march was about fourteen miles, and as we had not started
-till the hot hours of the day were upon us, it was enough and to spare
-so far as I was concerned. Up-hill and down-hill wandered our path,
-now plunged in the twilight of a forest valley, now winding up the
-side of a scorched hill, and I had for some time been hoping to see
-the camp round every corner, when at last we reached it. It consisted
-of two rows of green tents and a large "banda," or rest-house, as big
-as a large barn in England, standing in a nice, trim clearing. These
-"bandas" are a great feature of African travel; and the dutiful chief
-through whose territory we are passing had taken pains to make them on
-the most elaborate scale. He was not long in making his appearance
-with presents of various kinds. A lanky, black-faced sheep, with a fat
-tail as big as a pumpkin, was dragged forward, bleating, by two
-retainers. Others brought live hens and earthenware jars of milk and
-baskets of little round eggs. The chief was a tall, intelligent-looking
-man, with the winning smile and attractive manners characteristic
-of the country, and made his salutations with a fine air of dignity
-and friendship.
-
-  [Illustration: PALM TREE NEAR THE ASUA.]
-
-  [Illustration: BANDA WITH ESCORT OF KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES.]
-
-The house he had prepared for us was built of bamboo framework,
-supported upon a central row of Y-shaped tree-stems, with a
-high-pitched roof heavily thatched with elephant-grass, and walls of
-wattled reeds. The floors of African "bandas" when newly made are
-beautifully smooth and clean, and strewn with fresh green rushes; the
-interior is often cunningly divided into various apartments, and the
-main building is connected with kitchens and offices of the same
-unsubstantial texture by veranda-shaded passages. In fact, they prove
-a high degree of social knowledge and taste in the natives, who make
-them with almost incredible rapidity from the vegetation of the
-surrounding jungle; and the sensation of entering one of these lofty,
-dim, cool, and spacious interiors, and sinking into the soft rush-bed
-of the floor, with something to drink which is, at any rate, not
-tepid, well repays the glaring severities of a march under an
-Equatorial sun. The "banda," however, is a luxury of which the
-traveller should beware, for if it has stood for more than a week it
-becomes the home of innumerable insects, many of approved malevolence
-and venom, and spirillum fever is almost invariably caught from
-sleeping in old shelters or on disused camping-grounds.
-
-Life "on Safari" is rewarded by a sense of completeness and
-self-satisfied detachment. You have got to "do" so many miles a day,
-and when you have "done" them your day's work is over. 'Tis a simple
-programme, which leaves nothing more to be demanded or desired. Very
-early in the morning, often an hour before daybreak, the bugles of the
-King's African Rifles sounded réveille. Every one dresses hurriedly by
-candle-light, eats a dim breakfast while dawn approaches; tents
-collapse, and porters struggle off with their burdens. Then the march
-begins. The obvious thing is to walk. There is no surer way of keeping
-well in Uganda than to walk twelve or fourteen miles a day. But if the
-traveller will not make the effort, there are alternatives. There is
-the rickshaw, which was described in the last chapter--restful, but
-tedious; and the litter, carried on the heads of six porters of
-different sizes, and shifted every now and then, with a disheartening
-jerk, to their shoulders and back again--this is quite as
-uncomfortable as it sounds. Ponies cannot, or at least do not, live in
-Uganda, though an experiment was just about to be made with them by
-the Chief of the Police, who is convinced that with really careful
-stable management, undertaken in detail by the owner himself, they
-could be made to flourish. Mules have a better chance, though still
-not a good one. We took one with us on the last spell of "Safari" to
-Gondokoro, and were told it was sure to die; but we left it in
-apparently excellent condition and spirits.
-
-  [Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT.]
-
-But the best of all methods of progression in Central Africa--however
-astonishing it may seem--is the bicycle. In the dry season the paths
-through the bush, smoothed by the feet of natives, afford an excellent
-surface. Even when the track is only two feet wide, and when the
-densest jungle rises on either side and almost meets above the head,
-the bicycle skims along, swishing through the grass and brushing the
-encroaching bushes, at a fine pace; and although at every few hundred
-yards sharp rocks, loose stones, a water-course, or a steep hill
-compel dismounting, a good seven miles an hour can usually be
-maintained. And think what this means. From my own experience I should
-suppose that with a bicycle twenty-five to thirty miles a day could
-regularly be covered in Uganda, and, if only the porters could keep
-up, all journeys could be nearly trebled, and every white officer's
-radius of action proportionately increased.
-
-Nearly all the British officers I met already possessed and used
-bicycles, and even the native chiefs are beginning to acquire them.
-But what is needed to make the plan effective is a good system of
-stone, fumigated, insect-proof rest-houses at stages of thirty miles
-on all the main lines of communication. Such a development would mean
-an enormous saving in the health of white officials and a valuable
-accession to their power. Had I known myself before coming to Uganda
-the advantages which this method presents, I should have been able to
-travel far more widely through the country by the simple expedient of
-trebling the stages of my journeys, and sending porters on a week in
-advance to pitch camps and deposit food at wide intervals. And then,
-instead of merely journeying from one Great Lake to the other, I
-could, _within the same limits of time_, have explored the fertile
-and populous plateau of Toro, descended the beautiful valley of the
-Semliki, and traversed the Albert Lake from end to end, and skirted
-the slopes of Ruenzori. "If youth but knew...!"
-
-But the march, however performed, has its termination; and if, as is
-recommended, you stop to breakfast and rest upon the way, the new camp
-will be almost ready upon arrival. During the heat of the day every
-one retires to his tent or to the more effective shelter of the
-"banda," to read and sleep till the evening. Then as the sun gets low
-we emerge to smoke and talk, and there is, perhaps, just time for the
-energetic to pursue an antelope, or shoot a few guinea-fowl or
-pigeons.
-
-With the approach of twilight comes the mosquito, strident-voiced and
-fever-bearing; and the most thorough precautions have to be taken
-against him and other insect dangers. We dine in a large
-mosquito-house made entirely of fine gauze, and about twelve feet
-cubically. The bedding, which should if possible be packed in tin
-boxes, is unrolled during the day, and carefully protected by
-mosquito-nets well tucked in, against all forms of vermin. Every one
-puts on mosquito-boots--long, soft, leather leggings, reaching to the
-hips. You are recommended not to sit on cane-bottomed chairs without
-putting a newspaper or a cushion on them, to wear a cap, a scarf, and
-possibly gloves, and to carry a swishing mosquito-trap. Thus one
-moves, comparatively secure, amid a chorus of ferocious buzzings.
-
-To these precautions are added others. You must never walk barefoot on
-the floor, no matter how clean it is, or an odious worm, called a
-"jigger," will enter your foot to raise a numerous family and a
-painful swelling. On the other hand, be sure when you put on boots or
-shoes that, however hurried, you turn them upside down and look
-inside, lest a scorpion, a small snake, or a perfectly frightful kind
-of centipede may be lying in ambush. Never throw your clothes
-carelessly upon the ground, but put them away at once in a tin box,
-and shut it tight, or a perfect colony of fierce-biting creatures will
-beset them. And, above all, quinine! To the permanent resident in
-these strange countries no drug can be of much avail; for either its
-protection is diminished with habit, or the doses have to be
-increased to impossible limits. But the traveller, who is passing
-through on a journey of only a few months, may recur with safety and
-with high advantage to that admirable prophylactic. Opinions differ as
-to how it should be taken. The Germans, with their love of exactness
-even in regard to the most uncertain things, prescribe thirty grains
-on each seventh day and eighth day alternately. We followed a simpler
-plan of taking a regular ten grains every day, from the moment we left
-Port Said till we arrived at Khartoum. No one in my party suffered
-from fever even for a day during the whole journey.
-
-Our second day's march was about the same in length and character,
-except that we were nearer the river, and as the path led through the
-twilight of the forest we saw every now and then a gleam of broad
-waters on our left. At frequent intervals--five or six times during
-the day--long caravans of native porters were met carrying the produce
-of the fertile districts between Lake Chioga and Mount Elgon into
-Jinja. Nothing could better show the need of improved communications
-than this incipient and potential trade--ready to begin and thrusting
-forward along bush-paths on the heads of tottering men. For the rest,
-the country near the river seemed the densest and most impenetrable
-jungle, hiding in its recesses alike its inhabitants and its game.
-
-The third morning, however, brought us among "shambas," as the patches
-of native cultivation are called; and the road was among plantations
-of bananas, millet, cotton, castor-oil, and chilies. Here in Usoga, as
-throughout Uganda, the one staple crop is the banana; and as this
-fruit, when once planted, grows and propagates of its own accord,
-requiring no thought or exertion, it finds special favour with the
-improvident natives, and sustains them year after year in leisured
-abundance, till a sudden failure and a fearful famine restore the
-harsh balances of the world.
-
-After a tramp of twelve miles, and while it was still comparatively
-early--for we had started before dawn--we reached Kakindu. The track
-led out of the forest of banana-groves downwards into more open spaces
-and blazing sunlight, and there before us was the Nile. Already--forty
-miles from its source, near four thousand from its mouth--it was a
-noble river: nearly a third of a mile in breadth of clear, deep water
-rolling forward majestically between banks of foliage and verdure. The
-"Chioga flotilla," consisting of the small steam launch, _Victoria_, a
-steel boat, and two or three dug-out canoes, scooped out of
-tree-trunks, awaited us; and after the long, hot business of embarking
-the baggage and crowding the native servants in among it, was
-completed, we parted from our first relay of escorts and porters, and
-drifted out on the flood.
-
-The next three days of our life were spent on the water--first
-cruising down the Victoria Nile till it flows into Chioga, and then
-traversing the smooth, limpid expanses of that lake. Every evening we
-landed at camps prepared by the Busoga chiefs, pitched our tents,
-lighted our fires, and erected our mosquito-houses, while dusk drew
-on, and thunderstorms--frequent at this season of the year--wheeled in
-vivid splendour about the dark horizon. All through the hot hours of
-the day one lay at the bottom of massive canoes, sheltered from the
-sun by an improvised roof of rushes and wet grass. From time to time a
-strange bird, or, better still, the rumour of a hippo--nose just
-peeping above the water--enlivened the slow and sultry passage of the
-hours; and one great rock, crowded with enormous crocodiles, all of
-whom--a score at least--leaped together into the water at the first
-shot, afforded at least one really striking spectacle.
-
-As the Victoria Nile approaches Lake Chioga, it broadens out into wide
-lagoons, and the sloping banks of forest and jungle give place to
-unbroken walls of papyrus-reeds, behind which the flat, surrounding
-country is invisible, and above which only an isolated triangular hill
-may here and there be descried, purple in the distance. The lake
-itself is about fifty miles long from east to west, and eleven broad,
-but its area and perimeter are greatly extended by a series of long
-arms, or rather fingers, stretching out in every direction, but
-especially to the north, and affording access by water to very wide
-and various districts. All these arms, and even a great part of the
-centre of the lake, are filled with reeds, grass, and water-lilies,
-for Chioga is the first of the great sponges upon which the Nile
-lavishes its waters. Although a depth of about twelve feet can usually
-be counted on, navigation is impeded by floating weeds and
-water-plants; and when the storms have swept the northern shore,
-numerous papyrus-tangled islands, complete with their populations of
-birds and animals, are detached, and swim erratically about the lake
-to block accustomed channels and puzzle the pilot.
-
-For one long day our little palpitating launch, towing its flotilla of
-canoes, plashed through this curious region, at times winding through
-a glade in the papyrus forest scarcely a dozen yards across, then
-presently emerging into wide flood, stopping often to clear our
-propeller from tangles of accumulating greenery. The middle of the
-lake unrolls large expanses of placid water. The banks and reeds
-recede into the distance, and the whole universe becomes a vast
-encircling blue globe of sky and water, rimmed round its middle by a
-thin band of vivid green. Time vanishes, and nothing is left but space
-and sunlight.
-
-All this while we must carefully avoid the northern, and particularly
-the north-western shore, for the natives are altogether
-unadministered, and nearly all the tribes are hostile. To pursue the
-elephants which, of course (so they say), abound in these forbidden
-precincts is impossible; to land for food or fuel would be dangerous,
-and even to approach might draw a splutter of musketry or a shower of
-spears from His Majesty's yet unpersuaded subjects.
-
-The Nile leaves the north-west corner of the lake at Namasali and
-flows along a broad channel above a mile in width, still enclosed by
-solid papyrus walls and dotted with floating islands. Another forty
-miles of steaming and we reach Mruli. Mruli is a representative
-African village. Its importance is more marked upon the maps than on
-the ground. An imposing name in large black letters calls up the idea
-of a populous and considerable township. All that meets the eye,
-however, are a score of funnel-shaped grass huts, surrounded by dismal
-swamps and labyrinths of reeds, over which clouds of mosquitoes danced
-feverishly. A long wattled pier had been built from terra firma to
-navigable water, but the channel by which it could be approached had
-been wholly blocked by a floating island, and this had to be towed
-painfully out of the way before we could land. Here we were met by a
-fresh escort of King's African Rifles, as spick and span in uniform,
-as precise in their military bearing, as if they were at Aldershot; by
-a mob of fresh porters, and, lastly, by the only friendly tribe
-from the northern bank of the river: and while tents were pitched,
-baggage landed, and cooking-fires began to glow, these four hundred
-wild spearmen, casting aside their leopard skins, danced naked in the
-dusk.
-
-  [Illustration: LANDING AT MRULI.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-MURCHISON FALLS
-
-
-We had intended, on leaving the Nile where it turns northward at
-Mruli, to march directly across to Hoima, on the Albert Lake; and this
-journey, by way of Masindi, would have required four marches. But
-tales of the beauty and wonder of the Murchison Falls had captivated
-my mind, and before embarking at Kakindu a new plan had been resolved.
-Runners were sent back to the telegraph wire at Jinja, and thence a
-message was flashed by Kampala to Hoima, directing the flotilla which
-awaited us there, to steam to the north end of the Albert and meet us
-by the foot of the Murchison Falls at Fajao. Thither we were now to
-proceed by five marches--two to Masindi and three more turning
-northward to the Nile.
-
-The road from Mruli consists of a sort of embanked track through
-low-lying and desolate scrub and jungle. The heavy black cotton soil,
-cracked and granulated by the heat, offered at this time a hardened if
-uneven surface to the bicycle; but in the rains such paths must become
-utterly impassable. As one advances westward the country improves
-rapidly in aspect. The dismal flats of the South Chioga shore are left
-behind, and the traveller discovers more characteristic Uganda scenery
-in a region of small hills and great trees. Before Masindi is reached
-we are again in a rich and beautiful land. Pools of shining water, set
-in verdant green, flash back the sunbeams. Bold bluffs and ridges rise
-on all sides from amid the unceasing undulations of the ground.
-Streams plash merrily downwards through rocky channels. The yellow
-grass roofs of frequent villages peep from underneath their groves of
-bananas among broad streaks of cultivated ground, and chiefs and
-headmen salute the stranger with grave yet curious politeness as the
-long "safari" winds beneath the trees.
-
-The heat grows as the altitude dwindles, and even in the early morning
-the sun sits hard and heavy on the shoulders. At ten o'clock its power
-is tremendous. So long as the roadway consisted of nobbly lumps of
-black cotton soil bicycling, though possible in places, was scarcely
-pleasant. But the change in the landscape arises from the change in
-the soil. The fields are now of bright red earth, the paths of red
-sandstone washed in places almost as smooth and as firm as asphalt by
-the rains and sparkling with crystalline dust; and when the ridges
-which form the watershed between Lake Chioga and Lake Albert had been
-topped, my bicycle glided almost without impulsion down four miles of
-gradual descent into Masindi. This station--which is the residence of
-a collector--lies embosomed in a wide bay of gently-sloping hills
-clothed with noble trees. It is indeed a pleasant spot. There are real
-houses, standing on high stone platforms, with deep verandas and wire
-gauze windows. The roads are laid out in bold geometry of broad red
-lines. There are avenues of planted trees, delicious banks of flowers,
-a prepared breakfast, _cold_, not cool, drinks, a telegraph office,
-and a file of the _Times_. What more could an explorer desire or the
-Fates accord?
-
-We were now to strike northwards to the Nile at Fajao in three long
-marches (for the porters) of about sixteen miles each. Upon the Hoima
-road some preparations had been made to make the journey easier by
-clearing the encroaching jungle from the track and constructing
-rest-houses. But my change of plan had disconcerted these
-arrangements, and on the new route we had to clear our own paths from
-the overgrowth by which even in a season, if unused, they are choked,
-and to trust to tents and improvised shelters. Progress was therefore
-slow and camps unpretentious. But all was redeemed by the wonders of
-the scene.
-
-For a whole day we crept through the skirts of the Hoima forest, amid
-an exuberance of vegetation which is scarcely describable. I had
-travelled through tropical forests in Cuba and India, and had often
-before admired their enchanting, yet sinister, luxuriance. But the
-forests of Uganda, for magnificence, for variety of form and colour,
-for profusion of brilliant life--plant, bird, insect, reptile,
-beast--for the vast scale and awful fecundity of the natural processes
-that are beheld at work, eclipsed, and indeed effaced, all previous
-impressions. One becomes, not without a secret sense of aversion, the
-spectator of an intense convulsion of life and death. Reproduction and
-decay are locked struggling in infinite embraces. In this glittering
-Equatorial slum huge trees jostle one another for room to live;
-slender growths stretch upwards--as it seems in agony--towards
-sunlight and life. The soil bursts with irrepressible vegetations.
-Every victor, trampling on the rotting mould of exterminated
-antagonists, soars aloft only to encounter another host of aerial
-rivals, to be burdened with masses of parasitic foliage, smothered in
-the glorious blossoms of creepers, laced and bound and interwoven with
-interminable tangles of vines and trailers. Birds are as bright as
-butterflies; butterflies are as big as birds. The air hums with flying
-creatures; the earth crawls beneath your foot. The telegraph-wire runs
-northward to Gondokoro through this vegetable labyrinth. Even its
-poles had broken into bud!
-
-As we advanced, continually rising or falling with the waves of the
-land, and moving in rapid alternations from a blazing patch of
-sunshine into a cloistered dimness, every now and then the path became
-smooth, broad, and of firm sandstone. And here one could watch the
-columns of marching soldier-ants. Perhaps in a hundred yards the road
-would be crossed four times by these fierce armies. They move in
-regular array, and upon purposes at once inscrutable and unswerving. A
-brown band, perhaps two inches broad and an inch and a half _deep_, is
-drawn across your track. Its ends are lost in the recesses of the
-jungle. It moves unceasingly and with a multiplied rapidity; for each
-ant runs swiftly forward, whether upon the ground or upon the backs of
-his already moving comrades. About a yard away, on each side of the
-main column, are the screening lines of the flank-guards, and for five
-yards beyond this every inch is searched, every object is examined by
-tireless and fearless reconnoitring patrols. Woe to the enemy who is
-overtaken by these hordes. No matter what his size or nature, he is
-attacked at once by an ever-increasing number of assailants, each one
-of whom, upon remorseless instinct, plunges his strong mandibles in
-the flesh, and will have his head pulled off his shoulders rather than
-let go.
-
-These ant armies fascinated me. I could not resist interfering with
-them. With my walking-stick I gently broke the column and pushed the
-swarming rope off its line of march. Their surprise, their confusion,
-their indignation were extreme. But not for an instant did they pause.
-In a second the scouts were running all over my boots eagerly seeking
-an entry, and when I looked back from this to the walking-stick I held
-it was already alive. With a gesture so nimble that it might have been
-misunderstood, I cast it from me and jumped back out of the danger
-circle until I found refuge on a large rock at a respectful distance.
-The Soudanese sergeant-major of the escort, a splendid negro, drilled
-as smart as a Grenadier Guardsman and with a good long row of medal
-ribbons on his khaki tunic, so far forgot himself as to grin from ear
-to ear. But his gravity was fully restored when I invited him to
-rescue my walking-stick, which lay abandoned on the field in the
-mandibles of the victorious enemy. The devoted man was, however, equal
-to the crisis.
-
-I have a sad tale also to tell of the perversity of butterflies. Never
-were seen such flying fairies. They flaunted their splendid liveries
-in inconceivable varieties of colour and pattern in our faces at every
-step. Swallow-tails, fritillaries, admirals, tortoise-shells,
-peacocks, orange-tips--all executed in at least a dozen novel and
-contrasted styles, with many even more beautiful, but bearing no
-resemblance to our British species--flitted in sunshine from flower to
-flower, glinted in the shadow of great trees, or clustered on the path
-to suck the moisture from any swampy patch. The butterfly is a dirty
-feeder, and if ever some piece of putrescent filth lay odorous on the
-ground, be sure it would be covered with a cloud of these greedy
-insects, come in such gay attire to eat such sorry meat. I found them
-sometimes so intoxicated with feasting that I could pick them up quite
-gently in my fingers without the need of any net at all.
-
-To any one who has ever tried to collect the modest and now all too
-rare and scattered butterflies of Britain, these sights could not but
-be a hard temptation. For a week I had resisted it, not because it was
-not easy enough to make a net, but because of the difficulty of
-setting and preserving the prizes; and it was not until the end of our
-first day's march out from Masindi that I was told that much the best
-way of sending butterflies home from Africa was to enclose them in
-neatly-folded triangles of paper and leave them to be set in London.
-Forthwith, out of telegraph-wire and mosquito-curtain, a net was made,
-and before another dawn I was fully equipped. It is almost incredible
-to state that from that very moment, except near the Murchison Falls,
-I scarcely ever saw a really fine butterfly again all the way to
-Gondokoro. Whether this was due to the intelligent perversity of these
-insects, or to the fact that we had left the deeper recesses of the
-forest region, I do not inquire; but the fact remains, and I carry
-away from the butterflies of Uganda only the haunting memories of
-unrealized opportunity.
-
-This first day's march from Masindi was a long one, and our porters
-panted and toiled under their loads through the heat of the day. It
-was not till the afternoon that the main body came into camp, and
-stragglers trickled through into the dusk. Meanwhile the local natives
-built under our eyes, with extraordinary speed and cleverness, a
-spacious dining-hall and two or three quite excellent bedrooms from
-the surrounding elephant-grass and bamboo groves; and we fared as
-comfortably in these two humble dwellings as if we dwelt in kings'
-palaces. The forest was a little thinner on the second day, although
-the jungle was of the same dense and tangled fertility. We started an
-hour before sunrise, and by eight o'clock had climbed to the saddle of
-the high rocky wall which contains the valley of the Victoria Nile.
-From this elevation of, perhaps, six hundred feet above the general
-level of the plain a comprehensive view of the landscape was for the
-first time possible. In every direction spread a wide sea of foliage,
-thinning here into bush, darkening there into forest, rising and
-falling with the waves of the land, and broken only by occasional
-peaks of rock. Far away to the north-west a long silver gleam, just
-discernible through the haze of the horizon, revealed to our eyes the
-distant prospect of the Albert Nyanza. The camera cannot do justice to
-such a panorama. In photographs these vast expanses look like mere
-scrubby commons, inhospitable and monotonous to the eye, melancholy to
-the soul. One has to remember that here are Kew Gardens and the Zoo
-combined on an unlimited scale; that Nature's central productive
-laboratory is here working night and day at full blast; and that the
-scrubby common of the picture is really a fairyland of glades and
-vistas, through which an army of a hundred thousand men might march
-without the glint of a bayonet, or even the dust of an artillery
-column, betraying their presence to the watcher on the crag.
-
-Our camp this night lay in a tiny patch cleared in the heart of this
-wild world. The cluster of tents under a canopy of palms, illumined by
-the watch-fires, bright with lanterns, and busy with the moving
-figures of men and the hum of human activity, seemed at a hundred
-yards' distance an island of society amid an ocean of Nature. To what
-strange perils--apart altogether from the certainty of losing your
-way--would a walk of a quarter of a mile in any direction expose the
-wanderer? To withdraw from the firelight was to be engulfed in the
-savage conditions of prehistoric time. Advance, and the telegraph-wire
-would tell you the latest quotations of the London markets, the
-figures of the newest by-election. An odd sensation!
-
-  [Illustration: MURCHISON FALLS.]
-
-We had scarce proceeded for an hour on our third march, when just as
-it grew daylight a low vibrant murmur began to be perceptible in the
-air. Now it was lost as we descended into some moist valley, now it
-broke even more strongly on the ear as we reached the summit of some
-ascent--the sound of the Nile plunging down the Murchison Falls. And
-by nine o'clock, when we were still about ten miles off, a loud,
-insistent, and unceasing hum had developed. These Falls are certainly
-the most remarkable in the whole course of the Nile. At Foweira the
-navigable reaches stretching from Lake Chioga are interrupted by
-cataracts, and the river hurries along in foam and rapid down a
-gradual but continuous stairway, enclosed by rocky walls, but still a
-broad flood. Two miles above Fajao these walls contract suddenly till
-they are _not six yards apart_, and through this strangling portal, as
-from the nozzle of a hose, the whole tremendous river is shot in one
-single jet down an abyss of a hundred and sixty feet.
-
-The escarpment over which the Nile falls curves away in a vast bay of
-precipitous, or almost precipitous, cliffs, broken here and there by
-more gradual rifts, and forms the eastern wall of the Albert Lake,
-from whose waters it rises abruptly in many places to a height of six
-or seven hundred feet. Arrived at the verge of this descent, the lower
-reaches of the Victoria Nile could be discerned, stretching away mile
-after mile in a broad, gleaming ribbon almost to its mouth on the
-lake. The Falls themselves were, indeed, invisible, concealed behind a
-forested bluff, but their roaring left no doubt of their presence.
-Below me a zigzag path led down by long descents to the water's edge,
-and on an open meadow a row of tents and grass houses had already been
-set up.
-
-Fajao as a native town was no more. At hardly any point in Uganda has
-the sleeping sickness made such frightful ravages. At least six
-thousand persons had perished in the last two years. Almost the whole
-population had been swept away. Scarcely enough remained to form the
-deputation, who, in their white robes, could be distinguished at the
-entrance to the cleared area of the camping-ground. And this cleared
-area was itself of the utmost importance; for all around it the powers
-of evil were strong. The groves which fringed and overhung the river
-swarmed with tsetse flies of newly-replenished venom and approved
-malignity, and no man could enter them except at a risk. After pausing
-for a few minutes to watch a troop of baboons who were leaping
-about from tree to tree on the opposite hill, and who seemed as big as
-men, I climbed down the zigzag, photographed the deputation, and shook
-hands with the chief. He was a very civilized chief--by name James
-Kago--who wore riding-breeches and leather gaiters, and who spoke a
-few unexpected sentences of excellent English. He seemed in the best
-of spirits, and so did the remnant of the population who gathered
-behind him, though whether this was due to stoical philosophy or good
-manners, I could not tell. All was smiles and bows and gurglings of
-guttural gratification. The district officer who had travelled with me
-explained that the chief had had the path up to the top of the Falls
-improved, and that he proposed, after we had lunched and rested, to
-guide us along it to the very edge of the abyss, but that the forest
-along the river-bank was so dangerous because of the tsetses that we
-should in prudence wear veils and gloves before entering it. With all
-of this I made no quarrel.
-
-  [Illustration: FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US.]
-
-In a little rocky inlet forming a small natural harbour we found the
-Albert flotilla already arrived. It consisted of the _Kenia_, a
-steam-launch about forty feet long, decked, and with a cabin, and
-drawing four feet of water, and three steel sailing-boats of different
-sizes--to wit, the _James Martin_, the _Good Intent_, and the
-_Kisingiri_. These small vessels were to carry us down the Victoria
-Nile into the Albert Nyanza, across the top end of this lake, and then
-down the hundred and seventy miles' reach of the White Nile till
-navigation is barred at Nimule by more cataracts. They were manned by
-a crew of jolly Swahili tars smartly dressed in white breeches and
-blue jerseys, on whose breasts the words "Uganda Marine" were worked
-in yellow worsted. The engineer of the steam-launch commanded the
-whole with plenary powers of discipline and diplomacy; and it was by
-means of this little group of cock-boats that trade and communications
-with the Nile province and around the whole of Lake Albert were alone
-maintained. The flotilla, nestling together in its harbour and
-sheltered by a rocky breakwater from the swift current, made a pretty
-picture; and behind it the Nile, streaked and often covered with the
-creamy foam of the Falls, swept along in majestic flood six hundred
-yards from brim to brim.
-
-  [Illustration: FLOTILLA AT FAJAO.]
-
-We began our climb to the summit of the Falls in the blazing heat
-of the day, and for the first time I was forced to confess the Central
-African sun as formidable as that which beats on the plains of India.
-Yet even at the worst moments it is more endurable, for the breeze
-does not stifle you with the breath of a furnace. First the path led
-through the deadly groves; and here, of course, the most beautiful
-butterflies--some five inches across the wings--floated tantalizingly.
-Sometimes we descended to where the river lapped along the rocks and
-curled in eddies under floating islands of froth. Precautions were
-required against diverse dangers. The Nile below the Murchison Falls
-swarms with crocodiles, some of an enormous size, and herds of
-hippopotamus are found every half mile or so; so that, what with the
-rifles which it was necessary to take for great beasts, and the gloves
-and veils which were our protection against even more villainous small
-ones, we were painfully encumbered. Indeed, the veils were such a
-nuisance and the heat was so great that I resolved to hazard the
-tsetse and took mine off. But after half an hour of menacing buzzings,
-and after a fly--presumably of the worst character--had actually
-settled on my shoulder, brushed off by the promptness of my
-companion, I changed my mind again.
-
-As we were thus scrambling along the brink of the river a crocodile
-was discovered basking in the sunshine on a large rock in mid-stream,
-about a hundred and fifty yards from the shore. I avow, with what
-regrets may be necessary, an active hatred of these brutes and a
-desire to kill them. It was a tempting shot, for the ruffian lay
-sleeping in the sun-blaze, his mouth wide open and his fat and scaly
-flanks exposed. Two or three attendant white birds hopped about him,
-looking for offal, which I have been assured (and does not Herodotus
-vouch for it?) they sometimes pick from his very teeth. I fired. What
-the result of the shot may have been I do not know, for the crocodile
-gave one leap of mortal agony or surprise and disappeared in the
-waters. But then it was my turn to be astonished. The river at this
-distance from the Falls was not broader than three hundred yards, and
-we could see the whole shore of the opposite bank quite plainly. It
-had hitherto appeared to be a long brown line of mud, on which the sun
-shone dully. At the sound of the shot the whole of this bank of the
-river, over the extent of at least a quarter of a mile, sprang into
-hideous life, and my companions and I saw hundreds and hundreds of
-crocodiles, of all sorts and sizes, rushing madly into the Nile, whose
-waters along the line of the shore were lashed into white foam,
-exactly as if a heavy wave had broken. It could be no exaggeration to
-say that at least a thousand of these saurians had been disturbed at a
-single shot. Our British friends explained that Fajao was the
-favourite haunt of the crocodiles, who lay in the water below the
-Falls waiting for dead fish and animals carried over by the river.
-Very often, they told us, hippos from the upper river and from Lake
-Chioga were caught and swept downwards, the force of the water
-"breaking every bone in their body." "Indeed," added the officer,
-somewhat obscurely, "they are _very lucky_ if they are not smashed
-into pulp."
-
-  [Illustration: THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS.]
-
-  [Illustration: UGANDA SCENERY.]
-
-At length we turned a corner and came face to face with the Falls.
-They are wonderful to behold, not so much because of their
-height--though that is impressive--but because of the immense volume
-of water which is precipitated through such a narrow outlet. Indeed,
-seeing the great size of the river below the Falls, it seemed
-impossible to believe that it was wholly supplied from this single
-spout. In clouds of rainbow spray and amid thunderous concussions of
-sound we set to work to climb the southern side of the rock wall, and
-after an hour achieved the summit. It was possible to walk to within
-an inch of the edge and, lying on one's face with a cautious head
-craned over, to look actually down upon the foaming hell beneath. The
-narrowness of the gorge at the top had not been overstated. I doubt
-whether it is fifteen feet across from sheer rock to sheer rock. Ten
-pounds, in fact, would throw an iron bridge across the Nile at this
-point. But it is evident that the falling waters must have arched and
-caved away the rock below their surface in an extraordinary degree,
-for otherwise there could not possibly be room for the whole river to
-descend.
-
-We waited long at this strange place, watching the terrible waters,
-admiring their magnificent fury, trying to compute their force. Who
-can doubt that the bridle is preparing which shall hold and direct
-their strength, or that the day will come when forlorn Fajao--now
-depopulated and almost derelict--will throb with the machinery of
-manufacture and electric production? I cannot believe that modern
-science will be content to leave these mighty forces untamed, unused,
-or that regions of inexhaustible and unequalled fertility, capable of
-supplying all sorts of things that civilized industry needs in greater
-quantity every year, will not be brought--in spite of their insects
-and their climate--into cultivated subjection. Certain it is that the
-economy of the world remains hopelessly incomplete while these
-neglects prevail, and, while it would be wasteful and foolish to
-hustle, it would be more wasteful and more foolish to abate the steady
-progress of development.
-
-From these reflections I was roused abruptly by the Nile, a wave of
-whose turbulent waters--cast up by some unusual commotion as they
-approached the verge--boiled suddenly over a ledge of rock hitherto
-high and dry, carrying an ugly and perhaps indignant swish of water to
-my very feet.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-HIPPO CAMP
-
-
-It took no little time to stow all our baggage, food and tents upon
-the launch and its steel boats, and though our camp was astir at
-half-past three, the dawn was just breaking when we were able to
-embark. And then the _James Martin_ wedged herself upon a rock a few
-yards from the shore of the sheltering inlet, and seemed to have got
-herself hard and fast; for pull as we might with all the force of the
-launch at full steam, and the added weight of the current to help us,
-not an inch would she budge. Everything had, therefore, to be unloaded
-again from the straggler, and when she had thus been lightened and her
-freight transferred to the attendant canoes, James Kago ordered his
-tribesmen to leap into the water, which was not more than five feet
-deep, and push and lift the little vessel whilst the steamer tugged.
-But this task the natives were most reluctant to perform out of
-fear of the crocodiles, who might at any moment make a pounce,
-notwithstanding all the noise and clatter. Thereupon the energetic
-chief seized hold of them one after another round the waist, and threw
-them full-splash into the stream, till at least twenty were
-accumulated round the boat, and then, what with their impatience to
-finish their uncomfortable job and our straining tow rope, the _James
-Martin_ floated free, was reloaded, and we were off.
-
-  [Illustration: THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO.]
-
-As we drifted out into mid-stream the most beautiful view of the falls
-broke upon us. It was already almost daylight, but the sun had not yet
-actually topped the great escarpment over which the Nile descends. The
-banks on both sides of the river, clad with dense and lofty forest and
-rising about twice as high as Cliveden Woods from the water's edge,
-were dark in shadow. The river was a broad sheet of steel grey veined
-with paler streaks of foam. The rock portals of the falls were jetty
-black, and between them, illumined by a single shaft of sunlight,
-gleamed the tremendous cataract--a thing of wonder and glory, well
-worth travelling all the way to see.
-
-We were soon among the hippopotami. Every two or three hundred yards,
-and at every bend of the river, we came upon a herd of from five to
-twenty. To us in a steam launch they threatened no resistance or
-danger. But their inveterate hostility to canoes leads to repeated
-loss of life among the native fishermen, whose frail craft are
-crumpled like eggshells in the snap of enormous jaws. Indeed, all the
-way from here to Nimule they are declared to be the scourge and terror
-of the Nile. Fancy mistaking a hippopotamus--almost the largest
-surviving mammal in the world--for a water lily. Yet nothing is more
-easy. The whole river is dotted with floating lilies detached from any
-root and drifting along contentedly with the current. It is the habit
-of the hippo to loll in the water showing only his eyes and the tips
-of his ears, and perhaps now and again a glimpse of his nose, and thus
-concealed his silhouette is, at three hundred yards, almost
-indistinguishable from the floating vegetation. I thought they also
-looked like giant cats peeping. So soon, however, as they saw us
-coming round a corner and heard the throbbing of the propeller, they
-would raise their whole heads out of the water to have a look, and
-then immediately dive to the bottom in disgust. Our practice was
-then to shut off steam and drift silently down upon them. In this way
-one arrives in the middle of the herd, and when curiosity or want of
-air compels them to come up again there is a chance of a shot. One
-great fellow came up to breathe within five yards of the boat, and the
-look of astonishment, of alarm, of indignation, in his large,
-expressive eyes--as with one vast snort he plunged below--was comical
-to see. These creatures are not easy to kill. They bob up in the most
-unexpected quarters, and are down again in a second. One does not like
-to run the risk of merely wounding them, and the target presented is
-small and vanishing. I shot one who sunk with a harsh sort of scream
-and thud of striking bullet. We waited about a long time for him to
-float up to the surface, but in vain, for he must have been carried
-into or under a bed of reeds and could not be retrieved.
-
-  [Illustration: EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO.]
-
-  [Illustration: FAJAO.]
-
-The Murchison, or Karuma, Falls, as the natives call them, are about
-thirty miles distance from the Albert Lake, and as with the current we
-made six or seven miles an hour, this part of our journey was short.
-Here the Nile offers a splendid waterway. The main channel is at least
-ten feet deep, and navigation, in spite of shifting sandbanks,
-islands, and entanglements of reeds and other vegetation, is not
-difficult. The river itself is of delicious, sweet water, and flows
-along in many places half-a-mile broad. Its banks for the first twenty
-miles were shaded by beautiful trees, and here and there contained by
-bold headlands, deeply scarped by the current. The serrated outline of
-the high mountains on the far side of the Albert Nyanza could soon be
-seen painted in shadow on the western sky. As the lake is approached
-the riparian scenery degenerates; the sandbanks became more intricate;
-the banks are low and flat, and huge marshes encroach upon the river
-on either hand. Yet even here the traveller moves through an imposing
-world.
-
-At length, after five or six hours' steaming, we cleared the mouth of
-the Victoria Nile and swam out on to the broad expanses of the lake.
-Happily on this occasion it was quite calm. How I wished then that I
-had not allowed myself to be deterred by time and croakers from a
-longer voyage, and that we could have turned to the south and,
-circumnavigating the Albert, ascended the Semliki river with all its
-mysterious attractions, have visited the forests on the south-western
-shores, and caught, perhaps, a gleam of the snows of Ruenzori! But we
-were in the fell grip of carefully-considered arrangements, and, like
-children in a Christmas toy shop always looking back, were always
-hurried on.
-
-Yet progress offered its prizes as well as delay. Some of my party had
-won the confidence of the engineer of the launch, who had revealed to
-them a valuable secret. It appeared that "somewhere between Lake
-Albert and Nimule"--not to be too precise--there was a place known
-only to the elect, and not to more than one or two of them, where
-elephants abounded and rhinoceros swarmed. And these rhinoceros, be it
-observed, were none of your common black variety with two stumpy horns
-almost equal in size, and a prehensile tip to their noses. Not at all;
-they were what are called "white" rhino--Burchell's white
-rhinoceros,[1] that is their full style--with one long, thin, enormous
-horn, perhaps a yard long--on their noses, and with broad, square
-upper lips. Naturally we were all very much excited, and in order to
-gain a day on our itinerary to study these very rare and remarkable
-animals more closely, we decided not to land and pitch a camp, but to
-steam on all through the night. Meanwhile our friend the engineer
-undertook to accomplish the difficult feat of finding the channel,
-with all its windings, in the dark.
-
-The scene as we left the Albert Lake and entered the White Nile was of
-surpassing beauty. The sun was just setting behind the high, jagged
-peaks of the Congo Mountains to the westward. One after another, and
-range behind range, these magnificent heights--rising perhaps to eight
-or nine thousand feet--unfolded themselves in waves of dark
-plum-coloured rock, crested with golden fire. The lake stretched away
-apparently without limit like the sea, towards the southward in an
-ever-broadening swell of waters--flushed outside the shadow of the
-mountains into a delicious pink. Across its surface our tiny
-flotilla--four on a string--paddled its way towards the narrowing
-northern shores and the channel of the Nile.
-
-  [Illustration: APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO HILLS IN THE
-    DISTANCE.]
-
-  [Illustration: WADELAI.]
-
-The White Nile leaves the Albert Lake in majesty. All the way to
-Nimule it is often more like a lake than a river. For the first twenty
-miles of its course it seemed to me to be at least two miles across.
-The current is gentle, and sometimes in the broad lagoons and bays
-into which the placid waters spread themselves it is scarcely
-perceptible. I slept under an awning in the _Kisingiri_, the last and
-smallest boat of the string, and, except for the native steersman and
-piles of baggage, had it all to myself. It was, indeed, delightful to
-lie fanned by cool breezes and lulled by the soothing lappings of the
-ripples, and to watch, as it were, from dreamland the dark outlines of
-the banks gliding swiftly past and the long moonlit levels of the
-water.
-
-At daybreak we were at Wadelai. In twenty-four hours from leaving
-Fajao we had made nearly a hundred miles of our voyage. Without the
-sigh of a single porter these small boats and launch had transported
-the whole of our "safari" over a distance which would on land have
-required the labours and sufferings of three hundred men during at
-least a week of unbroken effort. Such are the contrasts which impress
-upon one the importance of utilising the water-ways of Central
-Africa, of establishing a complete circulation along them, and of
-using railways in the first instance merely to link them together.
-
-Wadelai was deserted. Upon a high bank of the river stood a long row
-of tall, peaked, thatched houses, the walls of a fort, and buildings
-of European construction. All was newly abandoned to ruin. The
-Belgians are evacuating all their posts in the Lado enclave except
-Lado itself, and these stations, so laboriously constructed, so long
-maintained, will soon be swallowed by the jungle. The Uganda
-Government also is reducing its garrisons and administration in the
-Nile province, and the traveller sees, not without melancholy, the
-spectacle of civilization definitely in retreat after more than half a
-century of effort and experiment.
-
-We disembarked and climbed the slopes through high rank grass and
-scattered boulders till we stood amidst the rotting bungalows and
-shanties of what had been a bold bid for the existence of a town.
-Wadelai had been occupied by white men perhaps for fifty years. For
-half a century that feeble rush-light of modernity, of cigarettes, of
-newspapers, of whisky and pickles, had burned on the lonely banks of
-the White Nile to encourage and beckon the pioneer and settler. None
-had followed. Now it was extinguished; and yet when I surveyed the
-spacious landscape with its green expanses, its lofty peaks, its
-trees, its verdure, rising from the brink of the mighty and majestic
-river, I could not bring myself for a moment to believe that
-civilization has done with the Nile Province or the Lado Enclave, or
-that there is no future for regions which promise so much.
-
-All through the day we paddled prosperously with the stream. At times
-the Nile lost itself in labyrinths of papyrus, which reproduced the
-approaches to Lake Chioga, and through which we threaded a tortuous
-course, with many bumps and brushings at the bends. But more often the
-banks were good, firm earth, with here and there beautiful cliffs of
-red sandstone, hollowed by the water, and rising abruptly from its
-brim, crowned with luxuriant foliage. In places these cliffs were
-pierced by narrow roadways, almost tunnels, winding up to the high
-ground, and perfectly smooth and regular in their construction. They
-looked as if they were made on purpose to give access to and from the
-river; and so they had been--by the elephants. Legions of water-fowl
-inhabited the reeds, and troops of cranes rose at the approach of the
-flotilla. Sometimes we saw great, big pelican kind of birds, almost as
-big as a man, standing contemplative on a single leg, and often on the
-tree-tops a fish-eagle, glorious in bronze and cream, sat sunning
-himself and watching for a prey.
-
-I stopped once in the hope of catching butterflies, but found none of
-distinction--only a profuse variety of common types, a high level of
-mediocrity without beauties or commanders, and swarms of ferocious
-mosquitoes prepared to dispute the ground against all comers; and it
-was nearly four in the afternoon when the launch suddenly jinked to
-the left out of the main stream into a small semi-circular bay, five
-hundred yards across, and we came to land at "Hippo Camp."
-
-  [Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" NEARING
-    NIMULE.]
-
-  [Illustration: HIPPO CAMP.]
-
-We thought it was much too late to attempt any serious shooting that
-day. There were scarcely three and a half hours of daylight. But after
-thirty-six hours cramped on these little boats a walk through jungle
-was very attractive; and, accordingly, dividing ourselves into
-three parties, we started in three different directions--like the
-spokes of a wheel. Captain Dickinson, who commanded the escort, went
-to the right with the doctor; Colonel Wilson and another officer set
-out at right angles to the river bank; and I went to the left under
-the guidance of our friend the engineer. I shall relate very briefly
-what happened to each of us. The right-hand party got, after an hour's
-walking, into a great herd of elephants, which they numbered at over
-sixty. They saw no very fine bulls; they found themselves surrounded
-on every side by these formidable animals; and, the wind being shifty,
-the hour late, and the morrow free, they judged it wise to return to
-camp without shooting. The centre party, consisting of Colonel Wilson
-and his companion, came suddenly, after about a mile and a half's
-walk, upon a fine solitary bull elephant. They stalked him for some
-time, but he moved off, and, on perceiving himself followed, suddenly,
-without the slightest warning on his part and no great provocation on
-theirs, he threw up his trunk, trumpeted, and charged furiously down
-upon them; whereupon they just had time to fire their rifles in his
-face and spring out of his path. This elephant was followed for some
-miles, but it was not for three months afterwards that we learned that
-he had died of his wounds and that the natives had recovered his
-tusks.
-
-So much for my friends. Our third left party prowled off, slanting
-gradually away inland from the river's bank. It was a regular wild
-scrub country, with high grass and boulders and many moderate-sized
-trees and bushes, interspersed every hundred yards or so by much
-bigger ones. Near the Nile extensive swamps, with reeds fifteen feet
-high, ran inland in long bays and fingers, and these, we were told,
-were the haunts of white rhino. We must have walked along warily and
-laboriously for nearly three-quarters of an hour, when I saw through a
-glade at about two hundred yards distance a great dark animal. Judging
-from what I had seen in East Africa, I was quite sure it was a
-rhinoceros. We paused, and were examining it carefully with our
-glasses, when all of a sudden it seemed to treble in size, and the
-spreading of two gigantic ears--as big, they seemed, as the flaps of
-French windows--proclaimed the presence of the African elephant. The
-next moment another and another and another came into view, swinging
-leisurely along straight towards us--and the wind was almost dead
-wrong.
-
-We changed our position by a flank march of admirable celerity, and
-from the top of a neighbouring ant-bear hill watched, at the distance
-of about one hundred and fifty yards, the stately and awe-inspiring
-procession of eleven elephants. On they came, loafing along from foot
-to foot--two or three tuskers of no great merit, several large
-tuskless females, and two or three calves. On the back of every
-elephant sat at least one beautiful white egret, and sometimes three
-or four, about two feet high, who pecked at the tough hide--I presume
-for very small game--or surveyed the scene with the consciousness of
-pomp. These sights are not unusual to the African hunter. Those who
-dwell in the wilderness are the heirs of its wonders. But to me I
-confess it seemed a truly marvellous and thrilling experience to
-wander through a forest peopled by these noble Titans, to watch their
-mysterious, almost ghostly, march, to see around on every side, in
-large trees snapped off a few feet from the ground, in enormous
-branches torn down for sport, the evidences of their giant strength.
-And then, while we watched them roam down towards the water, I heard a
-soft swishing sound immediately behind us, and turning saw, not forty
-yards away, a splendid full-grown rhinoceros, with the long, thin horn
-of his rare tribe upon him--the famous white rhinoceros--Burchell
-himself--strolling placidly home after his evening drink and utterly
-unconscious of the presence of stranger or foe!
-
-We had very carefully judged our wind in relation to the elephants. It
-was in consequence absolutely wrong in relation to the rhinoceros. I
-saw that in another fifty yards he would walk right across it. For my
-own part, perched upon the apex of a ten-foot ant-bear cone, I need
-have no misgivings. I was perfectly safe. But my companions, and the
-native orderlies and sailors who were with us, enjoyed no such
-security. The consequences of not killing the brute at that range and
-with that wind would have been a mad charge directly through our
-party. A sense of responsibility no doubt restrained me; but I must
-also confess to the most complete astonishment at the unexpected
-apparition. While I was trying to hustle the others by signals and
-whispers into safer places; the rhino moved steadily, crossed the line
-of wind, stopped behind a little bush for a moment, and then, warned
-of his danger, rushed off into the deepest recesses of the jungle. I
-had thrown away the easiest shot I ever had in Africa. Meanwhile the
-elephants had disappeared.
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT HIPPO CAMP.]
-
-  [Illustration: BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE.]
-
-We returned with empty hands and beating hearts to camp, not without
-chagrin at the opportunity which had vanished, but with the keenest
-appetite and the highest hopes for the morrow. Thus in three hours and
-within four miles of our landing-place our three separate parties had
-seen as many of the greatest wild animals as would reward the whole
-exertion of an ordinary big-game hunt. As I dropped off to sleep that
-night in the little _Kisingiri_, moored in the bay, and heard the
-grunting barks of the hippo floating and playing all around, mingling
-with the cries of the birds and the soft sounds of wind and water, the
-African forest for the first time made an appeal to my heart,
-enthralling, irresistible, never to be forgotten.
-
-At the earliest break of day we all started in the same order, and
-with the sternest resolves. During the night the sailors had
-constructed out of long bamboo poles a sort of light tripod, which,
-serving as a tower of observation, enabled us to see over the top of
-the high grass and reeds, and this proved of the greatest convenience
-and advantage, troublesome though it was to drag along. We spent the
-whole morning prowling about, but the jungle, which twelve hours
-before had seemed so crowded with game of all kinds, seemed now
-utterly denuded. At last, through a telescope from a tree-top, we saw,
-or thought we saw, four or five elephants, or big animals of some
-kind, grazing about two miles away. They were the other side of an
-enormous swamp, and to approach them required not only traversing
-this, but circling through it for the sake of the wind.
-
-We plunged accordingly into this vast maze of reeds, following the
-twisting paths made through them by the game, and not knowing what we
-might come upon at every step. The ground under foot was quite firm
-between the channels and pools of mud and water. The air was stifling.
-The tall reeds and grasses seemed to smother one; and above, through
-their interlacement, shone the full blaze of the noonday sun. To wade
-and waddle through such country carrying a double-barrelled ·450
-rifle, not on your shoulder, but in your hands for instant service,
-peering round every corner, suspecting every thorn-bush, for at least
-two hours, is not so pleasant as it sounds. We emerged at last on the
-farther side under a glorious tree, whose height had made it our
-beacon in the depths of the swamp, and whose far-spreading branches
-offered a delicious shade.
-
-It was three o'clock. We had been toiling for nine hours and had seen
-nothing--literally nothing. But from this moment our luck was
-brilliant. First we watched two wild boars playing at fighting in a
-little glade--a most delightful spectacle, which I enjoyed for two or
-three minutes before they discovered us and fled. Next a dozen
-splendid water-buck were seen browsing on the crest of a little ridge
-within easy shot, and would have formed the quarry of any day but
-this; but our ambition soared above them, and we would not risk
-disturbing the jungle for all their beautiful horns. Then, thirdly, we
-came slap up against the rhinoceros. How many I am not certain--four,
-at least. We had actually walked past them as they stood sheltering
-under the trees. Now, here they were, sixty yards away to the left
-rear--dark, dim, sinister bodies, just visible through the waving
-grass.
-
-When you fire a heavy rifle in cold blood it makes your teeth clatter
-and your head ache. At such a moment as this one is almost unconscious
-alike of report and recoil. It might be a shot-gun. The nearest rhino
-was broadside on. I hit him hard with both barrels, and down he went,
-to rise again in hideous struggles--head, ears, horn flourished
-agonizingly above the grass, as if he strove to advance, while I
-loaded and fired twice more. That was all I saw myself. Two other
-rhinos escaped over the hill, and a fourth, running the other way,
-charged the native sailors carrying our observation tower, who were
-very glad to drop it and scatter in all directions.
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS.]
-
-To shoot a good specimen of the white rhinoceros is an event
-sufficiently important in the life of a sportsman to make the day on
-which it happens bright and memorable in his calendar. But more
-excitement was in store for us before the night. About a mile from the
-spot where our victim lay we stopped to rest and rejoice, and, not
-least, refresh. The tower of observation--which had been dragged
-so painfully along all day--was set up, and, climbing it, I saw at
-once on the edge of the swamp no fewer than four more full-grown
-rhinoceros, scarcely four hundred yards away. A tall ant-hill, within
-easy range, gave us cover to stalk them, and the wind was exactly
-right. But the reader has dallied long enough in this hunter's
-paradise. It is enough to say that we killed two more of these
-monsters, while one escaped into the swamp, and the fourth charged
-wildly down upon us and galloped through our party without apparently
-being touched himself or injuring any one. Then, marking the places
-where the carcasses lay, we returned homeward through the swamp, too
-triumphant and too tired to worry about the enraged fugitives who
-lurked in its recesses. It was very late when we reached home, and our
-friends had already hewn the tusks out of a good elephant which
-Colonel Wilson had shot, and were roasting a buck which had
-conveniently replenished our larder.
-
-  [Illustration: COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT.]
-
-  [Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" ON THE
-    WHITE NILE.]
-
-Such was our day at Hippo Camp, to which the ardent sportsman is
-recommended to repair, when he can get some one to show him the way.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[1] "I am informed by the courtesy of Mr. Lydekker of the British
-Natural History Museum, that the true name of the white rhinoceros
-found in Uganda is _Rhinoceros Simus Cottoni_. 'Burchell's white
-rhinoceros' is the designation of the southern race; but I have
-preserved in the text the name commonly used in Uganda."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-DOWN THE WHITE NILE
-
-
-We lingered lovingly around Hippo camp for two more days, moving to
-other lagoons and overflows of the river with the launch, and striking
-out inland in search of the great herd of elephants. But although
-their recent presence was on all sides proclaimed by snapped-off trees
-and trampled ground, and broad lanes cut through the grass, we saw
-none of them; and a tribe of natives who helped to carry home a
-variety of buck one afternoon, informed us upon expert authority that
-the whole herd had been alarmed by the arrival of strangers and the
-sound of firing, and had retired three days' journey from the river's
-bank. These natives--of the Lado Enclave--were gentleman-like folk,
-and I parleyed long with them upon their affairs. They were stark
-naked and very dignified, with graceful athletic bodies, long
-tapering well-bred hands, and bright keen eyes. The local chief
-exhibited all these characteristics in a superior degree, and his
-natural preeminence was recognized with instantaneous obedience by his
-followers. We loaded them with gifts. First, quantities of meat and
-hides; then chocolate all round--they love sweet things--three pieces
-of sugar for each, at least one empty bottle per man, and tin pots and
-card-board boxes almost without limit. The chief showed a fine taste
-in all these things, and annexed at once in the Imperial style
-whatever took his fancy, to whomsoever it belonged. I cast about for
-some means of doing him especial honour, and luckily remembered that I
-had bought a Japanese _kimono_ for a dressing-gown in passing through
-Port Said on the journey out. With this he was forthwith enrobed, and
-I must say he assumed the flowing garment with that easy grace and
-natural self-possession which are the gifts of a wilderness life. Thus
-the fabrics of Cathay were by the enterprise of Europe introduced into
-the heart of Africa.
-
-When, finally, with much reluctance we left this attractive place and
-pushed off determinedly into the stream, we lost no time in making
-Nimule. Steaming throughout the night and all next day along a broad
-flood contained by high and healthy slopes--now clothed with forest,
-now with waving grass--we approached, at about four in the afternoon,
-the mountains beneath which is the administrative station of Nimule.
-Hitherto the course of the Nile since it left the Albert Lake had been
-smooth and open--a broad, steady-flowing river everywhere navigable to
-vessels of not more than four feet draught. But at Nimule, after a
-reach of more than a hundred and seventy miles of unobstructed
-waterway, the river turns a sharp right angle and enters a long
-succession of granite gorges, through which it plunges in ceaseless
-cataract for a hundred and twenty miles. It is here at the head of
-these rapids that one of the great reservoirs of the Upper Nile must
-some day be constructed. "I spent hours," said Sir William Willcocks,
-the "practical mystic" of hydraulic engineering, "looking at the site,
-and seeing in a vision a great regulating work of the future." And
-indeed the exact scientific control of the whole vast system of
-Central African waters, of the levels of every lake, of the flow of
-every channel, from month to month and from day to day throughout the
-year, is a need so obvious and undisputed as to leave argument
-unemployed.
-
-The change in the character of the river separated us finally from our
-flotilla. From Nimule to Gondokoro we must again proceed by land, and
-the swift and easy progress of the last few days must be exchanged for
-the steady grind of marches. It was this stage which had always been
-painted to me as the most dangerous and unhealthy in our whole
-journey, and I had pictured to myself eight days of toil through swamp
-and forest amid miasma and mosquitoes. These anticipations were not
-sustained. Of the disadvantages of the track along the river bank I
-cannot speak; but the upper road over the hills is certainly excellent
-and healthy, and runs throughout over firm dry undulations of a
-bright, breezy, scrub-covered country.
-
-At Nimule we touched the telegraph wire again, and from the Reuter's
-accumulations which I studied, I learned that Parliament would not
-meet till the 19th of January. This gave another ten days' more rope,
-and I began to realize how much the spirit of these wonderful lands
-had taken possession of me, for it was only with the greatest
-reluctance and difficulty, that I forced myself to continue my
-homeward journey without first turning back with the launch and
-circumnavigating Lake Albert. No exertion or inconvenience seemed too
-great to win a few more glimpses of these enchanted seas and gardens,
-on which I may perhaps not look again, but from whose spell I can
-never be free. Porters to be fed from day to day, the Sirdar's steamer
-waiting at the Soudan frontier, public meetings looming heavily in the
-far-off distance, drove me onward; and with feelings of keen and
-genuine regret we addressed ourselves to the march to Gondokoro.
-
-  [Illustration: FORDING THE ASUA.]
-
-This was accomplished uneventfully in six stages, three of which were
-double marches. The country was pleasant and healthy, the scenery
-imposing, and, under a fierce sun, the air was cool. Each morning we
-started before dawn, and by noon had camped by the side of one of the
-tributary rivers or streams which flow into the Nile. Of these the
-Asua was the most important, and the picture of the long _safari_
-fording it and coming into camp among the palm-trees of the southern
-bank is one which lingers pleasantly in my memory. But this I must
-say--somehow after Nimule the charm was broken, and none of the
-regions through which the traveller passes in the long-drawn descent
-of the Nile revive in any degree those delicious sensations of wonder
-and novelty which are associated with the great lakes and the kingdoms
-of Uganda, Usoga, and Unyoro, to say nothing of what I have not been
-fortunate enough to see--Toro, Ankole, the Semliki, and the Mountains
-of the Moon.
-
-At the end of the sixth day we arrived at Gondokoro. The last march
-had been long and scorching. The moisture seemed to have gone from the
-air, and the vegetation, abundant though it was, seemed parched and
-stunted. The approaches to Gondokoro are beset by a herd of three
-hundred elephants of peculiar ill-fame. Nearly all the eligible
-tuskers have been killed. The females and young bulls are fierce and
-wary, and, taught by frequent contact with the white man, and
-protected by the sacred game laws, exercise a lawless and tyrannical
-power over the whole region. On every side their depredations are to
-be seen. Great trees pushed over in careless sport, native plantations
-trampled into ruin, the roads rendered precarious for the traveller,
-the mails often interrupted for days at a time, and occasional loss of
-life, are the features of this domination. And it seems likely to last
-a long time, for I was informed that the young bulls would not be
-sufficiently grown for about forty years, and even then, as the two
-white officers in the station are not allowed to shoot more than one
-elephant apiece each year, the nuisance will only gradually be abated.
-
-Rogue elephants are of course fair game at any time, and the day
-before we arrived at Gondokoro, the young civil officer of the station
-had encountered one in a manner which he was scarcely likely to
-forget. For, having pursued this evil-doer for some time, he at last
-got into an excellent position, and was about to fire at a distance of
-thirty yards when suddenly the elephant, without even trumpeting
-rushed furiously upon him, and, paying no attention to the two heavy
-bullets which struck him in the head, chased the officer twice round
-an uncommonly small bush; and then, distracted by the spectacle of the
-native gun-bearer in flight, turned off after this new prey, and,
-overtaking the poor wretch, smashed him to pieces with one blow of
-his terrible trunk. "Cet animal est très méchant; quand on l'attaque,
-il se défend." We reached the bungalow, which serves as the seat of
-government, in time to see the tusks of this man-slayer, who had died
-of his wounds, brought in by the tribe whose plantations he had so
-often ravaged.
-
-Gondokoro, like most of the names which figure so imposingly upon the
-African map, is not a numerously populated town. There are about six
-houses and a number of native huts. There is, however, a telegraph
-station, a prison, a court-house, and the lines of a company of native
-police and King's African Rifles. Here the Nile again becomes
-navigable, and offers an unbroken waterway open to large vessels until
-the Shabluka cataract is reached, a hundred miles below Khartoum and
-fifteen hundred miles from Gondokoro. And here at the river's bank,
-seen through a tracery of palms, were the white funnel and
-superstructure of the Sirdar's steamer with all the letters and
-newspapers; and which, instead of pursuing us across Uganda, had "come
-through the other way."
-
-"Had come through the other way"--it is an easy phrase to write: but
-how much it signifies in the modern history of Africa! Ten or eleven
-years ago this journey which I was now able to make so easily, so
-prosperously, so comfortably, would have been utterly impossible. The
-Dervish empire, stretching from Wady Halfa or Abu Hamed to Wadelai,
-interposed a harsh barrier which nothing but a stricken field could
-sweep away; and these long reaches of the Nile which now bore a fleet
-of fifty steamers were silent in the embrace of a devastating
-barbarism. A grim slaughter which had strewn the sands of Kerreri,
-twelve hundred miles to the North, with _jibba_-clad corpses "like
-snow-drifts" had blasted a passage, and the Nile was free.
-
-Embarked at Gondokoro we passed out of the sphere of the Colonial
-Office into the domain of that undefined joint authority which
-regulates the Soudan, which flies two flags side by side on every
-public building, and which you can only correspond with through the
-British Foreign Office.
-
-  [Illustration: THE BELGIAN OFFICIALS AT LADO.]
-
-  [Illustration: GONDOKORO.]
-
-Henceforward our journey was comfortable, and regular. Yet though I
-had no official work to do and was merely coming home the shortest
-way, I could not traverse the Soudan without the keenest interest.
-When one has started from Cairo and padded up the Nile to Wady Halfa,
-crossed the desert railway to the Atbara, marched thence two hundred
-miles to the battle of Omdurman, one feels one has seen something of
-the Nile. Yet now we had followed it the other way from its source for
-nearly five hundred miles, and yet twelve hundred more intervened
-before even Omdurman was reached; and as the mighty and peerless river
-unrolled its length and immemorial history, the feelings of reverence,
-without which no traveller can drink its sweet waters, grew in
-intensity.
-
-I yield to no one in recognition of the constructive and
-reconstructive work which Sir Reginald Wingate and his able officers
-have, with scanty means and in spite of grave military dangers,
-wrought in the Soudan. Yet it is not possible to descend the Nile
-continuously from its source at Ripon Falls without realizing that the
-best lies behind one. Uganda is the pearl. The Nile province and the
-Lado Enclave present splendid and alluring panoramas. Even the march
-from Nimule to Gondokoro is through a fertile and inspiring region.
-But thereafter the beauty dies out of the landscape and the richness
-from the land. We leave the regions of abundant rainfall, of
-Equatorial luxuriance, of docile peoples, of gorgeous birds and
-butterflies and flowers. We enter stern realms of sinister and
-forbidding aspect, where nature is cruel and sterile, where man is
-fanatical and often rifle-armed. Cultivation--nay, vegetation, is but
-a strip along the river bank: and even there thorn-bushes and prickly
-aloes are its chief constituents. We enter two successive deserts as
-contrasted in their character, as redoubtable in their inhospitality,
-as Dante's Circles of the Inferno: the Desert of Sudd and the Desert
-of Sand.
-
-  [Illustration: REVIEW AT KHARTOUM.]
-
-  [Illustration: SOUDAN GOVERNMENT STEAMER "DAL."]
-
-About a hundred miles from Gondokoro the White Nile enters and spills
-itself in a vast and appalling swamp. Of the action of this tremendous
-sponge, whether beneficial in regulating the flow, or harmful in
-wasting the water through evaporation, nothing need here be said. But
-its aspect is at once so dismal and so terrifying that to travel
-through it is a weird experience. Our steamer, with the favouring
-current, made at least seven miles an hour, and, as the moon was full,
-we travelled night and day. For three days and three nights we were
-continuously in this horrible swamp into which the whole of the United
-Kingdom could be easily packed. By day from the roof of the high
-pilot-house a commanding view revealed hour after hour, in every
-direction, one uninterrupted ocean of floating vegetation spreading to
-far horizons. The papyrus-plant is in itself a beautiful, graceful,
-and venerable thing. To travel through the _sudd_, is to hate it for
-evermore. Rising fifteen feet above the level of the water, stretching
-its roots twenty or even thirty feet below, and so matted and tangled
-together that elephants can walk safely upon its springy surface,
-papyrus is the beginning and end of this melancholy world. For
-hundreds of miles nothing else is to be perceived--not a
-mountain-ridge blue on the horizon, scarcely a tree, no habitation of
-man, no sign of beast. The silence is broken only by the croaking of
-innumerable frog armies, and the cry of dreary birds.
-
-The vigorous operations of the _sudd_-cutters have opened, and the
-constant traffic of steamers has preserved and improved, a channel
-about a hundred yards wide, winding by loops and corkscrews through
-the swamp. The river presents a depth of thirty feet along this
-course, and greater vessels could thread its length for nearly a
-thousand miles. The navigation is intricate and peculiar. Indeed, it
-would seem to be an art by itself. No effort is made by the Arab
-pilots, who alone are employed, to avoid collisions with the banks. On
-the contrary, they rely upon them as an essential feature of their
-management of the steamer. The vessel bumps regularly at almost every
-corner from one cushion of _sudd_ to the other, or plunges its nose
-into the reeds and waits for the currents to carry its stern round,
-bumps again and recovers its direction. Sometimes where the twists
-were very sharp we would turn completely round, not once but two or
-three times, and our movements round an S-curve were even more
-complicated. The bumps occasionally swept us out of our chairs and
-sent us sprawling on the deck. In this strange fashion we waltzed
-along at full speed for about seventy or eighty hours.
-
-Meanwhile the Nile was accomplishing its destiny. Its vast tributary
-rivers, the Sobat and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, came to reinforce its flow.
-The miles spread out behind us in a long succession of hundreds. At
-length the _sudd_ expanses begin to contract. Distant mountains rise
-against the steel-blue sky in serrated silhouette, and gradually draw
-in upon the river. Islands of earth and trees, peaks of sharp rock
-break here and there the awful monotony of waving reeds. At last the
-banks become firm and clear-cut walls of yellow sand, fringed in
-places with palms and shady trees, and everywhere bristling with
-undergrowth of thorns. We leave the wilderness of moisture, we
-approach the wilderness of drought. But first, in a middle region,
-vast areas of dusty scrub-covered plains, not wholly incapable of
-cultivation in the rainy season, supporting always flocks and herds,
-now flank both sides of the river. The camel caravans pad slowly
-across them under the blaze and glitter of the heat. The mirage begins
-to twist and blur the landscape with deceptive waters. At intervals of
-forty or fifty miles are the stations of the Soudan Government, each
-trim and regular with its public buildings, its storehouses, the lines
-of beehive huts of its garrison, a tangle of native sailing-craft, and
-always, or nearly always, one or two white gunboats of war-time days
-now turned policemen of the river.
-
-Thus we reach in time Fashoda--now called Kodok for old sake's sake;
-and here are clusters of Shillooks who (by request) stand pensively on
-one leg in their natural attitude, and smart companies of Soudanese
-troops and British officers, civil and military--the whole clear-cut
-under sun-blaze dry light, veiled only in dancing dust-devils
-piteously whipped by strong hot winds. All this was like a piece of
-the Omdurman campaign to me--the old familiar Soudan, so often made
-known to British minds by pen, pencil, and photograph during nearly
-twenty years of war, unfolded itself feature by feature. Yet we were
-still five hundred miles south of Khartoum!
-
-  [Illustration: A SHELUK AT KODOK (FASHODA).]
-
-At Meshra-er-Zeraf we stopped for two days to shoot, by the Sirdar's
-invitation, in the extensive game reserve, and were fortunate in
-securing a buffalo and various antelope. We wandered through a harsh
-country, of white sand and tussocks of coarse grass, more grey than
-green, with leafless black thorn-trees densely tangled; yet it seemed
-full of game. In three hours' walk on the second morning I shot a fine
-waterbuck, two reed-bucks, and two of a beautiful herd of roan
-antelope, who walked slowly down to water past our ambuscade. And,
-be it remembered, that the pleasure and excitement of such sport are
-in these lands always heightened by the possibility that at any moment
-the hunters may come upon game of much more serious quality--lion or
-buffalo; so that no one cares to be more than a few yards from his
-heavy rifle or give his mind wholly to the buck he stalks. Surely they
-are perverse, unenterprising folk who spend fortunes each year in
-preserving with so much artificial care, and to the inconvenience of
-other dwellers in a small island, well-counted herds of more or less
-tame deer, when in a month, and for less expense than the year's rent
-of their forests, they could pursue wild animals of every kind in
-their natural haunts and gain experiences that would last them all
-their lives.
-
-I was so much elated by this jolly morning's sport and the near
-approach of civilized conditions--for after all, contrast is an
-element in pleasure--that I permitted myself to rejoice at the safe
-and happy outcome of this long journey, and to exult in our complete
-immunity from serious accident or illness or even fever. How
-extravagant were the accounts of the dangers of African travel! How
-easy to avoid the evil chances of the road! Reasonable precautions,
-steady exercise, regular quinine--were these not in themselves the
-guarantees of safety? Thus I reckoned, and with specious reasons, but
-in a bad hour. We were not yet at our journey's end.
-
-Twenty-four hours' steaming from Meshra-er-Zeraf brought us near
-Khartoum. The character of the country was unchanged. Yellow
-sand-slopes drank at the Nile brim; thorn-scrub fringed the river on
-either side; but date-palms mingled even more frequently and
-numerously with the vegetation, and brown mud-built villages with
-brown mud-coloured populations multiplied as the miles slipped swiftly
-by. At length a solitary majestic tree, beneath whose spacious
-branches and luxuriant foliage a hundred persons might have found
-shelter from the relentless sun--Gordon's tree--advertised us of the
-proximity of Khartoum. Soon on the one bank came into view the vast
-mud labyrinth of Omdurman, with forests of masts rising along the
-shore, and on the other, among palm-groves ever clustering thicker,
-sprang the blue and pink and crimson minarets of new Khartoum.
-Khartoum--the new Khartoum, risen from its ruins in wealth and
-beauty--a smiling city sitting like a queen throned at the
-confluence of the Niles, the heart and centre of a far-reaching and
-formidable authority, disclosed herself to the traveller's eye. Sharp
-to the right turns the steamer, leaving the dull placid waters of the
-sovereign river we have so long followed, and shouldering a more
-turbulent current of clearer water, swings up-stream along its noble
-feudatory, the Blue Nile. And passing by the side of high stone
-embankments crowned by palms, the steamer enters into a modern
-Oriental port and city, and is soon surrounded by its palaces, its
-mosques, its warehouses and its quays.
-
-  [Illustration: THE PALACE, KHARTOUM.]
-
-Nearly ten years have passed since the Dervish domination was
-irretrievably shattered on the field of Omdurman, and every year has
-been attended by steady and remarkable progress in every sphere of
-governmental activity in every province of the Soudan. Order has been
-established, and is successfully, though precariously, maintained even
-in the remotest parts of Kordofan. The railway has reached the
-Southern bank of the Blue Nile, connects Khartoum with Cairo and with
-the Red Sea, waits only for the construction of a bridge to cross the
-river and enter the fertile regions of the Ghezireh. A numerous fleet
-of steamers maintains swift and regular communication along the great
-waterways. The revenue has risen from a few thousands a year in 1899
-to considerably over a million pounds in 1907. Improved methods of
-agriculture have increased the wealth of the country; the prevention
-of massacre and famine has begun to restore its population. Slavery
-has been abolished, and without affronting the religion or seriously
-disturbing the customs of the people, a measure of education and
-craftsmanship has been introduced.
-
-These great changes which are apparent throughout the whole Soudan are
-nowhere presented in so striking and impressive form as in the
-capital. A spacious palace, standing in a beautiful garden, has risen
-from the ruins where Gordon perished. Broad thoroughfares lighted by
-electricity, and lined with excellent European shops, lead with
-geometrical precision through the city. A system of steam tramways in
-connection with ferry boats, patronized chiefly by the natives,
-renders communication easy throughout Khartoum, and between Khartoum,
-Omdurman, and Halfyah. A semi-circle of substantial barracks, arranged
-upon a defensive scheme, protects the landward approaches. The
-Gordon College hums with scholarly activity--Moslem and Christian,
-letters or crafts; and seven thousand soldiers of all dress march past
-the British and Egyptian flags on occasions of ceremony.
-
-  [Illustration: GEORGE SCRIVINGS.]
-
-Yet neither these inspiring facts--the more impressive by contrast
-with my memories of ten years before--nor the gracious hospitality of
-the Sirdar--more responsible than any other man for the whole of this
-tremendous task of reconstruction and revival--were to prevent me from
-taking away a sombre impression of Khartoum. As our steamer approached
-the landing-stage I learned that my English servant, George Scrivings,
-had been taken suddenly ill, and found him in a condition of
-prostration with a strange blue colour under his skin. Good doctors
-were summoned. The hospital of Khartoum, with all its resources, was
-at hand. There appeared no reason to apprehend a fatal termination.
-But he had been seized by a violent internal inflammation, the result
-of eating some poisonous thing which we apparently had escaped, and
-died early next morning after fifteen hours' illness, with almost
-every symptom of Asiatic cholera.
-
-Too soon, indeed, had I ventured to rejoice. Africa always claims its
-forfeits; and so the four white men who had started together from
-Mombasa returned but three to Cairo. A military interment involves the
-union of the two most impressive rituals in the world. The day after
-the Battle of Omdurman it fell to my lot to bury those soldiers of the
-21st Lancers, who had died of their wounds during the night. Now after
-nine years, in very different circumstances, from the other end of
-Africa, I had come back to this grim place where so much blood has
-been shed, and again I found myself standing at an open grave, while
-the yellow glare of the departed sun still lingered over the desert,
-and the sound of funeral volleys broke its silence.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The remainder of our journey lay in tourist lands, and the comfortable
-sleeping-cars of the Desert Railway, and the pleasant passenger
-steamers of the Wady Haifa and Assouan reach soon carried us
-prosperously and uneventfully to Upper Egypt; and so to Cairo, London,
-and the rest.
-
-  [Illustration: PHILAE.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT RAILWAY
-
-
-My journey is at an end, the tale is told, and the reader who has
-followed so faithfully and so far has a right to ask what message I
-bring back. It can be stated in three words. Concentrate upon Uganda!
-
-Over the greater part of the north-east quarter of Africa, British
-influence or authority in one form or another is supreme. But when I
-turn my mind over all those vast expanses, excluding only Egypt, there
-is no region which offers prospects to compare in hopefulness with
-those of the Protectorate of Uganda. The Soudan is far greater in
-extent and importance, and Great Britain is at no charge in respect to
-it. But the Soudan is clearly inferior in fertility. The East African
-Protectorate possesses not only enormous coast-lands of great value,
-but noble plateaux where the air is as cool as an English spring. But
-we already spend on East Africa--and upon the needs of its expensive
-white settlers--more than the whole revenue of Uganda; and yet the
-promise is not so bright. Northern Somaliland is a desert of rocks and
-thorn bushes peopled by rifle-armed fanatics, on which we spend nearly
-half as much as the whole annual grant-in-aid of Uganda. And between
-Somaliland and Uganda there is this contrast presented in its crudest
-form--a barren land with dangerous inhabitants; and a fruitful land
-with a docile people. What is least worth having, is most difficult to
-hold: what is most worth having, is easiest.
-
-The union under scientific direction in Uganda (and I include in this
-popular name Usoga, Unyoro, Toro and Ankole, etc.) of unequalled
-fertility with a population of high intelligence and social quality,
-in a region of extraordinary waterways, must, unless some grievous
-error or neglect should intervene, result in remarkable economic
-developments. Already more than half the traffic which passes down the
-railway to Mombasa comes from beyond the lake. Yet scarcely any money
-has ever been spent on Uganda. No European roads exist, no railways
-have been built, no waterfalls are harnessed, no public works of any
-serious description have been undertaken. A poor little grant-in-aid
-has barely supported the day-to-day cost of European administration,
-and practically nothing in cash or credit has been available for the
-development of the country. But it is alive by itself. It is vital;
-and in my view, in spite of its insects and its diseases, it ought in
-the course of time to become the most prosperous of all our East and
-Central African possessions, and perhaps the financial driving wheel
-of all this part of the world. It is far from my desire to disparage
-the East African Protectorate, or to suggest diminution of activity or
-support. Both Protectorates are necessary to each other and should
-advance together; but in view of their relative positions, and looking
-at the situation as it is to-day, my counsel plainly is--"Concentrate
-upon Uganda!" Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far.
-Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or
-more rapidly realized.
-
-Cotton alone should make the fortune of Uganda. All the best qualities
-of cotton can be grown in the highest perfection, a hundred thousand
-intelligent landowners occupying twenty thousand square miles of
-suitable soil are eager to engage in the cultivation. An industrious
-and organized population offers the necessary labour. Merely at the
-request of the Government cotton has been planted experimentally on a
-considerable scale throughout Uganda. The figures of production--though
-of course they are only the first beginnings--show a surprising
-expansion. Great care is required, and steps have already been taken
-to secure that the quality of cotton exported from Uganda is not
-deteriorated or its reputation prejudiced by hasty or untutored
-action, that only the seeds which yield the best results should be
-distributed, and that no indiscriminate mixture should be permitted.
-The Government must control the culture. Experts must watch the
-ginneries and educate the native cultivator. Roads must be made to
-enable the crop to be marketed. The scientific organization of the
-cotton-growing resources of Uganda has now been definitely undertaken.
-A special grant of £10,000 a year will in future be devoted to this
-purpose, and the whole process will be supervised by European officers
-in close touch through the Colonial Office with the highest
-Manchester authorities and the British Cotton-Growing Association. In
-the opinion of the ablest observers the next five years will see a
-very remarkable development in cotton production, even though the
-means available to foster it continue to be slender.
-
-But cotton is only one of those tropical products for which the demand
-of civilized industry is almost insatiable, and which can nowhere in
-the world be grown more cheaply, more easily, more perfectly than
-between the waters of the two great lakes. Rubber, fibre, cinnamon,
-cocoa, coffee, sugar may all be cultivated upon the greatest scale;
-virgin forests of rare and valuable timber await the axe; and even
-though mineral wealth may perhaps never lend its hectic glory to
-Uganda, the economic foundations of its prosperity will stand securely
-upon a rich and varied agriculture. A settler's country it can never
-be. Whatever may be the destinies of the East African Highlands, the
-shores of the great lakes will never be the permanent residence of a
-white race. It is a planter's land, where the labours of the native
-population may be organized and directed by superior intelligence and
-external capital. For my own part I rejoice that the physical
-conditions of the country are such as to prevent the growth in the
-heart of happy Uganda of a petty white community, with the harsh and
-selfish ideas which mark the jealous contact of races and the
-exploitation of the weaker. Let it remain a "planter's land." Let the
-planters, instead of being the agents of excited syndicates with minds
-absorbed in the profits of shareholders thousands of miles away, be
-either Europeans of substance and character who have given proofs of
-their knowledge of natives and their ability to deal skilfully and
-justly with them, or better still--say I--let them be the
-disinterested officers of the Government, directing the development of
-the country neither in their own, nor any other pecuniary interest,
-but for the general good of its people and of the Empire of which it
-forms a part.
-
-But if the immediate inflexion of British policy in Eastern Africa
-should be, without prejudice, but with precedence of other provinces,
-to accelerate the economic and social development of Uganda, what are
-the first steps to take? I might have much to say of Forestry and
-Agriculture; of an extended system of technical education similar to
-that given at the Gordon College at Khartoum, here perhaps in part to
-be achieved through grants in aid of the existing missionary schools;
-of road-making, indispensable to progress, of motor-transport, and of
-water-power. But let me make my message brief and unclouded, and as
-before expressed in three words, "Build a Railway."
-
-The clusters of colonial possessions which have been acquired on the
-east and west coasts of Africa, so rapidly and with so little cost or
-bloodshed, will unquestionably prove an invaluable, if not indeed a
-necessary feature of the British Empire. From these vast plantations
-will be drawn the raw materials of many of our most important
-industries; to them will flow a continuous and broadening train of
-British products; and in them the peculiar gifts for administration
-and high civic virtues of our race may find a healthy and an
-honourable scope. Some of these great estates, like Southern Nigeria
-on the west coast, are already so prosperous as not only to be
-self-supporting, but able to assist with credit and subvention the
-progress of neighbours less far advanced. Others are still a charge
-upon our estimates. We are annually put to the expense of
-grants-in-aid more or less considerable for Northern Somaliland, the
-East African Protectorate, Nyassaland and Uganda. Heavy upon the
-finance of all the East Coast hangs the capital charge of the Uganda
-Railway. In no way will these charges be eased or removed except by
-the rise of one or more of the territories concerned to economic
-buoyancy, or by the growth of railway traffic down the Uganda trunk
-consequent upon development. Under present conditions the progress
-made from year to year is steady and encouraging. The charges upon the
-Colonial Estimates diminish regularly every year. Every year the
-administration of the different Governments increases in elaboration,
-in efficiency and consequently in cost. The extra charge is met ever
-more fully by the returning yield of a grateful soil. Except for the
-chances of war, rebellion, pestilence, and famine which brood over the
-infancy of tropical protectorates, but which may be averted or
-controlled, it would be easy to calculate a date--not too remote--by
-which all contribution from the British tax-payer would be
-unnecessary. The movement of events is encouraging; but there is one
-method by which it can be made far more sure and far more swift, by
-which all adverse chances are minimized, and all existing resources
-stimulated and multiplied--railways.
-
-I would go so far as to say that it is only wasting time and money to
-try to govern, or still more develop, a great African possession
-without a railway. There can be no security, progress, or prosperity
-without at least one central line of rapid communication driven
-through the heart of the country. Where, as in Northern Somaliland,
-the land itself is utterly valueless, a mere desert of rocks and
-scrub, or where the military dangers are excessive and utterly
-disproportioned to any results that can ever be reaped--withdrawal and
-concentration are the true policy. But if for any reason it be decided
-to remain and to administer, a railway becomes the prime of absolute
-necessities. Till then all civilized government is extravagant and
-precarious, and all profitable commerce practically impossible. These
-considerations have lately led a British Government to sanction the
-extensive railways, nearly 600 miles long, now being rapidly
-constructed in Northern and Southern Nigeria; and the same arguments
-apply, though in my view with increased force, to the Uganda
-Protectorate.
-
-It is not usually realized that the Uganda railway does not pass
-through Uganda. It is the railway _to_ Uganda and not _of_ Uganda. It
-stops short of the land from which it takes its name, and falls
-exhausted by its exertions and vicissitudes, content feverishly to lap
-the waters of the Victoria Nyanza. Uganda is reached, but not
-traversed by steam communication in any form. Yet the extension of the
-railway from the western shores of the Victoria to the Albert Nyanza
-would not only carry it through much of the most valuable and fertile
-country within its radius, but as I shall show could far more than
-double its effective scope.
-
-It may be accepted as an axiom that in the present state of
-development in these African protectorates, it is scarcely ever, and
-indeed I think never, worth while to build railways in competition
-with waterways. Railways should in new countries be in supplement of,
-and not in substitution for, lakes and navigable rivers. No doubt
-direct through-routes of railway, where bulk is not broken and all
-delays and changings are avoided, show an imposing advantage in
-comparison with a mere alternation of water stages and railway links.
-There could be no doubt which was the better if only you leave out
-the question of cost. But it is just this question of cost which
-cannot be left out, which clamorously dominates the proposition from
-the beginning. For first-class countries may afford first-class
-railways and _trains de luxe_, but second-class countries must be less
-ambitious, and young new jungle-born countries are satisfied, or ought
-to be, if they get any railway at all. The differences between the
-best railway in the world and the worst, are no doubt impressive; but
-they become utterly insignificant when contrasted with the difference
-between the worst railway in the world and no railway at all. For
-observe, the comparison is not with perfect lines of European
-communication, nor with anything like them, nor even with a waggon on
-a turnpike road. It is with a jogging, grunting, panting, failing line
-of tottering coolies, men reduced to beasts of burden, that the new
-pioneer line must be compared--that is to say, with the most painful,
-most degrading, slowest and feeblest method of transportation which
-has ever disgraced the world. And compared with that, any line of
-steam-communication, however primitive, however light, however
-interrupted, is heaven.
-
-I am endeavouring to guide the reader to a positive proposal of a
-modest and practical character, I mean the construction of a new
-railway which might be called "The Victoria and Albert Railway,"
-although it would virtually be an extension of the existing Uganda
-line. This railway should traverse the country between the great
-lakes, and join together these two noble reservoirs with all their
-respective river connections. The distance is not great. Two hundred
-and fifty miles would exceed the largest computation; and perhaps a
-line of one hundred and fifty miles would suffice. If the cost of this
-railway were estimated, as I am informed is reasonable, at a maximum
-figure of £5,000 a mile, the total sum involved would be between
-£1,250,000 and £750,000.
-
-The supreme advantage of making a railway debouch upon a great lake,
-is that every point on the lake shore is instantly put in almost equal
-communication with railhead. Steamers coast round on circular tours,
-and whatsoever trade or traffic may offer along the whole
-circumference, is carried swiftly to the railway. Lakes are in fact
-the catchment areas of trade, and it is by tapping and uniting them
-that the economic life of Central Africa can be most easily and
-swiftly stimulated.
-
-Two routes present themselves with various competing advantages by
-which the Victoria and Albert Railway may proceed. The first, the most
-obvious, most desirable and most expensive, is straight across the
-Highlands of Toro, through the best of the cotton country, from a
-point on the Victoria Lake in the neighbourhood of Entebbe, to where
-the Semliki river runs into the southern end of Lake Albert. The
-second would practically follow the footsteps recorded in these pages.
-It does not offer a direct line. It does not pass during the whole of
-its length through cultivated and inhabited country. It does not reach
-the Albert Lake at the most convenient end. But it is far cheaper than
-the other. It is only 135 miles long instead of nearly 250. It
-connects not only the two great lakes, but also Lake Chioga with all
-its channels and tributaries, in one system of unbroken steam
-communication.
-
-Briefly this latter project would consist of two links of railway: the
-first about sixty miles long from Jinja (or Ripon Falls) to Kakindu,
-the first point where the Victoria Nile becomes navigable: the second
-about seventy-five miles long from the neighbourhood of Mruli to the
-Nile below the Murchison Falls and near its mouth on the Albert. By
-these two sections of railway, together only 135 miles in length, a
-wonderful extent of waterways would be commanded; to wit: 1. Thirty
-miles of the Victoria Nile navigable from Kakindu to Lake Chioga. 2.
-Lake Chioga itself, with its long arms and gulfs stretching deeply
-into the whole of the fertile regions to the south-west of Mount
-Elgon, and affording a perimeter of navigable coastline accessible by
-steamers, of certainly not less than 250 miles. 3. All that reach of
-the Victoria Nile navigable from Lake Chioga to Foweira when the
-rapids ending in the Murchison Falls begin again--70 miles. 4. Thirty
-miles from below the falls to the Albert Lake. 5. The whole of the
-Albert Lake shores--250 miles. 6. The Semliki river navigable (once a
-sandbar has been passed) for sixty miles. 7. The glorious open reach
-of the White Nile from the Albert Lake to Nimule--120 miles. Thus by
-the construction of only 135 miles of railroad, swift modern
-communication would be established over a total range of 800 miles: or
-for an addition of one-fifth to its length and one-eighth to its cost
-the effective radius of the Uganda railway would be more than doubled.
-Such railway propositions are few and far between.
-
-I do not prejudge the choice of these two routes. Both are now being
-carefully surveyed. The advantages of the longer and more ambitious
-line across Toro are perhaps superior. But the cost is also nearly
-twice as great; and cost is a vital factor--not merely to the
-government called upon to find money, but still more to the commercial
-soundness of an enterprise which is permanently crippled, if its
-original capital charges are allowed notably to exceed what the
-estimated earnings would sustain. The question is one which will
-require severe and patient examination, the nicest balancings between
-competitive advantages, the smoothest compromises between the
-practical and the ideal.
-
-But let us now look forward to a time--not, I trust, remote--when by
-one route or the other the distance between the Victoria and Albert
-Lakes has been spanned by a railway, and when the Mountains of the
-Moon are scarcely four days' journey from Mombasa. The British
-Government will then be possessed of the shortest route to the
-Eastern Congo. The Uganda railway will be able to offer rates for
-merchandise and railway material with which no other line that can
-ever be constructed will ever be able to compete. The whole of that
-already considerable, though as yet stifled trade, which feebly
-trickles back half across Africa by Boma to the Atlantic, which is
-looking desperately for an outlet to the northward, which percolates
-in driblets through Uganda to-day, will flow swiftly and abundantly to
-the benefit of all parties concerned down the Uganda trunk, raising
-that line with steady impulse from the _status_ of a political railway
-towards the level of a sound commercial enterprise. In no other way
-will the British tax-payer recover his capital. The advantages are
-great and the expense moderate. Larger considerations may postpone,
-and the imperative need of the fullest surveys will in any case delay
-construction; but I cannot doubt that the Victoria and Albert railway
-is now the most important project awaiting action in the whole of that
-group of Protectorates which Sir Frederick Lugard used proudly to call
-"our East African Empire."
-
-But let us proceed one step further in the development of the
-communications of north-east Africa. When an extension of the Uganda
-railway has reached the Albert Nyanza, only one link will be missing
-to connect the whole of the rail and waterway system of East Africa
-and Uganda with the enormous system of railways and riverways of Egypt
-and the Soudan, to connect the Uganda with the Desert railway, to join
-the navigation of the great lakes to the navigation of the Blue and
-White Niles. Only one link will be missing, and that a very short one;
-the distance of 110 miles from Nimule to Gondokoro, where the Nile is
-interrupted by cataracts. Of the commercial utility of such a link _in
-itself_ I have nothing to say; but as a means of marrying two gigantic
-systems of steam communication, it will some day possess a high
-importance; and thereafter over the whole of the north-east quarter of
-the African continent under the influence or authority of the British
-Crown, comprising a total mileage by rail and river of perhaps 20,000
-miles, uninterrupted steam communication will prevail.
-
-The adventurous and the imaginative may peer out beyond these compact
-and practicable steps into a more remote and speculative region.
-Perhaps by the time that the junction between the Uganda and Soudan
-rail and water systems has been effected, the Rhodes Cape to Cairo
-railway will have reached the southern end of Lake Tanganyika: and
-then only one comparatively short hiatus will bar a complete
-transcontinental line, if not wholly of railroad, at least of steam
-traffic and of comfortable and speedy travel.
-
-Then, perhaps it will be time to make another journey; but as the
-reader, who will no doubt take care to secure a first-class tourist
-ticket, will no longer require my services as guide, I shall take this
-opportunity of making him my bow.
-
-
-
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
-  been preserved.
-
-  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My African Journey, by Winston Spencer Churchill
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-Title: My African Journey
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-Author: Winston Spencer Churchill
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-[Most recently updated: October 24, 2020]
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 <div class="tnbox">
 <p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
@@ -7442,379 +7408,6 @@ name commonly used in Uganda."</p>
 document have been preserved.</p>
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+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43035 ***</div>
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook, My African Journey, by Winston Churchill,
-Illustrated by Winston Churchill and Gordon Wilson
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: My African Journey
-
-
-Author: Winston Churchill
-
-
-
-Release Date: June 25, 2013  [eBook #43035]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY AFRICAN JOURNEY***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
-available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
-
-
-
-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
-      file which includes the original 61 photographic
-      illustrations and 3 maps.
-      See 43035-h.htm or 43035-h.zip:
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43035/43035-h/43035-h.htm)
-      or
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43035/43035-h.zip)
-
-
-      Images of the original pages are available through
-      Internet Archive. See
-      https://archive.org/details/myafricanjourney00churuoft
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
-
-      On page 6, "full tale of steamers" should possibly be
-      "full tail of steamers."
-
-
-
-
-
-MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA.
-      _Frontispiece._]
-
-
-MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-
-by
-
-THE RIGHT HON.
-WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL, M.P.
-
-Author of "The Story of the Malakand Field Force,"
-"The River War," "London to Ladysmith," "Ian Hamilton's March,"
-"Savrola," "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill"
-
-With Sixty-One Illustrations from Photographs by
-the Author and Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon Wilson,
-and Three Maps
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Toronto
-William Briggs
-1909
-
-Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
-Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
-Bungay, Suffolk.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-In so far as the collection of information is concerned, the
-advantages of travel may often be over-stated. So much has been
-written, so many facts are upon record about every country, even the
-most remote, that a judicious and persevering study of existing
-materials would no doubt enable a reader to fill himself with
-knowledge almost to repletion without leaving his chair. But for the
-formation of opinion, for the stirring and enlivenment of thought, and
-for the discernment of colour and proportion, the gifts of travel,
-especially of travel on foot, are priceless. It was with the design
-and in the hope of securing such prizes, that I undertook last year
-the pilgrimage of which these pages give account. I cannot tell
-whether I have succeeded in winning them; and still less whether, if
-won, they are transferable. I therefore view these letters with a
-modest eye. They were written mainly in long hot Uganda afternoons,
-after the day's march was done. The larger portion has already
-appeared in the _Strand Magazine_, and what has been added was
-necessary to complete the story.
-
-They present a continuous narrative of the lighter side of what was to
-me a very delightful and inspiring journey; and it is in the hope that
-they may vivify and fortify the interest of the British people in the
-wonderful estates they have recently acquired in the northeastern
-quarter of Africa, that I offer them in a connected form to the
-indulgence of the public.
-
-     WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
-
-_London_, 1908.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                              PAGE
-     CHAPTER I
-
-     THE UGANDA RAILWAY                                          1
-
-
-     CHAPTER II
-
-     AROUND MOUNT KENYA                                         19
-
-
-     CHAPTER III
-
-     THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA                               45
-
-
-     CHAPTER IV
-
-     THE GREAT LAKE                                             66
-
-
-     CHAPTER V
-
-     THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA                                      86
-
-
-     CHAPTER VI
-
-     KAMPALA                                                   104
-
-
-     CHAPTER VII
-
-     'ON SAFARI'                                               127
-
-
-     CHAPTER VIII
-
-     MURCHISON FALLS                                           148
-
-
-     CHAPTER IX
-
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                168
-
-
-     CHAPTER X
-
-     DOWN THE WHITE NILE                                       188
-
-
-     CHAPTER XI
-
-     THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT RAILWAY                           209
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-                                                    _To face page_
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA      _Frontispiece_
-
-     ON THE COW-CATCHER                                          7
-
-     THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA                                    12
-
-     GUARD OF HONOUR, KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES                     20
-
-     BREAKDOWN ON THE WAY TO THIKA CAMP                         22
-
-     SHOOTING PARTY AT THIKA CAMP                               24
-
-     THE BANDA AT THIKA CAMP                                    28
-
-     COLONEL WILSON'S LION                                      28
-
-     "DURBAR" AT KIAMBU                                         30
-
-     THE RIFT VALLEY FROM THE KIKUYU ESCARPMENT                 66
-
-     GOVERNMENT STOCK FARM AT NAIVASHA                          68
-
-     THE LAIBON'S WIVES                                         71
-
-     RAILHEAD AT KISUMU                                         71
-
-     KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU                               80
-
-     NANDI AND KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU                     84
-
-     KISUMU                                                     86
-
-     GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ENTEBBE                                  90
-
-     THE GOVERNOR WITH BAGANDA GROUP                           102
-
-     BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA                               106
-
-     KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA                          108
-
-     WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA                         109
-
-     ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA                                     110
-
-     ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA                        110
-
-     WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA--"THE BRAVEST MAN
-     IN THE ARMY"                                              112
-
-     WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA                                      112
-
-     THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA                     114
-
-     CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION,
-     KAMPALA                                                   114
-
-     INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL                           116
-
-     THE RIPON FALLS (SOURCE OF THE NILE)                      120
-
-     BETWEEN NIMULE AND GONDOKORO                              128
-
-     FOREST SCENE NEAR RIPON FALLS                             133
-
-     PALM TREE NEAR THE ASUA                                   134
-
-     BANDA WITH ESCORT OF KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES                134
-
-     AN ENCAMPMENT                                             136
-
-     LANDING AT MRULI                                          146
-
-     MURCHISON FALLS                                           159
-
-     FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US               160
-
-     FLOTILLA AT FAJAO                                         162
-
-     THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS                            164
-
-     UGANDA SCENERY                                            164
-
-     THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO                                169
-
-     EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO                        170
-
-     FAJAO                                                     170
-
-     APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO
-     HILLS IN THE DISTANCE                                     174
-
-     WADELAI                                                   174
-
-     THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
-     NEARING NIMULE                                            178
-
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                178
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                182
-
-     BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE                                 182
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS             186
-
-     COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT                                 187
-
-     THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
-     ON THE WHITE NILE                                         187
-
-     FORDING THE ASUA                                          192
-
-     THE BELGIAN OFFICIALS AT LADO                             196
-
-     GONDOKORO                                                 196
-
-     REVIEW AT KHARTOUM                                        198
-
-     SOUDAN GOVERNMENT STEAMER "DAL"                           198
-
-     A SHELUK AT KODOK (FASHODA)                               202
-
-     THE PALACE, KHARTOUM                                      204
-
-     GEORGE SCRIVINGS                                          207
-
-     PHILAE                                                    208
-
-
-MAPS
-
-     EASTERN AFRICA                                              2
-
-     BRITISH EAST AFRICA                                        16
-
-     UGANDA                                                     92
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE UGANDA RAILWAY
-
-
-The aspect of Mombasa as she rises from the sea and clothes herself
-with form and colour at the swift approach of the ship is alluring and
-even delicious. But to appreciate all these charms the traveller
-should come from the North. He should see the hot stones of Malta,
-baking and glistening on a steel-blue Mediterranean. He should visit
-the Island of Cyprus before the autumn rains have revived the soil,
-when the Messaoria Plain is one broad wilderness of dust, when every
-tree--be it only a thorn-bush--is an heirloom, and every drop of water
-is a jewel. He should walk for two hours at midday in the streets of
-Port Said. He should thread the long red furrow of the Suez Canal, and
-swelter through the trough of the Red Sea. He should pass a day among
-the cinders of Aden, and a week among the scorched rocks and stones of
-Northern Somaliland; and then, after five days of open sea, his eye
-and mind will be prepared to salute with feelings of grateful delight
-these shores of vivid and exuberant green. On every side is
-vegetation, moist, tumultuous, and varied. Great trees, clad in dense
-foliage, shrouded in creepers, springing from beds of verdure, thrust
-themselves through the undergrowth; palms laced together by flowering
-trailers; every kind of tropical plant that lives by rain and
-sunshine; high waving grass, brilliant patches of purple
-bougainvillea, and in the midst, dotted about, scarcely keeping their
-heads above the fertile flood of Nature, the red-roofed houses of the
-town and port of Mombasa.
-
-  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF
-    "MY AFRICAN JOURNEY"]
-
-The vessel follows a channel twisting away between high bluffs, and
-finds a secure anchorage, land-locked, in forty feet of water at a
-stone's throw from the shore. Here we are arrived at the gate of
-British East Africa; and more, at the outlet and debouchment of all
-the trade of all the countries that lap the Victoria and Albert Lakes
-and the head-waters of the Nile. Along the pier now being built at
-Kilindini, the harbour of Mombasa Island, must flow, at any rate for
-many years, the main stream of East and Central African commerce.
-Whatever may be the produce which civilized government and enterprise
-will draw from the enormous territories between Southern Abyssinia and
-Lake Tanganyika, between Lake Rudolf and Ruenzori, as far west as the
-head-streams of the Congo, as far north as the Lado enclave; whatever
-may be the needs and demands of the numerous populations comprised
-within those limits, it is along the unpretentious jetty of Kilindini
-that the whole traffic must pass.
-
-For Kilindini (or Mombasa, as I may be permitted to call it) is the
-starting-point of one of the most romantic and most wonderful railways
-in the world. The two iron streaks of rail that wind away among the
-hills and foliage of Mombasa Island do not break their smooth monotony
-until, after piercing Equatorial forests, stretching across immense
-prairies, and climbing almost to the level of the European snow-line,
-they pause--and that only for a time--upon the edges of the Great
-Lake. And thus is made a sure, swift road along which the white man
-and all that he brings with him, for good or ill, may penetrate into
-the heart of Africa as easily and safely as he may travel from London
-to Vienna.
-
-Short has been the life, many the vicissitudes, of the Uganda Railway.
-The adventurous enterprise of a Liberal Government, it was soon
-exposed, disowned, to the merciless criticism of its parents. Adopted
-as a cherished foundling by the Conservative party, it almost perished
-from mismanagement in their hands. Nearly ten thousand pounds a mile
-were expended upon its construction; and so eager were all parties to
-be done with it and its expense that, instead of pursuing its proper
-and natural route across the plateau to the deep waters of Port
-Victoria, it fell by the way into the shallow gulf of Kavirondo, lucky
-to get so far. It is easy to censure, it is impossible not to
-criticize, the administrative mistakes and miscalculations which
-tarnished and nearly marred a brilliant conception. But it is still
-more easy, as one traverses in forty-eight hours countries which ten
-years ago would have baffled the toilsome marches of many weeks, to
-underrate the difficulties in which unavoidable ignorance and
-astonishing conditions plunged the pioneers. The British art of
-"muddling through" is here seen in one of its finest expositions.
-Through everything--through the forests, through the ravines, through
-troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five
-years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the
-railway; and here at last, in some more or less effective fashion, is
-it arrived at its goal. Other nations project Central African railways
-as lightly and as easily as they lay down naval programmes; but here
-is a railway, like the British Fleet, "in being"--not a paper plan or
-an airy dream, but an iron fact grinding along through the jungle and
-the plain, waking with its whistles the silences of the Nyanza, and
-startling the tribes out of their primordial nakedness with
-"Americani" piece goods _made in Lancashire_.
-
-Let us, then, without waiting in Mombasa longer than is necessary to
-wish it well and to admire the fertility and promise of the coastal
-region, ascend this railway from the sea to the lake. And first, what
-a road it is! Everything is in apple-pie order. The track is smoothed
-and weeded and ballasted as if it were the London and North-Western.
-Every telegraph-post has its number; every mile, every hundred yards,
-every change of gradient has its mark; not in soft wood, to feed the
-white ant, but in hard, well-painted iron. Constant labour has
-steadily improved the grades and curves of the permanent-way, and the
-train--one of those comfortable, practical Indian trains--rolls along
-as evenly as upon a European line.
-
-Nor should it be supposed that this high standard of maintenance is
-not warranted by the present financial position of the line. The
-Uganda Railway is already doing what it was never expected within any
-reasonable period to do. It is paying its way. It is beginning to
-yield a profit--albeit a small profit--upon its capital charge.
-Projected solely as a political railway to reach Uganda, and to secure
-British predominance upon the Upper Nile, it has already achieved a
-commercial value. Instead of the annual deficits upon working expenses
-which were regularly anticipated by those most competent to judge,
-there is already a substantial profit of nearly eighty thousand pounds
-a year. And this is but the beginning, and an imperfect beginning; for
-at present the line is only a trunk, without its necessary limbs and
-feeders, without its deep-water head at Kilindini, without its full
-tale of steamers on the lake; above all, without its natural and
-necessary extension to the Albert Nyanza.
-
-  [Illustration: ON THE COW-CATCHER.
-    (Mr. Currie, Mr. Marsh, Col. Wilson, Sir J. Hayes-Sadler, Mr.
-    Churchill.)]
-
-We may divide the journey into four main stages--the jungles, the
-plains, the mountains, and the lake, for the lake is an essential part
-of the railway, and a natural and inexpensive extension to its length.
-In the early morning, then, we start from Mombasa Station, taking our
-places upon an ordinary garden seat fastened on to the cow-catcher of
-the engine, from which position the whole country can be seen. For a
-quarter of an hour we are still upon Mombasa Island, and then the
-train, crossing the intervening channel by a long iron bridge,
-addresses itself in earnest to the continent of Africa. Into these
-vast regions the line winds perseveringly upon a stiff up-grade, and
-the land unfolds itself ridge after ridge and valley after valley,
-till soon, with one farewell glance at the sea and at the
-fighting-tops of His Majesty's ship _Venus_ rising queerly amid the
-palms, we are embraced and engulfed completely. All day long the train
-runs upward and westward, through broken and undulating ground clad
-and encumbered with super-abundant vegetation. Beautiful birds and
-butterflies fly from tree to tree and flower to flower. Deep, ragged
-gorges, filled by streams in flood, open out far below us through
-glades of palms and creeper-covered trees. Here and there, at
-intervals, which will become shorter every year, are plantations of
-rubber, fibre, and cotton, the beginnings of those inexhaustible
-supplies which will one day meet the yet unmeasured demand of Europe
-for those indispensable commodities. Every few miles are little trim
-stations, with their water-tanks, signals, ticket-offices, and
-flower-beds complete and all of a pattern, backed by impenetrable
-bush. In brief one slender thread of scientific civilization, of
-order, authority, and arrangement, drawn across the primeval chaos of
-the world.
-
-In the evening a cooler, crisper air is blowing. The humid coast
-lands, with their glories and their fevers, have been left behind. At
-an altitude of four thousand feet we begin to laugh at the Equator.
-The jungle becomes forest, not less luxuriant, but distinctly
-different in character. The olive replaces the palm. The whole aspect
-of the land is more friendly, more familiar, and no less fertile.
-After Makindu Station the forest ceases. The traveller enters upon a
-region of grass. Immense fields of green pasture, withered and
-whitened at this season by waiting for the rains, intersected by
-streams and watercourses densely wooded with dark, fir-looking trees
-and gorse-looking scrub, and relieved by bold upstanding bluffs and
-ridges, comprise the new panorama. And here is presented the wonderful
-and unique spectacle which the Uganda Railway offers to the European.
-_The plains are crowded with wild animals._ From the windows of the
-carriage the whole zoological gardens can be seen disporting itself.
-Herds of antelope and gazelle, troops of zebras--sometimes four or
-five hundred together--watch the train pass with placid assurance, or
-scamper a hundred yards farther away, and turn again. Many are quite
-close to the line. With field-glasses one can see that it is the same
-everywhere, and can distinguish long files of black wildebeeste and
-herds of red kongoni--the hartebeeste of South Africa--and wild
-ostriches walking sedately in twos and threes, and every kind of small
-deer and gazelle. The zebras come close enough for their stripes to be
-admired with the naked eye.
-
-We have arrived at Simba, "The Place of Lions," and there is no reason
-why the passengers should not see one, or even half-a-dozen, stalking
-across the plain, respectfully observed by lesser beasts. Indeed, in
-the early days it was the custom to stop and sally out upon the royal
-vermin whenever met with, and many the lion that has been carried back
-to the tender in triumph before the guard, or driver, or any one else
-could think of timetables or the block system, or the other
-inconvenient restrictions of a regular service. Farther up the line,
-in the twilight of the evening, we saw, not a hundred yards away, a
-dozen giraffes lollopping off among scattered trees, and at Nakuru six
-yellow lions walked in leisurely mood across the rails in broad
-daylight. Only the rhinoceros is absent, or rarely seen, and after one
-of his species had measured his strength, unsuccessfully, against an
-engine, he has confined himself morosely to the river-beds and to the
-undisturbed solitudes which, at a distance of two or three miles,
-everywhere engulf the Uganda Railway.
-
-Our carriage stopped upon a siding at Simba Station for three days, in
-order that we might more closely examine the local fauna. One of the
-best ways of shooting game in this part of the world, and certainly
-the easiest, is to get a trolly and run up and down the line. The
-animals are so used to the passage of trains and natives along the one
-great highway that they do not, as a rule, take much notice, unless
-the train or trolly stops, when their suspicions are at once aroused.
-The sportsmen should, therefore, slip off without allowing the vehicle
-or the rest of the party to stop, even for a moment; and in this way
-he will frequently find himself within two hundred and fifty or three
-hundred yards of his quarry, when the result will be governed solely
-by his skill, or want of skill, with the rifle.
-
-There is another method, which we tried on the second day in the hopes
-of finding a waterbuck, and that is, to prowl about among the trees
-and undergrowth of the river-bed. In a few minutes one may bury
-oneself in the wildest and savagest kind of forest. The air becomes
-still and hot. The sun seems in an instant to assert his just
-prerogative. The heat glitters over the open spaces of dry sand and
-pools of water. High grass, huge boulders, tangled vegetation,
-multitudes of thorn-bushes, obstruct the march, and the ground itself
-is scarped and guttered by the rains into the strangest formations.
-Around you, breast-high, shoulder-high, overhead, rises the African
-jungle. There is a brooding silence, broken only by the cry of a bird,
-or the scolding bark of baboons, and the crunching of one's own feet
-on the crumbling soil. We enter the haunt of the wild beasts; their
-tracks, their traces, the remnants of their repasts, are easily and
-frequently discovered. Here a lion has passed since the morning. There
-a rhinoceros has certainly been within the hour--perhaps within ten
-minutes. We creep and scramble through the game paths, anxiously,
-rifles at full cock, not knowing what each turn or step may reveal.
-The wind, when it blows at all, blows fitfully, now from this quarter,
-now from that; so that one can never be certain that it will not
-betray the intruder in these grim domains to the beast he seeks, or to
-some other, less welcome, before he sees him. At length, after two
-hours' scramble and scrape, we emerge breathless, as from another
-world, half astonished to find ourselves within a quarter of a mile of
-the railway line, with its trolly, luncheon, soda-water, ice, etc.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA]
-
-But if one would seek the rhinoceros in his open pastures, it is
-necessary to go farther afield; and accordingly we started the next
-morning, while the stars were still shining, to tramp over the
-ridges and hills which shut in the railway, and overlook remoter
-plains and valleys beyond. The grass grows high from ground
-honeycombed with holes and heaped with lava boulders, and it was
-daylight before we had stumbled our way to a spur commanding a wide
-view. Here we halted to search the country with field-glasses, and to
-brush off the ticks--detestable insects which infest all the resorts
-of the game in innumerable swarms, ready to spread any poison among
-the farmers' cattle. The glass disclosed nothing of consequence.
-Zebra, wildebeeste, and kongoni were to be seen in troops and herds,
-scattered near and far over the plains, but never a rhinoceros! So we
-trudged on, meaning to make a wide circle. For an hour we found
-nothing, and then, just as we were thinking of turning homewards
-before the sun should get his full power, three beautiful oryx, great,
-dark-coloured antelope with very long, corrugated horns, walked over
-the next brow on their way to water. Forthwith we set off in pursuit,
-crouching and creeping along the valley, and hoping to intercept them
-at the stream. Two passed safely over before we could reach our point.
-The third, seeing us, turned back and disappeared over the hill,
-where, a quarter of an hour later, he was stalked and wounded.
-
-It is always the wounded beast that leads the hunter into adventures.
-Till the quarry is hit every one walks delicately, avoids going the
-windward side of unexplored coverts, skirts a reed-bed cautiously,
-notices a convenient tree, looks often this way and that. But once the
-prize is almost within reach, you scramble along after it as fast as
-your legs will carry you, and never trouble about remoter
-contingencies, be they what they may. Our oryx led us a mile or more
-over rocky slopes, always promising and never giving a good chance for
-a shot, until at last he drew us round the shoulder of a hill--and
-there, abruptly, was the rhinoceros. The impression was extraordinary.
-A wide plain of white, withered grass stretched away to low hills
-broken with rocks. The rhinoceros stood in the middle of this plain,
-about five hundred yards away, in jet-black silhouette; not a
-twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the
-Stone Age. He was grazing placidly, and above him the vast snow dome
-of Kilimanjaro towered up in the clear air of morning to complete a
-scene unaltered since the dawn of the world.
-
-The manner of killing a rhinoceros in the open is crudely simple. It
-is thought well usually to select the neighbourhood of a good tree,
-_where one can be found_, as the centre of the encounter. If no tree
-is available, you walk up as near as possible to him from any side
-except the windward, and then shoot him in the head or the heart. If
-you hit a vital spot, as sometimes happens, he falls. If you hit him
-anywhere else, he charges blindly and furiously in your direction, and
-you shoot him again, or not, as the case may be.
-
-Bearing all this carefully in mind, we started out to do battle with
-Behemoth. We had advanced perhaps two hundred yards towards him, when
-a cry from one of the natives arrested us. We looked sharply to the
-right. There, not a hundred and fifty paces distant, under the shade
-of a few small trees, stood two other monsters. In a few more steps we
-should have tainted their wind and brought them up with a rush; and
-suppose this had happened, when perhaps we were already compromised
-with our first friend, and had him wounded and furious on our hands!
-Luckily warned in time, to creep back to the shoulder of the hill, to
-skirt its crest, and to emerge a hundred and twenty yards from this
-new objective was the work of a few minutes. We hurriedly agree to
-kill one first before touching the other. At such a range it is easy
-to hit so great a target; but the bull's-eye is small. I fired. The
-thud of a bullet which strikes with an impact of a ton and a quarter,
-tearing through hide and muscle and bone with the hideous energy of
-cordite, came back distinctly. The large rhinoceros started, stumbled,
-turned directly towards the sound and the blow, and then bore straight
-down upon us in a peculiar trot, nearly as fast as a horse's gallop,
-with an activity surprising in so huge a beast, and instinct with
-unmistakable purpose.
-
-  [Illustration: BRITISH EAST AFRICA]
-
-Great is the moral effect of a foe who advances. Everybody fired.
-Still the ponderous brute came on, as if he were invulnerable; as if
-he were an engine, or some great steam barge impervious to bullets,
-insensible to pain or fear. Thirty seconds more, and he will close. An
-impalpable curtain seems to roll itself up in the mind, revealing a
-mental picture, strangely lighted, yet very still, where objects have
-new values, and where a patch of white grass in the foreground,
-four or five yards away, seems to possess astonishing significance. It
-is there that the last two shots that yet remain before the resources
-of civilization are exhausted must be fired. There is time to reflect
-with some detachment that, after all, we were the aggressors; we it is
-who have forced the conflict by an unprovoked assault with murderous
-intent upon a peaceful herbivore; that if there is such a thing as
-right and wrong between man and beast--and who shall say there is
-not?--right is plainly on his side; there is time for this before I
-perceive that, stunned and dazed by the frightful concussions of
-modern firearms, he has swerved sharp to the right, and is now moving
-across our front, broadside on, at the same swift trot. More firing,
-and as I reload some one says he is down, and I fire instead at his
-smaller companion, already some distance off upon the plain. But one
-rhinoceros hunt is like another, except in its details, and I will not
-occupy the reader with the account of this new pursuit and death.
-Suffice it to say that, in all the elements of neurotic experience,
-such an encounter seems to me fully equal to half an hour's brisk
-skirmish at six or seven hundred yards--and with an important
-addition. In war there is a cause, there is duty, there is the hope
-of glory, for who can tell what may not be won before night? But here
-at the end is only a hide, a horn, and a carcase, over which the
-vultures have already begun to wheel.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-AROUND MOUNT KENYA
-
-
-The town of Nairobi, the capital of the East Africa Protectorate,
-stands on the base of wooded hills at the three hundred and
-twenty-seventh mile of the railroad. Originally chosen as a convenient
-place for assembling the extensive depots and shops necessary to the
-construction and maintenance of the railway, it enjoys no advantages
-as a residential site. The ground on which the town is built is low
-and swampy. The supply of water is indifferent, and the situation
-generally unhealthy. A mile farther on, however, upon the rising
-ground a finer position could have been found, and this quarter is
-already being occupied sparsely by Government buildings, hospitals,
-and barracks. It is now too late to change, and thus lack of foresight
-and of a comprehensive view leaves its permanent imprint upon the
-countenance of a new country.
-
-Our train traverses the Athi plains, more crowded perhaps with game
-than any other part of the line, and approaches swiftly the long rows
-of one-storeyed tin houses which constitute the town. Nairobi is a
-typical South African township. It might be Pietermaritzburg or
-Ladysmith of twenty years ago, before blue gum-trees and stone
-buildings had waxed and multiplied. In its present stage perhaps it
-resembles Buluwayo most. The population is also South African in its
-character and proportions. There are five hundred and eighty whites,
-three thousand one hundred Indians, and ten thousand five hundred and
-fifty African natives. The shops and stores are, however, much more
-considerable than these figures would appear to warrant, and are fully
-capable of supplying the varied needs of settlers and planters over a
-wide area. Nairobi is also the headquarters of a brigade of the King's
-African Rifles, the central office and depot of the Uganda Railway,
-and the seat of the Administration, with its numerous official
-_personnel_. The dinner of the Colonists' Association, to which I was
-invited, afforded the familiar, yet in Central Africa not
-unimpressive, spectacle of long rows of gentlemen in evening dress;
-while the ball given by the Governor to celebrate the King's birthday
-revealed a company gay with uniforms, and ladies in pretty dresses,
-assembled upon a spot where scarcely ten years before lions hunted
-undisturbed.
-
-  [Illustration: GUARD OF HONOUR, KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES.]
-
-Every white man in Nairobi is a politician; and most of them are
-leaders of parties. One would scarcely believe it possible, that a
-centre so new should be able to develop so many divergent and
-conflicting interests, or that a community so small should be able to
-give to each such vigorous and even vehement expression. There are
-already in miniature all the elements of keen political and racial
-discord, all the materials for hot and acrimonious debate. The white
-man _versus_ the black; the Indian _versus_ both; the settler as
-against the planter; the town contrasted with the country; the
-official class against the unofficial; the coast and the highlands;
-the railway administration and the Protectorate generally; the King's
-African Rifles and the East Africa Protectorate Police; all these
-different points of view, naturally arising, honestly adopted,
-tenaciously held, and not yet reconciled into any harmonious general
-conception, confront the visitor in perplexing disarray. Nor will he
-be wise to choose his part with any hurry. It is better to see
-something of the country, of its quality and extent, of its promises
-and forfeits, of its realities and illusions, before endeavouring to
-form even a provisional opinion.
-
-The snow-clad peak of Mount Kenya, a hundred miles away, can on a
-clear morning be easily seen from the slopes above Nairobi--a sharp,
-serrated summit veined with gleaming white. A road--passable, albeit
-unmetalled, for wagons and even a motor-car--runs thitherward by Fort
-Hall and across the Tana River. On the way there is much to see. A
-wild, ragged-looking, but fertile region, swelling into successive
-undulations and intersected by numerous gorges whose streams are
-shaded by fine trees, unfolds itself to the eye. Scattered about upon
-spacious estates of many thousand acres are a score or two of
-colonists, each gradually making himself a home and a living in his
-own way. One raises stock; another plants coffee, which grows so
-exuberantly in this generous soil as to threaten the speedy exhaustion
-of the plant. Here are ostriches, sheep, and cattle standing
-placidly together in one drove under the guardianship of a native
-child of eleven. There is a complete dairy farm, admirably equipped.
-One of the streams has been dammed effectively, and turbines are
-already in position to light Nairobi with electricity. Upon the banks
-of another there is talk of building an hotel.
-
-  [Illustration: BREAKDOWN ON THE WAY TO THIKA CAMP.]
-
-At one place I found a family of good people from Hightown,
-Manchester, grappling courageously with an enormous tract of ten
-thousand acres. Hard by, an old Boer, who has trekked the length of
-Africa to avoid the British flag, sits smoking stolidly by his grass
-house, reconciled to British rule at last by a few months' experience
-of paternal government in a neighbouring Protectorate. He has few
-cattle and less cash, but he holds decided views as to the whereabouts
-of lions; there, moreover, stands the heavy tilted wagon of the Great
-Trek--an ark of refuge when all else fails; and for the rest there is
-plenty of game, few people, and the family grows from year to year. In
-short, one sees a sparse, heterogeneous population engaged in varied
-labours; but everywhere hard work, straitened resources, hopes
-persisting through many disappointments, stout hospitable hearts, and
-the beginnings, at any rate, of progress.
-
-A camp has been prepared for me in a very beautiful spot at the
-juncture of the Chania and Thika rivers. Tents are pitched and grass
-shelters are erected in a smooth meadow. Southwards, a hundred yards
-away, a fine waterfall plunges downwards over enormous boulders amid
-tall, interlacing trees. The muffled roar of another rises from a deep
-ravine an equal distance to the north; and the Philistine computes,
-with a frown, four thousand horse-power expending itself upon the
-picturesque.
-
-Nothing causes the East African colonist more genuine concern than
-that his guest should not have been provided with a lion. The
-knowledge preys upon his mind until it becomes a veritable obsession.
-He feels some deep reproach is laid upon his own hospitality and the
-reputation of his adopted country. How to find, and, having found, to
-kill, a lion is the unvarying theme of conversation; and every place
-and every journey is judged by a simple standard--"lions or no lions."
-At the Thika camp, then, several gentlemen, accomplished in this
-important sport, have come together with ponies, rifles, Somalis,
-and all the other accessories. Some zebras and kongoni have been
-killed and left lying in likely-looking places to attract the lions;
-and at 4 a.m., rain or shine, we are to go and look for them.
-
-  [Illustration: SHOOTING PARTY AT THIKA CAMP.
-    From left to right--Capt. Sadler, Major Riddell, Mr. Marsh,
-    Marquis Gandolfi-Hornyold, Hon. K. Dundas, Mr. Percival, Mr.
-    Churchill, Mr. D. J. Wilson.]
-
-The young Englishman, be he officer or settler in the East African
-Highlands, cuts a hardy figure. His clothes are few and far between: a
-sun hat, a brown flannel shirt with sleeves cut above the elbow and
-open to the chest, a pair of thin khaki knickerbockers cut short five
-inches--_at least_--above the knee, boots, and a pair of putties
-comprise the whole attire. Nothing else is worn. The skin, exposed to
-sun, thorns, and insects, becomes almost as dark as that of the
-natives, and so hardened that it is nothing to ride all day with bare
-knees on the saddle; a truly Spartan discipline from which at least
-the visitor may be excused.
-
-This is the way in which they hunt lions. First find the lion, lured
-to a kill, driven from a reed-bed, or kicked up incontinently by the
-way. Once viewed he must never be lost sight of for a moment. Mounted
-on ponies of more or less approved fidelity, three or four daring
-Britons or Somalis gallop after him, as in India they ride the
-pig--that is to say, neck or nothing--across rocks, holes, tussocks,
-nullahs, through high grass, thorn scrub, undergrowth, turning him,
-shepherding him, heading him this way and that until he is brought to
-bay. For his part the lion is no seeker of quarrels; he is often
-described in accents of contempt. His object throughout is to save his
-skin. If, being unarmed, you meet six or seven lions unexpectedly, all
-you need do--according to my information--is to speak to them sternly
-and they will slink away, while you throw a few stones at them to
-hurry them up. All the highest authorities recommend this.
-
-But when pursued from place to place, chased hither and thither by the
-wheeling horsemen, the naturally mild disposition of the lion becomes
-embittered. First he begins to growl and roar at his enemies, in order
-to terrify them, and make them leave him in peace. Then he darts
-little short charges at them. Finally, when every attempt at peaceful
-persuasion has failed, he pulls up abruptly and offers battle. Once he
-has done this, he will run no more. He means to fight, and to fight
-to the death. He means to charge home; and when a lion, maddened with
-the agony of a bullet-wound, distressed by long and hard pursuit, or,
-most of all, a lioness in defence of her cubs, is definitely committed
-to the charge, death is the only possible conclusion. Broken limbs,
-broken jaws, a body raked from end to end, lungs pierced through and
-through, entrails torn and protruding--none of these count. It must be
-death--instant and utter--for the lion, or down goes the man, mauled
-by septic claws and fetid teeth, crushed and crunched, and poisoned
-afterwards to make doubly sure. Such are the habits of this cowardly
-and wicked animal.
-
-It is at the stage when the lion has been determinedly "bayed" that
-the sportsman from London is usually introduced upon the scene. He
-has, we may imagine, followed the riders as fast as the inequalities
-of the ground, his own want of training, and the burden of a heavy
-rifle will allow him. He arrives at the spot where the lion is
-cornered in much the same manner as the matador enters the arena, the
-others standing aside deferentially, ready to aid him or divert the
-lion. If his bullet kills, he is, no doubt, justly proud. If it only
-wounds, the lion charges the nearest horseman. For forty yards the
-charge of a lion is swifter than the gallop of a racehorse. The
-riders, therefore, usually avoid waiting within that distance. But
-sometimes they do not; or sometimes the lion sees the man who has shot
-him; or sometimes all sorts of things happen which make good
-stories--afterwards.
-
-After this general description no particular example is required, and
-the reader need not be disappointed to learn that our lion escaped
-what, no doubt, would have been his certain destruction by the
-breaking of a single link in the regular chain of circumstances. He
-was not found upon the kill. His place was taken by a filthy hyena,
-and it was not until we had beaten thoroughly for two hours more than
-three miles of reed-bed that we saw him--a splendid great yellow cat,
-looking as big as a bullock--bounding away up the opposite hill. Off
-started our riders like falcons; but alas!--if "alas!" is the proper
-word--a deep and impassable nullah intervened, necessitating large
-circuits and long delays; so that the lion got clean away out of sight
-of all men, and we were reduced to the slow and tedious process of
-tracking him footprint by footprint through waving grass, breast-high,
-hour after hour, always expecting to tread on his tail, and
-always--disappointed!
-
-  [Illustration: THE BANDA AT THIKA CAMP.]
-
-  [Illustration: COLONEL WILSON'S LION.]
-
-In the afternoon I had to ride to Fort Hall, where there was to be a
-great gathering of Kikuyu chiefs and thousands of their warriors and
-women. The country is much the same as that traversed on the previous
-day, but greener, smoother, and more pleasant-looking. Fort Hall is
-not a fort in any military sense, but the Commissioner's house with a
-ditch round it, a jail, a few houses, and an Indian bazaar. The
-station is hardly well selected, being perched up on a hill out of the
-reach of any railway--and unhealthy nevertheless. The whole place was
-crowded with natives in their most highly ornamented and elaborate
-nudity, waiting for the war-dance.
-
-This ceremony was performed the next morning. Long before daylight the
-beating of drums, the blowing of horns, and the rhythm of loud, yet
-not altogether unmelodious chanting awakened the weariest sleeper; and
-when, at eight o'clock the _indaba_ began, the whole space in front of
-the fort was densely packed with naked, painted, plumed, and gyrating
-humanity, which seethed continually to and fro, and divided from time
-to time as particular chiefs advanced with their followers, or as
-gifts of struggling sheep and bulls were brought forward. In his war
-dress the Kikuyu, and, still more, the Masai warrior, is a striking,
-if not impressive, figure. His hair and body are smeared with the red
-earth of his native land, compounded into a pigment by mixture with
-the slimy juice of the castor-oil plant, which abounds. Fantastic
-headdresses, some of ostrich feathers, others of metal or leather;
-armlets and leglets of twisted wire; stripes of white clay rubbed
-across the red pigment; here and there an old pot-hat or some European
-garment, incongruously contrasted with leopard-skins and bulls' horns;
-broad, painted cow-hide shields, and spears with soft iron blades
-nearly four feet long, complete a grotesque and indecorous picture.
-Still, there is a sleek grace about these active forms--bronze statues
-but for their frippery--which defeats all their own efforts to make
-themselves hideous. The chiefs, however, succeed in reducing
-themselves to regular guys. Any old, cast-off khaki jacket or tattered
-pair of trousers; any fragment of weather-stained uniform, a
-battered sun-helmet with a feather stuck lamely into the top of it, a
-ragged umbrella, is sufficient to induce them to abandon the ostrich
-plume and the leopard-skin kaross. Among their warriors in ancient
-gear they look ridiculous and insignificant--more like the commonest
-kind of native sweeper than the hereditary rulers of some powerful and
-numerous tribe.
-
-  [Illustration: "DURBAR" AT KIAMBU.]
-
-It is unquestionably an advantage that the East African negro should
-develop a taste for civilized attire. In no more useful and innocent
-direction could his wants be multiplied and his desires excited, and
-it is by this process of assimilation that his life will gradually be
-made more complicated, more varied, less crudely animal, and himself
-raised to a higher level of economic utility. But it would surely be
-worth while to organize and guide this new motive force within
-graceful and appropriate limits. A Government runs risks when it
-intrudes upon the domain of fashion; but when a veritable abyss of
-knowledge and science separates the rulers from the ruled, when
-authority is dealing with a native race still plunged in its primary
-squalour, without religion, without clothes, without morals, but
-willing to emerge and capable of emerging, such risks may fairly be
-accepted; and the Government might well prescribe or present suitable
-robes for ceremonial occasions to the chiefs, and gradually encourage,
-and more gradually still enforce, their adoption throughout the
-population.
-
-After the dance it had been arranged that I should go as far as the
-bank of the Tana River to see the view of Mount Kenya, and then return
-to the Thika camp before night. But when the whole splendid panorama
-of the trans-Tana country opened upon us, I could not bring myself to
-stop short of the promised land; and, casting away material cares of
-luncheon and baggage, I decided to ride through to Embo, twenty-eight
-miles from Fort Hall, and our most advanced post in this direction. We
-crossed the Tana by a ferry which travels along a rope under the
-impulsion of the current. The ponies swam the deep, strong, sixty-yard
-stream of turbulent red water. On the farther bank the country is
-really magnificent in quality and aspect. The centre of the picture is
-always Mount Kenya; but there never was a mountain which made so
-little of its height. It rises by long gentle slopes, more like a
-swelling of ground than a peak, from an immense upland plain, and so
-gradual is the acclivity that, but for the sudden outcrop of snow-clad
-rock which crowns the summit, no one would believe it over eighteen
-thousand feet high. It is its gradual rise that imparts so great a
-value to this noble mountain; for about its enormous base and upon its
-slopes, traversed by hundreds of streams of clear perennial water,
-there grows, or may grow, in successive, concentric belts, every kind
-of crop and forest known in the world, from the Equator to the Arctic
-Circle. The landscape is superb. In beauty, in fertility, in verdure,
-in the coolness of the air, in the abundance of running water, in its
-rich red soil, in the variety of its vegetation, the scenery about
-Kenya far surpasses anything I have ever seen in India or South
-Africa, and challenges comparison with the fairest countries of
-Europe. Indeed, looking at it with an eye fresh from Italy, I was most
-powerfully reminded of the upper valleys of the Po.
-
-We rode on all day through this delicious country, along a well-kept
-native road, smooth enough for a bicycle, except where it crossed
-stream after stream on primitive bridges. On every side the soil was
-cultivated and covered with the crops of a large and industrious
-population. It is only a year since regular control was established
-beyond the Tana, not without some bloodshed, by a small military
-expedition. Yet so peaceful are the tribes--now that their intertribal
-fighting has been stopped--that white officers ride freely about among
-their villages without even carrying a pistol. All the natives met
-with on the road were armed with sword and spear, and all offered us
-their customary salutations, while many came up smiling and holding
-out long, moist, delicate-looking hands for me to shake, till I had
-quite enough of it. Indeed, the only dangers of the road appear to be
-from the buffaloes which infest the country, and after nightfall place
-the traveller in real peril. We were very glad for this reason, and
-also because we had eaten nothing but a banana each since early
-morning, to see at last on the top of the next hill the buildings of
-Embo just as the sun sank beneath the horizon.
-
-Embo is a model station, only five months old--one small, three-roomed
-house for the District Commissioner, one for the military officer, an
-office, and a tiny jail, all in good dressed stone; two Indian shops
-in corrugated iron; and seven or eight long rows of beehive grass huts
-for a hundred and fifty soldiers and police. Two young white
-officers--a civilian and a soldier--preside from this centre of
-authority, far from the telegraph, over the peace and order of an area
-as large as an English county, and regulate the conduct and fortunes
-of some seventy-five thousand natives, who have never previously known
-or acknowledged any law but violence or terror. They were uncommonly
-surprised to see four horsemen come riding up the zigzag path to their
-dwelling; but their astonishment was no bar to their hospitality, and
-we were soon rewarded for our journey and our fasting in most
-excellent fashion.
-
-I had just time before the darkness flooded the land and blotted out
-the mighty mountain and its wreaths of fire-tipped cloud to walk round
-this station. The jail consisted of a single room, barred and bolted.
-Inside not a prisoner was to be seen. I inquired where they were, and
-was shown two little groups seated round fires in the open. They were
-chained together by a light running chain, and after a hard day's
-miscellaneous work about the station they chatted peacefully as they
-cooked and ate their evening meal. The prison was only their shelter
-for the night--primitive arrangements, no doubt, but are they more
-barbarous than the hideous, long-drawn precision of an English convict
-establishment?
-
-The African protectorates now administered by the Colonial Office
-afford rare scope for the abilities of earnest and intelligent youth.
-A man of twenty-five may easily find himself ruling a large tract of
-country and a numerous population. The Government is too newly
-established to have developed the highly centralized and closely
-knit--perhaps too closely knit--hierarchy and control of the Indian
-system. It is far too poor to afford a complete Administration. The
-District Commissioner must judge for himself, and be judged upon his
-actions. Very often--for tropical diseases make many gaps in the
-ranks, and men must often return to England to recruit their
-health--the officer is not a District Commissioner at all, but a
-junior acting in his stead or in some one's stead, sometimes for a
-year or more. To him there come day by day the natives of the
-district with all their troubles, disputes, and intrigues. Their
-growing appreciation of the impartial justice of the tribunal leads
-them increasingly to carry all sorts of cases to the District
-Commissioner's Court. When they are ill they come and ask for
-medicine. When they are wounded in their quarrels it is to the white
-man they go to have the injuries dressed. Disease and accident have to
-be combated without professional skill. Courts of justice and forms of
-legality must be maintained without lawyers. Taxes have to be
-collected by personal influence. Peace has to be kept with only a
-shadow of force.
-
-All these great opportunities of high service, and many others, are
-often and daily placed within the reach of men in their twenties--on
-the whole with admirable results. It was most pleasant to hear with
-what comprehension and sympathy the officers of the East Africa
-Protectorate speak about their work; and how they regard themselves as
-the guardians of native interests and native rights against those who
-only care about exploiting the country and its people. No one can
-travel even for a little while among the Kikuyu tribes without
-acquiring a liking for these light-hearted, tractable, if brutish
-children, or without feeling that they are capable of being instructed
-and raised from their present degradation. There are more than four
-million aboriginals in East Africa alone. Their care imposes a grave,
-and I think an inalienable, responsibility upon the British
-Government. It will be an ill day for these native races when their
-fortunes are removed from the impartial and august administration of
-the Crown and abandoned to the fierce self-interest of a small white
-population. Such an event is no doubt very remote. Yet the speculator,
-the planter, and the settler are knocking at the door. There are many
-things which ought to be done--good, wise, scientific, and justly
-profitable. If the Government cannot find the money to develop the
-natural economic strength of the country, to make its communications,
-to start its industries, can it with any reason bar the field to
-private enterprise? Can it prevent the ingress of a white population?
-Ought it to do so, and for how long? What is to happen when there are
-thirty thousand white people in East Africa, instead of the three
-thousand or so who make so much stir at the present time? Perhaps the
-course of these chapters will lead us back again to these questions.
-I am very doubtful whether it will supply their answers.
-
-We have a discussion in the evening on a much more manageable subject.
-The District Commissioner at Embo has been ordered by the High Court
-of the Protectorate to retry a criminal case which he had settled some
-months before, on account of an informality in the report of the
-proceedings, which had excited the attention of the revising
-authority. It is pointed out that neither the accused nor his
-fellow-natives understand, or can ever be made to understand, the
-meaning of this repetition of a trial; that they are bewildered; that
-their confidence in their personal ruler may be weakened; that endless
-practical difficulties--for instance, the collection of witnesses
-scattered about in distant villages, and the disquietude caused to
-them by a second summons from the strange, mysterious power called
-"Government"--arise out of an error which only a lawyer could detect,
-and which only appears upon a piece of paper. "Some one," quaintly
-says a young civil officer, who has ridden over with us, "forgot to
-say 'Bo!' in the right place." I ask the nature of the "Bo!" It is
-certainly substantial. No mention was made in the report of the trial
-that the accused was given the opportunity of cross-examining the
-hostile witnesses. Therefore, although this was in fact done, the
-trial is held to be no trial, and ordered anew.
-
-Now, here is again a balancing of disadvantages; but without here
-examining whether a simple release would not have been better than a
-retrial, I find myself plainly on the side of the "Bo!" There is
-scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the
-exact--I will even say the pedantic--observance of the regular forms
-by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.
-Those forms are designed to protect the prisoner, not merely from the
-consequences of honest forgetfulness in his judges, but from
-systematic carelessness and possible oppression. Once they are allowed
-to be loosely construed the whole system of civilized jurisprudence
-begins to crumble, and in its place there is gradually erected a
-rough-and-ready practice dependent entirely for its efficiency and
-fairness upon the character and intelligence of the individual
-responsible. Necessary as it is to trust to personal authority in the
-control of native races of the lowest standard, it is not less
-necessary to assign well-marked limits to that authority, and, above
-all, to place the simple primary rights of accused persons to what we
-at home are accustomed to call a "fair trial" outside its scope. Nor
-does the administrator really suffer in native eyes from the
-apparition into his domain of superior authority. The tribesmen see
-that their ruler--to them all-powerful, the man of soldiers and
-police, of punishment and reward--is himself obedient to some remote
-external force, and they wonder what that mysterious force can be and
-marvel dimly at its greatness. Authority is enhanced and not impaired
-by the suggestion of immense reserves behind and above the immediate
-ruler--strong though he be. But upon this, as upon other matters, it
-is not necessary for every one to be of the same opinion; and even
-lawyers are not always wise.
-
-On our homeward ride in the early morning we passed a Swahili village.
-These Mohammedans have penetrated deeply and established themselves
-widely in the Eastern parts of Africa. Armed with a superior religion
-and strengthened with Arab blood, they maintain themselves without
-difficulty at a far higher level than the pagan aboriginals among
-whom they live. Their language has become a sort of _lingua franca_
-over all this part of the world. As traders they are welcomed, as
-fighting men they are respected, and as sorcerers they are feared by
-all the tribes. Their Khan had supplied us with bananas on the
-previous day with many expressions of apology that, as we were
-unexpected, he had no "European food." To-day all this was repaired.
-The men of the village, to the number of perhaps fifty, walked
-sedately out to meet us, their long white smocks in striking contrast
-to the naked, painted barbarians who surrounded them. The Khan led up
-a white Arab stallion, of vicious temper and tripling gait, to replace
-my wearied pony; and then produced tea and a familiar tin of mixed
-biscuits, which he had over-night sent runners to procure, that his
-hospitality might incur no reproach.
-
-While we were eating and parleying with the Khan there arrived on the
-scene a mounted Kikuyu chief, with chair, umbrella, khaki helmet, and
-other insignia, and attended by about a hundred warriors in full
-feather. In order to show their respect they began at once their
-war-dance, and we left them a quarter of an hour later still circling
-and hopping to and fro with quivering spears and nodding plumes to
-their monotonous chorus, while the white-robed Swahilis stood gravely
-by and bade us farewell in the dignified manners of the East. I
-reflected upon the interval that separates these two races from each
-other, and on the centuries of struggle that the advance had cost, and
-I wondered whether that interval was wider and deeper than that which
-divides the modern European from them both; but without arriving at
-any sure conclusion.
-
-Our journey to Embo had been so delightful that I was not inclined to
-hanker after rejected alternatives. But when we drove in to the Thika
-camp as the sun was setting, tired out by fifty miles of road, the
-first spectacle which saluted my eyes was a lion's skin spread out
-upon the ground and Colonel Wilson engaged in sprinkling it with
-arsenical powder. Then we were told the tale, which in brief was that
-they were driving a long reed-bed, when the lion sprang out and ran
-obliquely across the line of beaters. Wilson fired and the lion
-bounded back into the reeds, whence stones, fires, shoutings, shots,
-and all other disturbances failed to move him. Whereupon, after two
-hours, being impatient and venturesome, they had marched in upon him
-shoulder to shoulder, to find him, fortunately, quite dead.
-
-My friends endeavoured to console me by the news that lions had now
-been heard of in two other places, and that we should be sure to find
-one in the morning; and next day, after we had driven three miles of
-reeds, it seemed that their hopes were well founded, for a large
-animal of some kind could be seen moving swiftly to and fro under
-cover, and every one declared this must be the lion. At last only one
-more patch of reeds remained to beat, and we took up our positions,
-finger on trigger, about sixty yards from the farther edge of it,
-while the beaters, raising an astonishing tumult with yells and the
-beating of tin cans, plunged boldly in. _Parturiunt montes_--out
-rushed two enormous wart-hogs. Let no one reproach the courage of the
-pig. These great fierce boars, driven from their last shelter, charged
-out in gallant style--tusks gleaming, tails perpendicular--and met a
-fate prepared for a king. With these and another which we galloped
-down and pistolled on the way home I had to be content, and can now,
-so far as I am concerned, sadly write, in the expressive words of
-Reuter, "No lions were 'bagged.'"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA
-
-
-"Colour" is already the dominant question at Nairobi. "We mean to make
-East Africa a white man's country," cries, in strident tones, the
-Colonists' Association on every occasion. Truly a respectable and
-impressive policy; but one which seems, at first sight, rather
-difficult to achieve in a land where there are, so far, fewer than two
-thousand five hundred whites and more than four million black
-aboriginals. Can East Africa ever become a white man's country? Can
-even the Highlands, with their cool and buoyant breezes and temperate,
-unchanging climate, become a white man's country? Never, certainly, in
-the sense that Canada, or, indeed, the United Kingdom, are white men's
-countries--that is to say, countries inhabited wholly by white people
-and subsisting upon an economic basis of white unskilled labour.
-
-It is scarcely worth while even to imagine the Highlands of East
-Africa denuded of their native inhabitants and occupied solely by
-Europeans. Such an idea is utterly impossible. Whatever may be the
-increase in the white population in the future, it is safe to say that
-it will be far more than counter-balanced by the multiplication of the
-natives, as they are guarded against famine and prevented from civil
-war. But were such a solution possible, it would be almost the last
-thing in the world desired by those who clamour for "a white man's
-country." For observe it is not against the black aboriginal that the
-prejudices and interests of the white settler or trader are arrayed.
-The African, it is conceded, is welcome to stay in his own country. No
-economic competition has yet arisen or is likely to arise between him
-and the new-comers. Their spheres of activity lie wholly apart, for
-the white man absolutely refuses to do black man's work; not for that
-harsh toil does he exile himself from the land of his birth; while the
-native could not, in his present state of development, displace the
-white man in skilled employments and the superintendence and the
-organization of industry--even if he would--and nothing is farther
-from his ambitions.
-
-It is the brown man who is the rival. The European has neither the
-wish nor the power to constitute a white proletariat in countries like
-East Africa. In his view the blacks should be the private soldiers of
-the army, but the non-commissioned officers and the commanders must be
-white. This should not be dismissed as a mere assertion of racial
-arrogance. It is an obstinate fact. It is already a grave defect for a
-community to found itself upon the manual labour of an inferior race,
-and many are the complications and perils that spring therefrom. But
-what of the second storey? If there is to be any kind of white society
-dwelling together year after year within the standards of life and
-comfort to which Europeans have universally been accustomed to aspire,
-and largely to attain, this middle stage in the economic system must
-provide that white society with the means of earning--as professional
-men, as planters, merchants, traders, farmers, bankers, overseers,
-contractors, builders, engineers, accountants, clerks--a living for
-themselves and their families. And here strikes in the Asiatic. In
-every single employment of this class, his power of subsisting upon a
-few shillings a month, his industry, his thrift, his sharp business
-aptitudes give him the economic superiority, and if economic
-superiority is to be the final rule--as it has never been and never
-will be in the history of the world--there is not a single employment
-of this middle class, from which he will not, to a very large extent,
-clear the white man, as surely and as remorselessly as the brown rat
-extirpated the black from British soil.
-
-Then what remains? What sort of social organizations shall we be
-building up with so much thought and labour in these new lands under
-the British Crown? There is already no white working class. There is
-to be no white middle class. Room is left only for the capitalist
-_pure and simple_--if one may so describe him. A vast army of African
-labourers, officered by educated Indians or Chinese, and directed by a
-few individuals of diverse nationalities employing cosmopolitan
-capital--that is the nightmare which haunts the white population of
-South Africa, and at which what there is of a white population in East
-Africa is already shrieking vigorously.
-
-Yet hear the other side. How stands the claim of the British Indian?
-His rights as a human being, his rights as a British subject, are
-equally engaged. It was the Sikh soldier who bore an honourable part
-in the conquest and pacification of these East African countries. It
-is the Indian trader who, penetrating and maintaining himself in all
-sorts of places to which no white man would go or in which no white
-man could earn a living, has more than any one else developed the early
-beginnings of trade and opened up the first slender means of
-communication. It was by Indian labour that the one vital railway on
-which everything else depends was constructed. It is the Indian banker
-who supplies perhaps the larger part of the capital yet available for
-business and enterprise, and to whom the white settlers have not
-hesitated to recur for financial aid. The Indian was here long before
-the first British official. He may point to as many generations of
-useful industry on the coast and inland as the white settlers--especially
-the most recently-arrived contingents from South Africa (the loudest
-against him of all)--can count years of residence. Is it possible for
-any Government with a scrap of respect for honest dealing between man
-and man, to embark upon a policy of deliberately squeezing out the
-native of India from regions in which he has established himself under
-every security of public faith? Most of all must we ask, is such a
-policy possible to the Government which bears sway over three hundred
-millions of our Indian Empire?
-
-We are in presence of one of those apparently hopeless antagonisms of
-interests which baffle and dispirit all who are concerned in their
-adjustment. And these questions are not confined to East Africa or to
-South Africa. A whole series of new problems has arisen, and will grow
-graver and larger as the immediate history of the British Empire
-unfolds. They erect themselves upon a field almost wholly unstudied,
-and familiar only by the prejudices which in every direction obstruct
-movement and view. The entry of the Asiatic as labourer, trader, and
-capitalist into competition in industry and enterprise not only
-_with_, but _in_, the Western world is a new fact of first importance.
-Cheap, swift, easy means of communication, the establishment of peace
-and order over land and sea, the ever-growing inter-dependence of all
-men and all countries upon one another, have given wings to Asiatic
-commercial ambition and rendered Asiatic manual labour fluid, as it
-has never before been fluid since the beginning of things.
-
-Unless these new elements in the economic life of mankind can be
-scientifically and harmoniously controlled and assimilated, great and
-novel dangers menace alike the Asiatic and the European he supplants.
-On the one hand we see the possible exploitation under various
-unhealthy conditions of immense masses of Asiatic labour, to the moral
-injury of the employer and to the degradation and suffering of the
-employed; on the other the overturn of the standards of living
-laboriously achieved or long obstinately battled for among Europeans.
-Superadded to these we must foresee the confusion of blood, of
-manners, of morals, amounting, where operative upon any extensive
-scale, almost to the disintegration of the existing order of society.
-And behind--very close behind--lie the appeals to force, by mobs or
-Empires, to decide in a brutal fashion the brutal question which of
-two sets of irreconcilable interests shall prevail. It is not easy to
-measure the degree of political instability that will be introduced
-into international relations, when the subjects of a powerful
-military and naval State are continually exposed to penal legislation
-and open violence, and into private life when the white artisan is
-invited to acquiesce in his own extinction, in virtue of laws which he
-himself controls, by a competitor whom, he believes, he could strike
-down with his hands.
-
-Yet the Asiatic, and here I also include the African native, has
-immense services to render and energies to contribute to the happiness
-and material progress of the world. There are spacious lands whose
-promise can never be realized, there are unnumbered harvests which can
-never be garnered, without his active co-operation. There are roads
-and railways and reservoirs which only he can make. There are mines
-and forests which will slumber for ever without his aid. The mighty
-continent of tropical Africa lies open to the colonizing and
-organizing capacities of the East. All those new products which modern
-industry insistently demands are offered in measureless abundance to
-the West--if only we could solve the Sphinx's riddle in its newest
-form.
-
-And is it after all beyond our reach to provide, if not a perfect, at
-any rate a practical answer? There ought to be no insuperable
-difficulty, in the present state of political knowledge and social
-organization, in assigning different spheres to the external activity
-of different races. The Great Powers have partitioned Africa
-territorially; is it beyond the wit of man to divide it economically?
-The co-operation of many different kinds of men is needed for the
-cultivation of such a noble estate. Is it impossible to regulate in
-full and intricate detail the conditions under which that co-operation
-shall take place? Here white men can live and thrive; there they
-cannot. Here is a task for one, there the opportunity of another. The
-world is big enough. [I write as the stream of the Nile bears me
-between the immense spaces of beautiful, fertile, unpopulated country
-that lie north of the Albert Lake.] There is plenty of room for all.
-Why cannot we settle it fairly?
-
-It must be noted that the question of Asiatic immigration presents
-itself to the Imperial point of view in several quite distinct forms.
-There are, first of all, colonies which stand on the basis of a white
-proletariat, and whose inhabitants, rich and poor, employers and
-employed, are all Europeans. The right of such colonies to forbid the
-entry of large numbers of Asiatics, and to preserve themselves from
-the racial chaos and economic disturbance inseparable from such
-immigration, cannot be denied, although its exercise ought no doubt to
-be governed by various prudential and other considerations. But these
-colonies differ markedly from those where the mass of the population
-is not white, but black. Again, there are colonies which possess
-responsible government, and where the number of the white middle-class
-inhabitants very largely exceeds the Asiatic community. It is evident
-that these stand in a wholly different position from that of places
-like the tropical Protectorates of East and West Africa.
-
-Indeed, it may be contended that the very fact that the native of
-British India will undoubtedly, wisely or unwisely, rightly or
-wrongly, be refused access in any large numbers to several South
-African and all Australian Colonies by their respective Governments,
-makes it all the more desirable that the Imperial Government should
-afford in the tropical Protectorates outlet and scope to the
-enterprise and colonizing capacity of Hindustan. And, as I have
-written, these countries are big enough for all. There is no reason
-why those Highland areas which promise the white man a home and a
-career, and where alone he can live in comfort, should not, as a
-matter of practical administration, be in the main reserved for him.
-Nor, on the other hand, why the Asiatic, if only he does not teach the
-African natives evil ways--a contingency which must not be
-forgotten--should not be encouraged to trade and settle as he will in
-the enormous regions of tropical fertility to which he is naturally
-adapted. Somewhere in this direction--I do not wish to dogmatize--the
-immediate course of sound policy would seem to lie, and, guided by the
-lights of science and tolerance, we may easily find it.
-
-But the course of these reflections has carried me a good deal farther
-than the politics of Nairobi would seem to justify; and I hasten to
-return to the question with which I started: "Can the Highlands of
-East Africa be made 'a white man's country'?" Let us examine this by a
-fresh process. As one rides or marches through the valleys and across
-the wide plateaux of these uplands, braced by their delicious air,
-listening to the music of their streams, and feasting the eye upon
-their natural wealth and beauty, a sense of bewilderment overcomes the
-mind. How is it they have never become the home of some superior race,
-prosperous, healthy, and free? Why is it that, now a railway has
-opened the door and so much has been published about them, there has
-not been one furious river of immigration from the cramped and
-insanitary jungle-slums of Europe? Why, most of all, are those who
-have come--the pioneers, the men of energy and adventure, of large
-ambitions and strong hands--why are they in so many cases only just
-keeping their heads above water? Why should complaint and discontent
-and positive discouragement be so general among this limited class?
-
-I have always experienced a feeling of devout thankfulness never to
-have possessed a square yard of that perverse commodity called "land."
-But I will confess that, travelling in the East African Highlands for
-the first time in my life, I have learned what the sensation of
-land-hunger is like. We may repress, but we cannot escape, the desire
-to peg out one of these fair and wide estates, with all the rewards
-they offer to industry and inventiveness in the open air. Yet all
-around are men possessing thousands of fertile acres, with mountains
-and rivers and shady trees, acquired for little or nothing, all
-struggling, all fretful, nervous, high-strung, many disappointed, some
-despairing, some smashed.
-
-What are the true lineaments concealed behind the veil of boundless
-promise in which this land is shrouded? Are they not stamped with
-mockery? Is not the eye that regards you fierce as well as bright?
-"When I first saw this country," said a colonist to me, "I fell in
-love with it. I had seen all the best of Australia. I had prospered in
-New Zealand. I knew South Africa. I thought at last I had struck
-'God's own country.' I wrote letters to all my friends urging them to
-come. I wrote a series of articles in the newspapers praising the
-splendours of its scenery and the excellence of its climate. Before
-the last of the articles appeared my capital was nearly expended, my
-fences had been trampled down by troops of zebra, my imported stock
-had perished, my title-deeds were still blocked in the Land Office,
-and I myself had nearly died of a malignant fever. Since then I have
-left others to extol the glories of East Africa."
-
-These second thoughts err, no doubt, as much on the side of
-extravagant depression as the first impression was over-sanguine. But
-that there is a rude reverse to the East African medal is a fact which
-cannot be disputed, and which ought not, in the interests either of
-the immigrant or of the country to be concealed. It is still quite
-unproved that a European can make even the Highlands of East Africa
-his permanent home--that is to say, that he can live there without
-sensible degeneration for fifteen or twenty years at a stretch without
-ever returning to the temperate zones; still less that he can breed
-and rear families through several generations. The exhilaration of the
-air must not lead people to forget that an altitude of from five to
-eight thousand feet above the sea-level is an unusual condition,
-producing results, not yet ascertained, upon the nervous system, the
-brain, and the heart. Its coolness can never remove the fact that we
-are upon the Equator. Although the skies look so familiar and kindly
-with their white fleecy clouds and passing showers, the direct ray of
-the sun--almost vertical at all seasons of the year--strikes down on
-man and beast alike, and woe to the white man whom he finds
-uncovered! Although sheep and oxen multiply so rapidly, although
-crossing them with imported stock produces in each generation
-astonishing improvements in quality, they are subject to many perils
-little understood and often fatal. And if the landscape recalls to the
-pensive traveller the peaceful beauties of gentler climes at home, let
-him remember that it nurses with blithe fecundity poisonous reptiles,
-and pest-spreading insects, and terrible beasts of prey.
-
-There is no reason, however, for doubting that modern science
-possesses, or will discover, the means of eradicating or mitigating
-many of these evils. As the development of the country and the
-scientific investigation of tropical agriculture and tropical disease
-proceed, the difficulties which beset the early settler will gradually
-be removed. He will learn how to clothe and house himself; what to
-plant, what to breed, and what to avoid. The spread of East Coast
-fever, now carried by the ticks from one animal to another, and
-carried by the infected animals from one district to another, will be
-arrested, and controlled by a proper system of wire-fencing and
-quarantine. Remedies will be discovered against the various diseases
-which attack sheep or horses. Zebra, rhinoceros, buffalo, and other
-picturesque and fascinating nuisances will be driven from or
-exterminated within the settled areas, and confined to the ample
-reserves of uninhabited land. The slow but steady growth of a white
-population will create a market for local agricultural produce. The
-powerfully equipped Scientific Departments, the Veterinary and
-Forestry Departments, and the Department of Agriculture newly
-established on a considerable scale, will be able to guide and assist
-the enterprise of the new-comer, and save him from repeating the
-ill-starred experiments of the pioneer. Roads will improve, and
-railways and mono-rail tramways will extend. Step by step life and the
-means of living will become easier and more secure. Still it will not
-be proved that the pure-bred European can rear his children under the
-Equatorial sun and at an elevation of more than six thousand feet; and
-till that is proved "the white man's country" will remain a white
-man's dream.
-
-I have written of Europeans and Asiatics. What of the African? About
-four millions of these dark folk are comprised within the districts
-of the East Africa Protectorate which are actually or partially
-administered. Many more lie beyond those wide and advancing
-boundaries. What is to be their part in shaping the future of their
-country? It is, after all, _their_ Africa. What are they going to do
-for it, and what is it going to do for them? "The natives," says the
-planter, "evince a great reluctance to work, especially to work
-regularly." "They must be made to work," say others. "Made to work for
-whom?" we innocently ask. "For us, of course," is the ready answer;
-"what did you think we meant?" And here we run into another herd of
-rhinoceros questions--awkward, thick-skinned, and horned, with a short
-sight, an evil temper, and a tendency to rush blindly up wind upon any
-alarm. Is the native idle? Does he not keep himself and pay his taxes?
-Or does he loll at his ease while his three or four wives till the
-soil, bear the burden, and earn his living? And if idle, has he a
-right to remain idle--a naked and unconscious philosopher, living "the
-simple life," without cares or wants,--a gentleman of leisure in a
-panting world? Is that to be the last word? Is civilization to say
-definitely that when the African native has kept himself, or made his
-women keep him, she has no further claim upon him? The white man shall
-do the rest. He shall preserve the peace, that the tribes may prosper
-and multiply. His watchful and foreseeing eye, strained and weary with
-the effort, shall still make provision against famine; his science,
-though he himself goes down in the struggle, shall grapple with
-pestilence and cure disease. Far from his home or from his family he
-shall hew the trees and dig the wells, shall dam the streams and build
-the roads, with anxious heart and "in the sweat of his brow,"
-according to the curse laid upon the child of many wants, while the
-child of few wants watches him from the shade and thinks him mad.
-
-And to compare the life and lot of the African aboriginal--secure in
-his abyss of contented degradation, rich in that he lacks everything
-and wants nothing--with the long nightmare of worry and privation, of
-dirt and gloom and squalour, lit only by gleams of torturing knowledge
-and tantalizing hope, which constitutes the lives of so many poor
-people in England and Scotland, is to feel the ground tremble under
-foot. "It would never do to have a lot of 'mean whites' in this
-country," I heard one day a gentleman say. "It would destroy the
-respect of the native for the white man, if he saw what miserable
-people we have got at home." So here, at any rate, the boot is on the
-other leg, and Civilization is ashamed of her arrangements in the
-presence of a savage, embarrassed lest he should see what lies behind
-the gold and purple robe of State, and begin to suspect that the
-all-powerful white man is a fraud. But this is an irrelevancy!
-
-I am clearly of opinion that no man has a right to be idle, whoever he
-be or wherever he lives. He is bound to go forward and take an honest
-share in the general work of the world. And I do not except the
-African native. To a very much larger extent than is often recognized
-by some who discuss these questions, the natives are industrious,
-willing to learn, and capable of being led forward. Live for a few
-weeks, as I have done, in close association with the disciplined
-soldiers of the King's African Rifles, or with the smart sailors of
-the Uganda Marine, and it seems wonderful to contrast them with the
-population from which they have emerged. How strong, how good-natured,
-how clever they are! How proud their white officers are of them! What
-pains they take to please the travellers whom they escort; how frankly
-they are delighted by a word of praise or thanks! Just and honourable
-discipline, careful education, sympathetic comprehension, are all that
-is needed to bring a very large proportion of the native tribes of
-East Africa to a far higher social level than that at which they now
-stand. And why should men only be taught to be soldiers? Is war always
-to have the best of everything? Cannot peaceful industry be made as
-attractive, be as highly organized, as carefully studied as the
-combined use of deadly weapons? "Why," as Ruskin asks, "cannot men
-take pride in _building_ villages instead of only _carrying_ them?"
-
-I wonder why my pen slips off into these labyrinths, when all I set
-out to do was to give some general idea of politics at Nairobi? But in
-truth the problems of East Africa are the problems of the world. We
-see the social, racial, and economic stresses which rack modern
-society already at work here, but in miniature; and if we choose to
-study the model when the whole engine is at hand, it is because on the
-smaller scale we can see more clearly, and because in East Africa and
-Uganda the future is still uncompromised. The British Government has
-it in its hands to shape the development and destiny of these new
-countries and their varied peoples with an authority and from an
-elevation far superior to that with which Cabinets can cope with the
-giant tangles at home. And the fact stirs the mind. But by this time
-the reader will have had as much of East African politics as I had
-when, after three days of deputations and disputations, the train
-steamed out of Nairobi to take us to the Great Lake and beyond.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE GREAT LAKE
-
-
-We are off again on the Uganda Railway. Interesting and beautiful as
-is the country through which the line passes from Mombasa to Nairobi,
-it is surpassed by the magnificent scenery of the journey to the Lake.
-First in order and in rank is the Great Rift. This curious fault in
-the earth's surface, which geologists trace across the four thousand
-miles of land and sea which separate us from Palestine, and onward
-still to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, is traversed by the
-Uganda Railway at one of its most remarkable stages. For sixty miles
-the Highland plateau has been rising steadily by a succession of
-wooded undulations to a level of over six thousand feet. Now it falls
-abruptly, almost precipitously, more than two thousand feet. This
-frowning wall of rock and forest, which extends straight as a ruler
-farther than eye can see, is the Kikuyu Escarpment. As the train
-claws its way downwards by slant and zigzag along its face, a majestic
-panorama breaks upon the view. Far below, bathed in sunshine,
-stretching away to misty purple horizons, lie the broad expanses of
-the Rift Valley. Its level surface is broken by strangely moulded
-volcanic hills and shattered craters. The opposite mountain wall looms
-up in the far distance, brown and blue. We gaze down upon the plain as
-from a balloon, mistaking forests for patches of green grass, and
-mighty trees for thorn-scrub.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RIFT VALLEY FROM THE KIKUYU ESCARPMENT.]
-
-Another hour or so and Lake Naivasha comes into view. This sheet of
-water is about ten miles square, and the rim of a submerged crater
-makes an odd, crescent-shaped island in its midst. Its brackish waters
-repel the inhabitants, but afford shelter to numberless wild-fowl and
-many hippopotami. At Naivasha there is the Government stock farm. One
-may see in their various flocks the native sheep, the half-bred
-English, the three-quarter-bred, etc. The improvement is amazing. The
-native sheep is a hairy animal, looking to the unpractised eye more
-like a goat than a sheep. Crossed with Sussex or Australian blood,
-his descendant is transformed into a woolled beast of familiar
-aspect. At the next cross the progeny is almost indistinguishable from
-the pure-bred English in appearance, but better adapted to the African
-sun and climate. It is the same with cattle. In the first generation
-the hump of the African ox vanishes. In the second he emerges a
-respectable British Shorthorn. The object of this farm is twofold:
-first, to find the type best adapted to local conditions; secondly, to
-supply the settlers and the natives with a steadily broadening
-fountain of good blood by which their flocks and herds may be trebled
-and quadrupled in value. The enthusiasm and zeal of those in charge of
-this work were refreshing. At present, however, their operations are
-restricted by insufficient funds and by the precautions which must be
-taken against East Coast fever. The first of these impediments may be
-removed; the second is less tractable.
-
-East Coast fever came across the German border a year and a half ago,
-and since then, in spite of such preventive measures as our scanty
-means allow, it has been gradually and slowly spreading through the
-Protectorate. A diseased cow may take thirty days to die. In the
-meantime wherever it goes the swarming ticks are infected. They hold
-their poison for a year. If, during that time, other cattle pass over
-the ground the ticks fasten upon them and inoculate them with the
-sickness. And each new victim wanders off to spread the curse to new
-ticks, who cast it back to new cattle, and so on till the end of the
-story. At each point fresh areas of ground become distempered, and
-fresh cows begin to drop off one by one, leaving their evil
-inheritance to the ravening insects.
-
-  [Illustration: GOVERNMENT FARM AT NAIVASHA.]
-
-So here we see the two principles of Nature at work
-simultaneously--the blood-stock rams and bulls spreading their
-healthy, fruitful life in ever-widening circles through the land; the
-infected cattle carrying their message of death in all directions.
-Every point that either attains, becomes at once a new centre of
-vitality or dissolution. Both processes march deliberately forward to
-limitless multiplications. The native is helpless in the face of
-advancing ruin. Left to itself the evil would assuredly devour the
-good, till the cattle were exterminated and the sickness starved to
-death for lack of prey. But at this moment the white biped with
-faculties of ratiocination intervenes from the tin-roofed Department
-of Agriculture; discovers, for instance, that ground may be purified
-by putting upon it sheep, into whom the ticks discharge their poison
-harmlessly and are thereafter purged; erects hundreds of miles of wire
-fencing to cut the country up into compartments, as a warship is
-divided by bulkheads; encloses infected areas; destroys suspected
-animals; searches methodically and ever more hopefully for
-prophylactics and remedies; with one hand arrests the curse, with the
-other speeds the blessing, and in so doing is surely discharging
-rather an important function from a good many points of view.
-
-My friends and I took four days in travelling to the Victoria Nyanza,
-although the distance can be covered in twenty-four hours; for we
-turned aside every day for sport or business, while our train waited
-obligingly in a siding. Of the latter, indeed, there was no lack, for
-the Governor and the heads of several departments were in the train,
-and we laboured faithfully together at many prickly things. Then at
-the stations came farmers, surveyors, and others, with words of
-welcome or complaint, and a deputation of Boer settlers with many
-expressions of loyalty to the Crown, and the chiefs of the Lumbwa and
-Nandi tribes, with a crowd of warriors, and their Laibon with his four
-wives, all in a row, till I was as tired of making "brief and
-appropriate" speeches as my companions must have been of hearing them.
-
-  [Illustration: THE LAIBON'S WIVES.]
-
-  [Illustration: RAILHEAD AT KISUMU.]
-
-But Elmenteita was all holiday. Lord Delamere met us at the station
-with Cape carts, ponies, and hog-spears, and we drove off in search of
-pig over an enormous plain thickly peopled with antelope and gazelle.
-I cannot pretend to the experience of both countries necessary to
-compare the merits of pig-sticking in India and in East Africa in
-respect of the fighting qualities of the animal, nor the ground over
-which he is pursued. But I should think the most accomplished member
-of the Meerut Tent Club would admit that the courage and ferocity of
-the African wart-hog, and the extreme roughness of the country, heaped
-as it is with boulders and pitted with deep ant-bear holes concealed
-by high grass, make pig-sticking in East Africa a sport which would
-well deserve his serious and appreciative attention. At present it is
-in its infancy, and very few even of the officers of the King's
-African Rifles can boast the proficiency of the Indian expert.
-But everything in East Africa is at its first page; and besides,
-the wart-hog is, at present at any rate, regarded as dangerous
-vermin who does incredible damage to native plantations, and whose
-destruction--by any method, even the most difficult--is useful as well
-as exciting.
-
-Our first pig was a fine fellow, who galloped off with his tail
-straight up in the air and his tusks gleaming mischievously, and
-afforded a run of nearly three miles before he was killed. The risk of
-the sport consists in this--that the pig cannot be overtaken and
-effectively speared except by a horse absolutely at full gallop. The
-ground is so trappy that one hardly cares to take one's eyes off it
-for a moment. Yet during at least a hundred yards at a time the whole
-attention of the rider must be riveted on the pig, within a few yards
-of whom he is riding, and who may be expected to charge at any second.
-A fall at such a climax is necessarily very dangerous, as the wart-hog
-would certainly attack the unhorsed cavalier; yet no one can avoid the
-chance. I do not know whether Anglo-India will shudder, but I should
-certainly recommend the intending hunter in East Africa to strap a
-revolver on his thigh in case of accidents. "You do not want it
-often," as the American observed; "but when you do, you want it
-badly."
-
-We passed a jolly morning riding after these brutes and shooting a few
-_Gazella Granti_ and _Gazella Thomsoni_, or "Grants" and "Tommies" as
-they are familiarly called, and in looking for eland in the intervals.
-At the end of Lake Elmenteita, a beautiful sheet of water, unhappily
-brackish, a feast had been prepared, to which a number of gentlemen
-from Lord Delamere's estates and the surrounding farms had been
-bidden. A long array of flocks and herds was marshalled on both sides
-of the track in due order, native-bred, half-bred, three-quarter-bred,
-pure. Through these insignia of patriarchal wealth, which would have
-excited the keenest interest in any traveller less hungry and more
-instructed in such matters than I, we made our way to an excellent
-luncheon, which, be sure, was not unaccompanied by the usual
-discussion on East African politics.
-
-It was late in the afternoon when we started back to the train, which
-lay eight miles off in a siding. On the way we fell in with a most
-fierce and monstrous pig, who led us a nice dance through bush and
-grass and boulder. As he emerged into a patch of comparatively smooth,
-open ground I made up my mind to spear him, urged my pony to her top
-speed, and was just considering how best to do the deed when, without
-the slightest provocation, or, at any rate, before he had been even
-pricked, the pig turned sharp round and sprang at me, as if he were a
-leopard. Luckily, my spear got in the way, and with a solid jar, which
-made my arm stiff for a week, drove deep into his head and neck before
-it broke, so that he was glad to sheer off with eighteen inches of it
-sticking in him, and after a dash at my companion he took refuge in a
-deep hole, from which no inducements or insults could draw him.
-
-Later we rode and killed another pig and chased a fourth
-unsuccessfully, and it was nearly dark before the railway was reached.
-As I was getting into my carriage they calmly told me that _six lions_
-had walked across the line a quarter of a mile away and a quarter of
-an hour before. A settler who had been to lunch at Elmenteita was
-loading a hastily-borrowed revolver before starting on his homeward
-ride to Nakuru, and as I gave him some cartridges, I reflected that,
-whatever may be the shortcomings of East Africa, the absence of an
-interesting and varied fauna is certainly not among them.
-
-Next day our train is climbing through dense and beautiful forests to
-the summit of the Mau Escarpment. Admiration of the wealth and
-splendour of the leafy kingdom is mingled with something very like awe
-at its aggressive fertility. The great trees overhang the line. The
-creepers trail down the cuttings, robing the red soil with cloaks of
-flowers and foliage. The embankments are already covered. Every
-clearing is densely overgrown with sinuous plants. But for the
-ceaseless care with which the whole line is scraped and weeded it
-would soon become impassable. As it is, the long fingers of the
-encroaching forest are everywhere stretching out enviously towards the
-bright metals. Neglect the Uganda Railway for a year, and it would
-take an expedition to discover where it had run.
-
-At Nyoro station nearly nine hundred natives were at work cutting
-timber for the railway, which is entirely dependent on wood fuel. The
-contractor in charge, a young English gentleman, who was described to
-me as being a model employer of native labour in Government contracts,
-had taken the trouble to cut a path through the forest across a loop
-of the line in order that I might see what it was like inside. Through
-this leafy tunnel, about a mile and a half long, we all accordingly
-dived. There was nothing sinister in the aspect of this forest, for
-all its density and confusion. The great giants towered up
-magnificently to a hundred and fifty feet. Then came the ordinary
-forest trees, much more thickly clustered. Below this again was a
-layer of scrub and bushes; and under, around, and among the whole
-flowed a vast sea of convolvulus-looking creeper. Through all this
-four-fold veil the sunlight struggled down every twenty yards or so in
-gleaming chequers of green and gold.
-
-On the way the method of fuel-cutting is explained. So far as the
-labourer is concerned, it is an elaborate system of piece-work, very
-accurately and fairly adjusted, and, as is so often the case where the
-white employer takes personal care of his men, there appeared to be no
-difficulty in finding any number of natives. But they are a plaguey
-company. Few will stay for more than a month or two, however
-satisfied they may be with their work and its rewards; and just as
-they begin to get skilful, off they go to their villages to cultivate
-their gardens and their families, promising to come back another year,
-or after the harvest, or at some other remote and indefinite date. And
-meanwhile the railway must have its fuel every day and day after day,
-with the remorseless monotony of the industrial machine.
-
-But what a way to cut fuel! A floating population of clumsy barbarians
-pecking at the trees with native choppers more like a toy hoe than an
-axe, and carrying their loads when completed a quarter of a mile on
-their heads to the wood-stack, while the forest laughs at the
-feebleness of man. I made a calculation. Each of the nine hundred
-natives employed costs on the whole six pounds a year. The price of a
-steam tree-felling plant, with a mile of mono-rail tram complete, is
-about five hundred pounds. The interest and sinking fund on this
-capital outlay represent the wages of four natives, to which must be
-added the salary of a competent white engineer, equal to the wage of
-forty natives, and the working expenses and depreciation roughly
-estimated at the wage of twenty natives more; in all the wage of
-sixty-five natives. Such a plant, able to cut trees six feet in
-diameter through in four or five minutes, to cut timber as well as
-fuel, to saw it into the proper lengths for every purpose with the
-utmost rapidity, and to transport it by whole truck-loads when sawn to
-the railway siding, would accomplish a week's work of the sixty-five
-natives it replaced in a single day, and effect a sevenfold
-multiplication of power. It is no good trying to lay hold of Tropical
-Africa with naked fingers. Civilization must be armed with machinery
-if she is to subdue these wild regions to her authority. Iron roads,
-not jogging porters; tireless engines, not weary men; cheap power, not
-cheap labour; steam and skill, not sweat and fumbling: there lies the
-only way to tame the jungle--more jungles than one.
-
-On this we talked--or at least I talked--while we scrambled across the
-stumps of fallen trees or waded in an emerald twilight from one
-sunbeam to another across the creeper flood. It is of vital importance
-that these forests should not be laid waste by reckless and
-improvident hands. It is not less important that the Uganda Railway
-should have cheap fuel. For a long time fuel alone was the object, but
-now that an elaborate Forestry Department has been established on the
-most scientific lines, there is a danger that forestry will be the
-only object, and the cost of fuel so raised by regulations, admirable
-in themselves, that the economy of the Uganda Railway may be impaired.
-And let us never forget that the Uganda Railway is the driving-wheel
-of the whole concern. What is needed here, as elsewhere, is a
-harmonious compromise between opposite and conflicting interests. That
-is all.
-
-Presently our guide began to tell us of the strange creatures who live
-in the forest, and are sometimes seen quite close by the
-fuel-cutters--very rare antelope, enormous buffaloes, and astonishing
-birds and butterflies beyond imagination. He had managed to make
-friends with the Wandorobo--a tribe of forest-dwelling natives who
-live plunged in these impenetrable shades, who are so shy that, if
-once a stranger does but set eye upon their village, forthwith they
-abandon it; yet who are at the same time so teased by curiosity that
-they cannot resist peeping, peeping ever nearer and nearer to the
-fuel-cutters, until one day commercial relations are established on
-the basis of sugar for skins. I was just becoming interested in these
-wood-squirrels when we broke into the hot blaze of the noonday sun
-beating down on the polished railway track, and had to climb up on to
-our cowcatcher in order to hurry on to a real steam saw-mill ten miles
-farther up the line.
-
-As the journey advances, the train mounts steadily higher and the
-aspect of the country changes. The forest, which has hitherto lapped
-the line closely on every side, now makes fair division with rolling
-hills of grass. And there is this extraordinary feature about it:
-where the forest areas end, they end abruptly. There is no ragged belt
-of trees less thickly grown; no transition. Smooth slopes of grass run
-up to the very edge of virgin forest, just as in England the meadow
-runs to the edge of the covert. The effect is to make the landscape
-surprisingly homelike. It is like travelling through a series of
-gigantic parks, where the hand of man has for hundreds of years
-decided exactly where trees shall grow and where they shall not.
-
-  [Illustration: KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU.]
-
-Towards the west great plains are visible, in misty apparition,
-through rifts in the plateau. At length we arrive at the summit of the
-escarpment, and stop for luncheon by an indicator, which registers
-eight thousand two hundred and ninety feet above the sea-level.
-Southward rises a hill perhaps five hundred feet above us, from the
-top of which the waters of the Great Lake can be seen, like the waters
-of a distant ocean.
-
-Geographically we have now reached the culminating point in this long
-journey. Henceforward, to find our way home, we have only to descend,
-guided by the force of gravity, first swiftly along the railroad to
-the Victoria Lake, then sedately with the stream of the Nile to the
-Mediterranean. The lofty table-lands of East Africa, with their crisp,
-chill air and English aspect, must now be left behind--not without
-many regrets--and the traveller will alight upon a middle world spread
-at a level of about four thousand feet, in which an entirely different
-order of conditions prevails. Downward then at thirty miles an hour,
-along the side of spacious valleys, around the shoulders of the hills,
-across thin-spun iron bridges, through whose girders one glances down
-at torrents flashing far below, onward to the Lake. Within an hour the
-temperature has sensibly altered. An overcoat is no longer necessary,
-even if you ride in front of the engine. In two hours the climate is
-warm and damp with the steamy heat of the Tropics. The freshness has
-gone out of the air, and in its place is that sense of sultry
-oppression which precedes the thunderstorms so common at this season
-of the year.
-
-In order to avoid a hot night on the Lake shore we stopped at Fort
-Ternan, a placeless name, some forty miles from Kisumu, and rather
-more than a thousand feet above it. And here the storm which had been
-brooding all the afternoon over the western face of the Mau Escarpment
-burst upon us. Even after ten months on the South African veldt I was
-astonished by its fury. For nearly two hours the thunder crashed and
-roared in tremendous peals--
-
-     "Like water flung from some high crag,
-     The lightning fell with never a jag,
-         A river steep and wide,"
-
-while the rain dashed down in sheets of water, one single gust of
-which would drench you to the skin. But our train is an effective
-shelter. We dine comfortably in the midst of the tempest, and
-afterwards in a cooler atmosphere look up towards repentant stars and
-a tear-stained sky.
-
-At dawn we are at Kisumu. There is a stir of men, a crowded platform,
-soldiers in order, groups of Indian traders, hundreds of Kavirondo
-natives in their fullest undress, bunting, and introductions. Large
-white steamers lie alongside the jetty, and beyond these the waters of
-the Lake gleam their broad welcome to the sunrise. Kisumu, or Port
-Florence as it is sometimes called, is the western terminus of the
-Uganda Railway and the chief port on Lake Victoria. It possesses what
-I am told is the highest dockyard in the world, and is the place at
-which all the steamers now plying on the Lake have been put together.
-One eight-hundred-ton cargo boat is actually in process of
-construction, and will be launched in a few months' time to meet the
-growing traffic of the Nyanza. The station itself is pretty; its trim
-houses and shady trees, backed against the hills, overlook the wide
-expanse of Kavirondo Bay and its encircling promontories. Unluckily,
-it is unhealthy, for the climate is depressing and the sewage
-accumulates in the tideless and shallow inlet. Some day one of two
-things will happen: either the waters of the Victoria Nyanza will be
-raised by a dam across the Ripon Falls and Kavirondo Bay will be
-proportionately deepened and cleansed, or the railway will be
-deflected and prolonged to its natural terminus on the deep waters of
-the lake at Port Victoria.
-
-The Kavirondo tribe, the greatest in this part of the country, had
-organized an imposing demonstration. In dense array they lined the
-road from the station to the Commissioner's house, and our party
-walked through their midst in a perfect hubbub of horns and drums and
-shrill salutations. All the warriors carried their spears, shields,
-and war-paint, and most of them wore splendid plumes of ostrich
-feathers. The Kavirondo are naked and unashamed. Both sexes are
-accustomed to walk about in the primitive simplicity of Nature. Their
-nudity is based not upon mere ignorance but reasoned policy. They have
-a very strong prejudice against the wearing of clothes, which they
-declare lead to immorality; and no Kavirondo woman can attire herself
-even in the most exiguous raiment without sullying her reputation.
-They are said to be the most moral of all the tribes dwelling on the
-Lake shore. It is a pity that Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, of the
-University of Weissnichtwo, did not meet them in his rugged
-wanderings, for they would surely have enabled him to add another page
-to his monumental work on the functions of the tailor.
-
-  [Illustration: NANDI AND KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU.]
-
-I wake up the next morning to find myself afloat on a magnificent
-ship. Its long and spacious decks are as snowy as those of a pleasure
-yacht. It is equipped with baths, electric light, and all modern
-necessities. There is an excellent table, also a well-selected
-library. Smart bluejackets--with ebon faces--are polishing the
-brasswork; dapper, white-clad British naval officers pace the bridge.
-We are steaming ten miles an hour across an immense sea of fresh water
-as big as Scotland, and uplifted higher than the summit of Ben Nevis.
-At times we are in a complete circle of lake and sky, without a sign
-of land. At others we skirt lofty coasts covered with forest and
-crowned with distant blue-brown mountains, or thread our course
-between a multitude of beautiful islands. The air is cool and fresh,
-the scenery splendid. We might be yachting off the coast of Cornwall
-in July. We are upon the Equator, in the heart of Africa, and crossing
-the Victoria Nyanza, four thousand feet above the sea!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA
-
-
-The East Africa Protectorate is a country of the highest interest to
-the colonist, the traveller, or the sportsman. But the Kingdom of
-Uganda is a fairy tale. You climb up a railway instead of a beanstalk,
-and at the end there is a wonderful new world. The scenery is
-different, the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and,
-most of all, the people are different from anything elsewhere to be
-seen in the whole range of Africa. Instead of the breezy uplands we
-enter a tropical garden. In the place of naked, painted savages,
-clashing their spears and gibbering in chorus to their tribal chiefs,
-a complete and elaborate polity is presented. Under a dynastic King,
-with a Parliament, and a powerful feudal system, an amiable, clothed,
-polite, and intelligent race dwell together in an organized monarchy
-upon the rich domain between the Victoria and Albert Lakes. More
-than two hundred thousand natives are able to read and write. More
-than one hundred thousand have embraced the Christian faith. There is
-a Court, there are Regents and Ministers and nobles, there is a
-regular system of native law and tribunals; there is discipline, there
-is industry, there is culture, there is peace. In fact, I ask myself
-whether there is any other spot in the whole earth where the dreams
-and hopes of the negrophile, so often mocked by results and stubborn
-facts, have ever attained such a happy realization.
-
-  [Illustration: KISUMU.]
-
-Three separate influences, each of them powerful and benevolent,
-exercise control over the mass of the Baganda nation. First, the
-Imperial authority, secular, scientific, disinterested, irresistible;
-secondly, a native Government and feudal aristocracy, corrected of
-their abuses, yet preserving their vitality; and thirdly, missionary
-enterprise on an almost unequalled scale. Under the shelter of the
-British Flag, safe from external menace or internal broil, the
-child-King grows to a temperate and instructed maturity. Surrounded by
-his officers of State, he presides at the meetings of his council and
-Parliament, or worships in the huge thatched cathedral which has been
-reared on Namirembe Hill. Fortified in their rights, but restrained
-from tyrannical excess, and guided by an outside power, his
-feudatories exercise their proper functions. The people, relieved from
-the severities and confusions of times not long ago, are apt to learn
-and willing to obey. And among them with patient energy toils a large
-body of devoted Christian men of different nations, of different
-Churches, but of a common charity, tending their spiritual needs,
-enlarging their social and moral conceptions, and advancing their
-education year by year.
-
-An elegance of manners springing from a naive simplicity of character
-pervades all classes. An elaborate ritual of friendly salutations
-relieves the monotony of the wayfarer's journey. Submission without
-servility or loss of self-respect is accorded to constituted
-authority. The natives evince an eagerness to acquire knowledge and a
-very high observant and imitative faculty. And then Uganda is from end
-to end one beautiful garden, where the staple food of the people grows
-almost without labour, and where almost everything else can be grown
-better and easier than anywhere else. The planter from the best
-islands in the West Indies is astonished at the richness of the soil.
-Cotton grows everywhere. Rubber, fibre, hemp, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee,
-tea, coca, vanilla, oranges, lemons, pineapples are natural or thrive
-on introduction. As for our English garden products, brought in
-contact with the surface of Uganda they simply give one wild bound of
-efflorescence or fruition and break their hearts for joy. Does it not
-sound a paradise on earth? Approach and consider it more closely.
-
-The good ship _Clement Hill_, named after a well-known African
-explorer, has carried us smoothly and prosperously across the northern
-corner of the Victoria Nyanza, and reaches the pier of Entebbe as the
-afternoon draws towards its close. The first impression that strikes
-the eye of the visitor fresh from Kavirondo is the spectacle of
-hundreds of natives all dressed in long clean white garments which
-they wear with dignity and ease. At the landing-place a sort of
-pavilion has been erected, and here come deputations from the Chamber
-of Commerce--a limited body of Europeans--from the Goanese community,
-and from the numerous Indian colony of merchants. A tonga drawn by
-two mules takes me to Government House, and from a wide
-mosquito-proof veranda I am able to survey a truly delightful
-prospect. The most beautiful plants and trees grow in profusion on all
-sides. Beyond a blaze of violet, purple, yellow, and crimson blossoms,
-and an expanse of level green lawns, the great blue lake lies in all
-its beauty. The hills and islands on the horizon are just beginning to
-flush to the sunset. The air is soft and cool. Except that the picture
-actually looks more English in its character, one would imagine it was
-the Riviera. It must be too good to be true.
-
-It _is_ too good to be true. One can hardly believe that such an
-attractive spot can be cursed with malignant attributes. Yet what is
-true of the East Africa Protectorate is even more true of Uganda. The
-contrast between appearance and reality is more striking and more
-harsh. Behind its glittering mask Entebbe wears a sinister aspect.
-These smiling islands which adorn and diversify the scenery of the
-lake supported a few years ago a large population. To-day they are
-desolate. Every white man seems to feel a sense of undefinable
-oppression. A cut will not heal; a scratch festers. In the third
-year of residence even a small wound becomes a running sore. One day a
-man feels perfectly well; the next, for no apparent cause, he is
-prostrate with malaria, and with malaria of a peculiarly persistent
-kind, turning often in the third or fourth attack to blackwater fever.
-In the small European community at Entebbe there have been quite
-recently two suicides. Whether, as I have suggested in East Africa, it
-be the altitude, or the downward ray of the Equatorial sun, or the
-insects, or some more subtle cause, there seems to be a solemn veto
-placed upon the white man's permanent residence in these beautiful
-abodes.
-
-  [Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ENTEBBE.]
-
-There are many who advocate the abandonment of Entebbe as the
-administrative capital and the restoration of the seat of Government
-to Kampala. But the expense of transferring public offices and
-buildings lately erected to another site is altogether beyond the
-slender resources and not among the most urgent needs of the Uganda
-Protectorate. Great improvements have been effected recently in the
-sanitation of Entebbe. The bush and trees, which added so greatly to
-its picturesque appearance, have been ruthlessly cut down; and with
-them, _mirabile dictu_, have vanished the mosquito and the
-sleeping-sickness tsetse-fly. Half a mile away on either side of the
-settlement are groves which it might easily be death to enter; but the
-inhabited area is now quite clear.
-
-Besides, the general unhealthiness of the country so far as the
-European is concerned is not local to Entebbe. It is widely spread in
-slightly different degrees throughout the whole of Uganda; and Kampala
-is certainly not exempt. Finally, there is a reason of a different
-character which ought to impose a final bar on any return of the
-Imperial Government to the native city. Uganda is a native state. Much
-of our success in dealing with its population arises from the fact
-that we work through and by the native Government. And that Government
-could not fail to lose much, if not all, of its separate and natural
-identity if it were overwhelmed by the immediate proximity of the
-supreme Administration.
-
-  [Illustration: UGANDA
-    Founded by permission of the War Office on the Map of Africa
-    No 1539.]
-
-For a new station in an almost unknown land, Entebbe certainly
-presents many remarkable evidences of progress. The slopes of the lake
-shore are covered with pretty villas, each standing in its own
-luxuriant garden. There is an excellent golf course, and a very
-bright and pleasant society. Guardian over all this stands the Sikh.
-There are two companies of these soldiers, one at Entebbe and the
-other at Kampala, who, being entirely immune to local influences of
-all kinds, constitute what Mr. Gladstone used to call the "motor
-muscle" of Imperial authority. I have always admired the Sikh in
-India, both in his cantonments and in the field. But somehow his
-graceful military figure and grave countenance under the turban as he
-stands erect beside his rifle on guard over British interests six
-thousand miles from the Punjab, impresses the eye and the imagination
-with an added force. He is a picked volunteer from all the Sikh
-regiments, who delights in Uganda, thrives under its, to him, milder
-sun, lives on nothing, saves his doubled pay, and returns to India
-enriched and proud of his service across the sea. If at any time
-considerations of expense, or the desire to obtain a complete
-homogeneity in the military forces of the Protectorate, should lead to
-the disbandment or withdrawal of these two companies, those who take
-the decision will have incurred a responsibility which few would care
-to share with them.
-
-So far as human force is concerned, the British power in these regions
-is at present beyond challenge. No man can withstand it. But a new
-opponent has appeared and will not be denied. Uganda is defended by
-its insects. It would even seem that the arrival of the white man and
-the increased movement and activity which his presence has engendered
-have awakened these formidable atoms to a realization of their powers
-of evil. The dreaded _Spirillum_ tick has begun to infest the roads
-like a tiny footpad, and scarcely any precautions avail with certainty
-against him. This tick is a dirty, drab-coloured creature the size and
-shape of a small squashed pea. When he bites an infected person he
-does not contract the Spirillum fever himself, nor does he transmit it
-directly to other persons. By a peculiarly malevolent provision of
-Nature this power is exercised not by him but by his descendants, who
-are numbered in hundreds. So the poison spreads in an incalculable
-progression. Although this fever is not fatal, it is exceptionally
-painful in its course and distressing in its consequences. There are
-five or six separate and successive attacks of fever, in which the
-temperature of the victim may rise even to 107 degrees; and
-afterwards the eyes and hearing are temporarily affected by a kind of
-facial paralysis. Road after road has been declared infected by this
-scourge, and officer after officer struck down as he moves on duty
-from place to place. The only sure preventive seems to be the
-destruction of all old grass-huts and camping-grounds, and the
-erection along the roads of a regular system of stone-built, properly
-maintained and disinfected rest-houses, in which the traveller may
-take refuge from the lurking peril. And this will have to be done.
-
-But a far more terrible shadow darkens the Uganda Protectorate. In
-July, 1901, a doctor of the Church Missionary Society Hospital at
-Kampala noticed eight cases of a mysterious disease. Six months later
-he reported that over two hundred natives had died of it in the Island
-of Buvuma, and that thousands appeared to be infected. The pestilence
-swiftly spread through all the districts of the lake shore, and the
-mortality was appalling. No one could tell where it had come from or
-what it was caused by. It resisted every kind of treatment and
-appeared to be universally fatal. Scientific inquiries of various
-kinds were immediately set on foot, but for a long time no results
-were obtained, and meanwhile the disease ran along the coasts and
-islands of the great lake like fire in a high wind. By the middle of
-1902 the reported deaths from _Trypanosomiasis_, or "sleeping
-sickness," as it has come to be called, numbered over thirty thousand.
-It was still spreading rapidly upon all sides, and no clue whatever to
-its treatment or prevention had been obtained. It seemed certain that
-the entire population of the districts affected was doomed.
-
-On April 28th, 1903, Colonel Bruce, whose services had been obtained
-for the investigation of "sleeping sickness" through the
-instrumentality of the Royal Society, announced that he considered the
-disease to be due to a kind of trypanosome, conveyed from one person
-to another by the bite of a species of tsetse-fly called _Glossina
-palpalis_. His theory was strongly supported by the fact that the
-disease appeared to be confined to the localities infested by the fly.
-The fly-belt also could be defined with precision, and was rarely
-found to extend more than a mile or two from water. The news that
-Europeans could no longer consider themselves immune from the
-infection caused, as might be imagined, much consternation in the
-white community. Nearly everybody had been bitten by tsetses at one
-time or another, but whether by this particular species when actually
-infected, remained in suspense. Moreover, tsetse-flies abounded in
-such numbers on all parts of the lake shore that their wholesale
-destruction seemed quite impossible. What then?
-
-For a time Colonel Bruce's discovery almost paralyzed all preventive
-and restrictive measures. The scourge fell unchecked. By the end of
-1903 the reported deaths numbered over ninety thousand, and the lake
-shores were becoming fast depopulated. Whole villages were completely
-exterminated, and great tracts in Usoga, which had formerly been famed
-for their high state of cultivation, relapsed into forests. The
-weakness of the victims and the terror or apathy of the survivors
-permitted a sudden increase in the number of leopards, and these
-fierce animals preyed with daring and impunity upon the living, the
-dying, and the dead.
-
-Further investigations, which were anxiously pushed on in many
-directions, revealed the existence of the tsetse-fly over widespread
-areas. In the interior of Usoga, on the banks of many rivers, in
-swamps on the shores of the Albert Lake and Lake Albert Edward, these
-swarming emissaries of death were found to be awaiting their message.
-All that was needed to arm them with their fatal power was the arrival
-of some person infected with the microbe. The Albert shores and
-several parts of the Upper Nile soon became new centres of pestilence.
-Thousands of deaths occurred in Unyoro. By the end of 1905
-considerably more than two hundred thousand persons had perished in
-the plague-stricken regions, _out of a population_ in those regions
-_which could not have exceeded three hundred thousand_.
-
-Any decrease in the mortality in any district up to the present time
-is due, not to any diminution in the virulence of the disease, but
-simply to the reduction of possible victims, owing to the
-extermination of the inhabitants. Buvuma, a few years ago one of the
-most prosperous of all the islands, contains fewer than fourteen
-thousand out of thirty thousand. Some of the islands in the Sesse
-group have lost every soul, while in others a few moribund natives,
-crawling about in the last stages of the disease, are all that are
-left to represent a once teeming population.
-
-"It might have been expected," writes Sir H. Hesketh Bell, the
-Governor of Uganda, to whom I am indebted for much valuable
-information on this subject, "that, even though the negroes showed
-inability to grasp the theory of the transmission of disease by the
-agency of insects, the undeniable deadliness of the countries
-bordering on the lake shore would have induced them to flee from the
-stricken land and to have sought in the healthier districts inland a
-refuge from the pestilence that was slaying them by thousands. An
-extraordinary fatalism, however, seems to have paralyzed the natives,
-and, while deploring the sadness of their fate, they appear to have
-accepted death almost with apathy."
-
-The police of science, although arrived late on the scene of the
-tragedy, were now following many converging clues. Therapeutic
-investigation into the treatment and origin of the disease,
-entomological examination of the resorts, habits, dangers, and
-life-history of the fly, and thirdly administrative measures of
-drastic authority are now being driven sternly forward. Knowledge has
-accumulated. Fighting the sleeping sickness is like laying a vampire.
-To make the spell work, five separate conditions must be
-present--water, bushes, trees, the tsetse-fly (_Glossina palpalis_),
-and one infected person. Remove any one of these and the curse is
-lifted. But let them all be conjoined, and the sure destruction of
-every human being in the district is only a matter of time.
-
-The Government of Uganda is now pursuing a policy based on the
-appreciation of these facts. Wherever it is necessary to come to the
-lake shores, as at Entebbe, Munyonyo, Ripon Falls, Fajao, etc., the
-tsetse-fly is banished or eliminated by cutting down the trees,
-clearing away the bush, and planting in its place the vigorous,
-rapid-growing _citronella_ grass, which, once firmly established,
-holds its own against invading vegetation. Wherever it is not possible
-to clear the shores of tsetse-flies, they must be cleared of
-inhabitants. And the extraordinary operation of moving entire
-populations from their old homes to new places--often against their
-will--has been actually accomplished within the last year by a
-combined dead-lift effort of these three tremendous forces of
-Government which regulate from such different points of view the
-lives and liberties of the Baganda.
-
-It does not follow that the lake shores will have to be abandoned for
-ever. In a very short time--some say two days, some eleven hours--the
-infected tsetse is free from poison and can no longer communicate it;
-and once the disease has been eradicated from the population, healthy
-people might return and be bitten with impunity. Nor, on the other
-hand, can we hope, unless some cure capable of being applied on a
-large scale can be perfected, that the mortality in the immediate
-future will sensibly diminish. For there are many thousands of persons
-still affected, and for these segregation, nursing, and compassion
-comprise the present resources of civilization.
-
-One thing is, however, above all things important. There must be no
-losing heart. At any moment the researches which are being conducted
-in so many laboratories, and in which Professor Koch has taken a
-leading part, may produce an absolute therapeutic remedy. By the
-administrative measures now vigorously enforced it is believed that
-the fatal contact between infected persons and uninfected flies,
-between infected flies and uninfected persons, will have been
-effectively broken. We cannot fail to learn more of the tsetse. The
-humble black horse-fly, indistinguishable to the casual observer from
-harmless types, except that his wings are folded neatly like a pair of
-shut scissors, instead of splaying out on either side of his back, is
-now under a bright, searching, and pitiless eye. Who are his enemies?
-What are his dangers? What conditions are essential to his existence?
-What conditions are fatal or inimical? International Commissions
-discuss him round green tables, grave men peer patiently at him
-through microscopes, active officers scour Central Africa to plot him
-out on charts. A fine-spun net is being woven remorselessly around
-him. And may not man find allies in this strange implacable warfare?
-There are fishes which destroy mosquitoes, there are birds which prey
-upon flies, there are plants whose scent or presence is abhorrent or
-injurious to particular forms of insect life. In what places and for
-how long will the tsetse continue to fly, as he is wont, over the
-smooth, gleaming water, just above the reeds and bushes, just below
-the branches of the overhanging trees? _Glossina palpalis contra
-mundum!_
-
-  [Illustration: THE GOVERNOR WITH BAGANDA GROUP.]
-
-I have not sought to conceal the perils in describing the riches and
-the beauties of Uganda. The harsh contrasts of the land, its noble
-potentialities, its hideous diseases, its fecundity alike of life and
-death, are capable of being illustrated by many more facts and
-examples than I can here set down. But what an obligation, what a
-sacred duty is imposed upon Great Britain to enter the lists in person
-and to shield this trustful, docile, intelligent Baganda race from
-dangers which, whatever their cause, have synchronized with our
-arrival in their midst! And, meanwhile, let us be sure that order and
-science will conquer, and that in the end John Bull will be really
-master in his curious garden of sunshine and deadly nightshade.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-KAMPALA
-
-
-Two days after I had arrived at Entebbe the Governor took me over to
-Kampala. The distance between the ancient and the administrative
-capital is about twenty-four miles. The road, although unmetalled,
-runs over such firm, smooth sandstone, almost polished by the rains,
-that, except in a few places, it would carry a motor-car well, and a
-bicycle is an excellent means of progression. The Uganda Government
-motor-cars, which are now running well and regularly, had not then,
-however, arrived, and the usual method was to travel by rickshaw.
-Mounted in this light bicycle-wheeled carriage, drawn by one man
-between the shafts and pushed by three more from behind, we were able
-to make rather more than six miles an hour in very comfortable style.
-
-The rickshaw-boys, who were neatly dressed in white tunics and red
-caps, were relieved every eight miles. They have their own way of
-doing business. From the moment when the travellers are seated in the
-rickshaw and their labour begins, they embark upon an ever-varying but
-absolutely interminable antiphony, which, if it exhausts their breath,
-serves undoubtedly to keep their spirits up. "Burrulum," cry the
-pushers; "Huma," says the puller. "Burrulum," say the pushers again,
-and so on over and over again for a very long time. All these chaunts
-have their meanings, and if the traveller is found to be heavy or
-known to be ignorant of the language, he would not always be
-complimented by a correct translation. The phrase I have quoted means
-"iron upon wood"; and its signification is that the iron of European
-strength and skill, however superior, yet cannot get along without the
-wood of native labour and endurance. With such unexceptionable
-sentiments no one would quarrel. Yet even these lose their flavour by
-repetition, and after half an hour of "Burrulum" and "Huma" I was
-constrained to ask the singers whether they could not possibly manage
-to convey us in silence. They tried their best, but I could see they
-were unhappy, and after a while, out of compassion and to improve the
-pace, I withdrew the ban, and the chorus was joyfully resumed in a new
-and more elaborate form.
-
-The manners of the Baganda are ceremonious to a degree. They well
-deserve Sir Harry Johnston's description of them as "the Japanese of
-Africa." If you say "Good morning" to a stranger on an English road,
-it is as like as not that his surprise will throw him into a posture
-of self-defence; but when two Baganda meet they begin to salute each
-other as soon as they come within earshot. "How are you?" cries the
-one. "Who am I that you should care to know?" replies the other.
-"Humble though I be, yet I have dared," rejoins the first. "But say
-first how are _you_," continues the second. "The better for the honour
-you have done me," is the answer. By this they have already passed
-each other, and there is only time for the Parthian affability, "The
-honour is mine, and I shall treasure it," and a quavering of
-delicately-modulated, long-drawn "A--a--a's" of contentment and
-goodwill which gradually die away in the distance, leaving neither of
-them the worse circumstanced, nor the better informed. I must add,
-for the reader's caution, that the aforesaid dialogue is not an
-invariable ritual. The phrases may be varied _ad infinitum_ to suit
-the occasion; but it will suffice as an illustration of these roadside
-courtesies.
-
-  [Illustration: BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA.]
-
-If you wish to make a Baganda perfectly happy, all you need to do is
-to say, "Way wally," which means a sort of supremely earnest "Well
-done." The moment this talismanic expression has left your lips, the
-native to whom it is addressed will probably fall on his knees, and,
-clasping his two hands together, will sway them from side to side, as
-if he were playing a concertina, while all the time his face beams
-with a most benignant and compulsive smile, and he purrs, "A--o, a--o,
-a--o," as much as to say, "My cup of joy is overflowing." It is not in
-accordance with our ideas that man should kneel to man, and one feels
-uncomfortable to see it done. Yet it should not be thought that the
-action, as performed by the Baganda, involves or implies any
-servility. It is their good manners--and meant to be no more. Nor,
-once you are used to it, do they seem to lose at all in dignity. Only
-they win your heart.
-
-The road from Entebbe to Kampala passes through delicious country.
-Along its whole length a double avenue of rubber trees has just been
-planted, and behind these on each side are broad strips of cotton
-plants, looking beautiful with their yellow flowers or pinky-white
-bolls. American upland cotton grown in Uganda actually commands a
-higher price in the Manchester market than when it is grown in the
-United States. There appears to be practically no natural difficulty
-in its cultivation throughout the larger part of Uganda. A great
-development is only a question of organization and--money.
-
-But I have forgotten that we have been moving swiftly along the
-Kampala road, and now we are almost in sight of the city. Almost, but
-not quite; for, to tell the truth, no one has ever seen Kampala. The
-traveller sees the Government buildings and residences neat and prim
-on one hill; he sees the King's house and his Ministers' houses on
-another. Upon a third, a fourth, or a fifth hill he may discern
-successively the Protestant Cathedral, the Catholic Mission, and the
-White Father's Monastery. But Kampala, the home of sixty thousand
-persons, is permanently invisible. The whole town is buried under the
-leaves of innumerable banana plantations, which afford shade and
-food to its people, and amid which their huts are thickly scattered
-and absolutely concealed.
-
-  [Illustration: KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA.
-    (Major Jenkins, Mr. Churchill, King Daudi, Sir H. Hesketh Bell.)]
-
-We were still three miles out of this "garden city" when the native
-reception began, and we travelled for a quarter of a mile between
-lines of white-robed Baganda, all mustered by their chiefs, and
-clapping their hands in sign of welcome. At last our procession of
-rickshaws reached a hillock by the roadside, at the top of which stood
-a pavilion, beautifully constructed of stout elephant grass like thin
-polished canes woven together with curious art. Down from this
-eminence, over a pathway strewn with rushes, came to meet us the King
-and his notables in a most imposing array. Daudi Chewa, the King or
-Kabaka of Uganda, is a graceful, distinguished-looking little boy,
-eleven years old. He was simply dressed in a flowing black robe edged
-with gold, and a little white gold-rimmed cap. Around him were the
-Council of Regency; and at his right hand stood the Prime Minister,
-Sir Apolo Kagwar, a powerful, determined-looking man, wearing a
-crimson, gold-laced robe, on which shone many decorations, several
-British war medals, and the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
-
-We all shook hands, and were then led up into the pavilion, where we
-took our seats on wicker chairs and ate sweet jellies while we
-conversed. The King, who is being most carefully educated by an
-English tutor, understands and speaks English quite well, but on this
-occasion he seemed too shy to say much more than "Yes" or "No," in a
-low, sweet drawl, and this formal interview soon came to an end.
-
-The afternoon was consumed in ceremony; for the Commissioner of Uganda
-had to be sworn in the rank of Governor, to which he has been lately
-raised; and there was a parade of troops, in which some five or six
-hundred very smart-looking soldiers took part, headed by the Kampala
-company of Sikhs. It was not until the shadows began to lengthen that
-we visited the Kabaka on the Royal Hill. He received us in his
-Parliament House. In this large and beautifully-constructed grass
-building about seventy chiefs and Baganda notables were assembled. The
-little Kabaka sat on his throne, and his subjects grouped themselves
-around and before him. We were given seats at his side, and the
-Prime Minister explained that the Baganda would show us the ceremony
-of swearing a chief. One of the most portly and dignified of the
-councillors thereupon advanced into the centre of the room, threw
-himself face downward on the ground, and poured out a torrent of
-asseverations of loyalty. After a few minutes he rose and began
-brandishing his spears, chaunting his oath all the while, until he had
-created an extraordinary appearance of passion. Finally he rushed from
-the building to go and slay the King's enemies outside. It was not
-until he returned a moment later, calm, sedate, and respectable, that
-I realized, from the merry smile on his face and from the mirth of the
-company, that he was "only pretending," and that the ceremony was
-merely a representation given to interest us.
-
-  [Illustration: ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA.]
-
-The incident is remarkable because it illustrates the rapidity with
-which the Baganda people are leaving their past behind them. Already
-they laugh at their old selves. Ceremonies which twenty years ago had
-a solemn and awful significance, are to-day reproduced by this
-reflective people in much the same spirit as the citizens of Coventry
-revive the progress of Lady Godiva. The same thing happened at the
-war-dance the next day. Two or three thousand men, naked and painted
-for war, rushed frantically to and fro to the beating of drums and
-barbaric music, with every sign of earnestness and even frenzy. Yet a
-few minutes later they were laughing sheepishly at one another, and
-bowing to us like actors before the curtain, and the Prime Minister
-was making a speech to explain that this was meant to be a pageant of
-the bad old times reproduced for our benefit. Indeed, so unaccustomed
-to carry arms had the warriors become that not one in ten could find a
-spear to arm himself with, and they had to come with sticks and other
-stage-properties.
-
-Even a comic element was provided in the shape of a warrior painted
-all over in a ridiculous manner, and held by two others with a rope
-tied round his middle. This, we were told, was "the bravest man in the
-army," who had to be restrained lest he should rush into battle too
-soon. It is not easy to convey the air of honest fun and good humour
-which pervaded these curious performances, or to measure the
-intellectual progress which the attitude of the Baganda towards them
-implied.
-
-  [Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.
-    "The bravest man in the army."]
-
-  [Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.]
-
-The Kabaka gave us tea in his house. It is a comfortable European
-building, quite small and modest, but nicely furnished, and adorned
-with familiar English prints and portraits of Queen Victoria and King
-Edward. Gradually he got the better of his shyness, and told me that
-he liked football more than anything else, and that his mathematical
-studies had advanced as far as "G.C.M.," initials which never fail to
-stir disagreeable school-day memories in my mind. He can write a very
-good letter in English, rides well on a nice pony, and will probably
-become a well-educated and accomplished man. Altogether it is a very
-pleasing spectacle to find in the heart of Africa, and amid so much
-barbarism, squalour, and violence, this island of gentle manners and
-peaceful civilization.
-
-The next day was one unending pilgrimage. I have described how Kampala
-lies under the leaves of the plantain groves about the slopes of many
-hills. Each hill has its special occupants and purpose. Each of the
-different Christian missions has a hill to itself, and in the bad old
-days a Maxim gun was not thought at all an inappropriate aid to
-Christian endeavour. It would, however, be very unfair to charge the
-missionaries with having created the feuds and struggles which
-convulsed Uganda twelve years ago. The accident that the line of
-cleavage between French and British influence was also the line of
-cleavage between Catholic and Protestant converts, imparted a
-religious complexion to what was in reality a fierce political
-dispute. These troubles are now definitely at an end. The arrival upon
-the scene of an English Catholic mission has prevented national
-rivalries and religious differences from mutually embittering one
-another. The erection of a stable Government and the removal of all
-doubts about the future of Uganda have led to an entire abatement of
-strife among devoted men engaged in a noble work. Not only is there
-peace among the different Christian missions themselves, but the
-Government of Uganda, so far from watching missionary enterprise with
-sour disfavour, is thoroughly alive to the inestimable services which
-have been and are daily being rendered by the missions to the native
-population, and excellent relations prevail.
-
-  [Illustration: THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION, KAMPALA.]
-
-In duty bound I climbed one hill after another and endeavoured to make
-myself acquainted with the details of mission work in Kampala. It
-comprises every form of moral and social activity. Apart from their
-spiritual work, which needs no advocacy here, the missionaries have
-undertaken and are now maintaining the whole educational system of the
-country. They have built many excellent schools, and thousands of
-young Baganda are being taught to read and write in their own
-language. The whole country is dotted with subsidiary mission
-stations, each one a centre of philanthropic and Christian effort.
-There are good hospitals, with skilful doctors and nurses or sisters
-of charity, in connection with all the missions. The largest of these,
-belonging to the Church Missionary Society, is a model of what a
-tropical hospital for natives ought to be. Technical education is now
-being added to these services, and in this, it is to be hoped, the
-Government will be able to cooperate. I do not know of any other part
-of the world where missionary influence and enterprise have been so
-beneficently exerted, or where more valuable results have been
-achieved.
-
-On Namirembe Hill, where the Church Missionary Society have their
-head-quarters, a really fine cathedral, with three tall, quaint,
-thatched spires, has been built out of very primitive materials; and
-this is almost the only building in Uganda which offers the slightest
-attempt at architectural display. Under the shadow of this I found
-myself on the afternoon of the 20th of November engaged in opening a
-high school for scholars who are more advanced than can be instructed
-in the existing establishments. A large and well-dressed audience,
-native and European, filled a good-sized room. The scholars crowded
-together in a solid mass of white-dressed youths upon the floor. The
-Kabaka and Sir Apolo Kagwar, who has himself five sons at the school,
-were upon the platform. The Governor presided. The Bishop made a
-speech. The schoolboys sang English songs and hymns in very good tune
-and rhythm. It was astonishing to look at the map of the British
-Empire hanging on the wall and to realize that all this was taking
-place near the north-western corner of the Victoria Nyanza.
-
-  [Illustration: INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL.]
-
-It is eight miles from Kampala to Munyonyo, its present port on the
-lake, and this distance we covered in rickshaws over a shocking road.
-Munyonyo is itself little more than a jetty and a few sheds, but it
-affords a very good example of the salutary effects of cutting down
-the bush and forest. Mosquitoes and tsetses have been absolutely
-banished from the cleared area, and a place which a year ago was a
-death-trap is now perfectly safe and healthy. Plans are now on foot to
-make a new port a little farther along the coast at a point only five
-miles away from Kampala; and when this has been connected with the
-capital, as it must be, by a line of mono-rail tramway, there is every
-reason to expect a substantial and growing trade.
-
-The _Sir William Mackinnon_, a venerable vessel of the Uganda Marine,
-awaited our party, and we steamed off on the smooth waters of the
-lake, through an archipelago of beautiful islands--each one more
-inviting than the other--and all depopulated by sleeping sickness. All
-day long we voyaged in these sheltered waters, and in the evening the
-lights of Jinja guided us to our destination. One cannot help admiring
-the luck which led Speke to his thrilling discovery of the source of
-the Nile. There are five hundred gulfs and inlets on the northern
-shore of Lake Victoria, and nothing distinguishes this one from the
-rest. No current is perceptible to the ordinary mariner until within a
-few miles of the rapids, and although the presumption that so vast a
-body of fresh water would have an overflow somewhere had behind it a
-backing of strong probability, the explorer might have searched for a
-year without finding the spot. Instead of which he drifted and paddled
-gently along until all of a sudden the murmur of a distant cataract
-and the slight acceleration in the pace of his canoe drew him to the
-long-sought birthplace of the most wonderful river in the world.
-
-It was dark when we landed at Jinja, and I could not properly see the
-preparations made for our reception by the local chiefs and the Indian
-traders, of whom there was a considerable crowd. The darkness,
-otherwise a cause of disappointment, afforded the opportunity for just
-the sort of brave act one so often finds a British officer ready to
-do. As the baggage was being landed from the steamer on to the jetty,
-a poor coolie slipped under his load, and in an instant was engulfed
-in the deep black waters below. Whereupon, as a matter of course, a
-young civilian in the Political Department jumped in after him in the
-darkness and among the crocodiles, and fished him out safe and sound,
-an act of admirable behaviour which has since received the recognition
-of the Royal Humane Society. I am not quite sure that in all parts of
-Africa so high a standard of honour and respect for the life of the
-humble native would prevail.
-
-Jinja is destined to become a very important place in the future
-economy of Central Africa. Situated at the point where the Nile flows
-out of the Great Lake, it is at once on the easiest line of water
-communication with Lake Albert and the Soudan, and also where great
-water-power is available. In years to come the shores of this splendid
-bay may be crowned with long rows of comfortable tropical villas and
-imposing offices, and the gorge of the Nile crowded with factories and
-warehouses. There is power enough to gin all the cotton and saw all
-the wood in Uganda, and it is here that one of the principal emporia
-of tropical produce will certainly be created. In these circumstances
-it is a pity to handicap the town with an outlandish name. It would be
-much better to call it Ripon Falls, after the beautiful cascades which
-lie beneath it, and from whose force its future prosperity will be
-derived.
-
-The Ripon Falls are, for their own sake, well worth a visit. The Nile
-springs out of the Victoria Nyanza, a vast body of water nearly as
-wide as the Thames at Westminster Bridge, and this imposing river
-rushes down a stairway of rock from fifteen to twenty feet deep, in
-smooth, swirling slopes of green water. It would be perfectly easy to
-harness the whole river and let the Nile begin its long and beneficent
-journey to the sea by leaping through a turbine. It is possible that
-nowhere else in the world could so enormous a mass of water be held up
-by so little masonry. Two or three short dams from island to island
-across the falls would enable, at an inconceivably small cost, the
-whole level of the Victoria Nyanza--over an expanse of a hundred and
-fifty thousand square miles--to be gradually raised six or seven feet;
-would greatly increase the available water-power; would deepen the
-water in Kavirondo Bay, so as to admit steamers of much larger
-draught; and, finally, would enable the lake to be maintained at a
-uniform level, so that immense areas of swampy foreshore, now
-submerged, now again exposed, according to the rainfalls, would be
-converted either into clear water or dry land, to the benefit of
-man and the incalculable destruction of mosquitoes.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RIPON FALLS (Source of the Nile).]
-
-As one watches the surging waters of the Ripon Falls and endeavours to
-compute the mighty energies now running to waste, but all within the
-reach of modern science, the problem of Uganda rises in a new form on
-the mind. All this water-power belongs to the State. Ought it ever to
-be surrendered to private persons? How long, on the other hand, is a
-Government, if not prepared to act itself, entitled to bar the way to
-others? This question is raised in a multitude of diverse forms in
-almost all the great dependencies of the Crown. But in Uganda the
-arguments for the State ownership and employment of the natural
-resources of the country seem to present themselves in their strongest
-and most formidable array. Uganda is a native State. It must not be
-compared with any of those colonies where there is a white population
-already established, nor again with those inhabited by tribes of
-nomadic barbarians. It finds its counterparts among the great native
-States of India, where Imperial authority is exercised in the name and
-often through the agency of a native prince and his own officers.
-
-This combination of the external brain and the native hand results in
-a form of government often highly acceptable to the general body of
-the inhabitants, who are confronted with no sudden or arbitrary
-changes in the long-accustomed appearances of things. But it involves
-all the administration of affairs in a degree of complexity and
-delicacy which is absent from simpler and cruder systems. In such
-circumstances there cannot be much opening for the push and drive of
-ordinary commercial enterprise. The hustling business man--admirably
-suited to the rough and tumble of competitive production in Europe or
-America--becomes an incongruous and even a dangerous figure when
-introduced into the smooth and leisurely development of a native
-State. The Baganda will not be benefited either morally or materially
-by contact with modern money-making or modern money-makers. When a man
-is working only for the profits of his company and is judged by the
-financial results alone, he does not often under the sun of Central
-Africa acquire the best method of dealing with natives; and all sorts
-of difficulties and troubles will follow any sudden incursion of
-business enterprise into the forests and gardens of Uganda. And even
-if the country is more rapidly developed by these agencies, the
-profits will not go to the Government and people of Uganda, to be used
-in fostering new industries, but to divers persons across the sea, who
-have no concern, other than purely commercial, in its fortunes. This
-is not to advocate the arbitrary exclusion of private capital and
-enterprise from Uganda. Carefully directed and narrowly controlled
-opportunities for their activities will no doubt occur. But the
-natural resources of the country should, as far as possible, be
-developed by the Government itself, even though that may involve the
-assumption of many new functions.
-
-Indeed, it would be hard to find a country where the conditions were
-more favourable than in Uganda to a practical experiment in State
-Socialism. The land is rich; the people pacific and industrious. There
-are no great differences between class and class. One staple article
-of food meets the needs of the whole population, and produces itself
-almost without the aid of man. There are no European vested interests
-to block the way. Nowhere are the powers of the Government to
-regulate and direct the activities of the people more overwhelming or
-more comprehensive. The superiority of knowledge in the rulers is
-commanding. Their control upon the natives is exerted through almost
-every channel; and besides the secular authorities--native and
-Imperial--there is the spiritual and educative influence of the
-missionaries to infuse human sympathy and moral earnestness into the
-regular machinery of State.
-
-The first, and perhaps the greatest, difficulty which confronts the
-European Socialist is the choosing of Governors to whom the positively
-awful powers indispensable to a communistic society are to be
-entrusted. If a race of beings could be obtained when and as required
-from a neighbouring planet, whose practical superiority in virtue,
-science, wisdom, and strength was so manifest as to be universally
-acclaimed, this difficulty would disappear, and we might with
-composure await the decision of popular elections with all their
-defects and advantages. But in the absence of this dispensation the
-problem of how rulers are to be selected, and how, having been
-selected, they are to be controlled or changed, remains the first
-question of politics, even in days when the functions of government
-are, in general, restricted to the modest limits of _laissez-faire_.
-
-In Uganda, however, this difficulty does not exist. A class of rulers
-is provided by an outside power as remote from and, in all that
-constitutes fitness to direct, as superior to the Baganda as Mr.
-Wells's Martians would have been to us. The British administration is
-in its _personnel_ absolutely disinterested. The officials draw their
-salaries, and that is all. They have no end to serve, except the
-improvement of the country and the contentment of its people. By that
-test and that test alone are they judged. In no other way can they win
-approbation or fame. They are furthermore controlled in the exercise
-of their functions by a superior authority, specially instructed in
-this class of administration, and itself answerable to a Parliament
-elected on a democratic franchise. At no point in the whole chain of
-command is there any room for corruption, usurpation, or gross
-inefficiency.
-
-It is clear that larger powers could be entrusted to the State in
-regard to the labour of its citizens than would ever be accorded to
-private employers. The subjects of every European Power have accepted
-the obligation of military service to defend their respective
-countries from external attack. The Baganda, relieved from this harsh
-obsession, have no higher duty than to cultivate and develop the
-beautiful land they live in. And if it were desired to organize
-scientifically, upon a humane and honourable basis, the industry of an
-entire population, and to apply the whole fruits of their labour to
-their own enrichment and elevation, no better conditions are likely to
-be discovered than those which now exist in Uganda.
-
-It might at any rate be worth while to make such an experiment, if
-only as a prelude to those more general applications of the principles
-of Socialism which are held in some quarters to be so necessary.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-'ON SAFARI'
-
-
-Now the reader must really look at the map. To this point we have
-proceeded by train and steamer with all the power and swiftness of
-modern communication. If we have traversed wild and lonely lands, it
-has been in a railway carriage. We have disturbed the lion with the
-locomotive, and all our excursions have but led back to the iron road.
-But at Ripon Falls we are to let go our hold upon machinery. Steam and
-all it means is to be shut off. We are "to cut the painter," and,
-losing the impulsion of the great ship, are for a while to paddle
-about upon a vast expanse in a little cock-boat of our own. Back
-towards Mombasa, three days' journey will cover nine hundred miles.
-Forward, you will be lucky to make forty in the same time. Return at
-this moment is swift and easy. In a week it will be perhaps
-impossible. Going on means going through.
-
-Everywhere great pathways are being cut into Africa. We have followed
-for nearly a thousand miles one leading from the East towards the
-centre. Far away from the North another line has been thrust forward
-by British efforts in peace and war. From Alexandria to Cairo, from
-Cairo to Wady Halfa, from Halfa to Berber, from Berber to Khartoum,
-from Khartoum to Fashoda, from Fashoda to Gondokoro, over a distance
-of nearly three thousand miles, stretches an uninterrupted service of
-trains and steamers. But between the landing-stage at Jinja and the
-landing-stage at Gondokoro there opens a wide gulf of yet unbridged,
-unconquered wilderness and jungle, across which and through which the
-traveller must crawl painfully and at a foot's pace, always amid
-difficulty and never wholly without danger. It is this gulf which we
-are now to traverse.
-
-  [Illustration: BETWEEN NIMULE AND GONDOKORO.
-    Capt. Read. Mr. Marsh. Dr. Goldie. Mr. Ormsby.
-    Col. Wilson. Mr. Churchill. Capt. Dickinson. Lieut.
-    Fishbourne, R.E.]
-
-The distance from the Victoria to the Albert Nyanza is about two
-hundred miles in the direct line, and it is all downhill. The Great
-Lake is hoisted high above the highest hill-tops of England. From this
-vast elevated inland sea the descending Nile water flows through a
-channel of three thousand five hundred miles into the Mediterranean.
-The first and steepest stage of its journey is to the Albert Lake.
-This second body of water, which, except in comparison with the
-Victoria Nyanza, would be impressive--it is more than a hundred miles
-long--lies at an altitude of two thousand three hundred feet above the
-sea. So that in its first two hundred miles the Nile exhausts in the
-exuberant improvidence of youth about a third of the impulse which is
-to carry it through its venerable career. Yet this considerable
-descent of twelve hundred feet is itself accomplished in two short
-steps. There is one series of rapids, thirty miles long, below the
-Ripon Falls, and another of equal extent above the Murchison Falls.
-Between these two declivities long reaches of open river and the wide,
-level expanse of Lake Chioga afford a fine waterway.
-
-Our journey from one great lake to the other divided itself therefore
-into three stages. Three marches through the forest to Kakindu, the
-first point where the Victoria Nile is navigable after the rapids;
-three days in canoes along the Nile and across Lake Chioga; and,
-lastly, five marches from the western end of Lake Chioga to the Albert
-Nyanza. Beyond this, again, four days in canoes and steel
-sailing-boats, towed by a launch, would carry us to Nimule, where the
-rapids on the White Nile begin, and in seven or eight marches from
-there we should reach the Soudan steamers at Gondokoro. About five
-hundred miles would thus be covered in twenty days. It would take
-about the same time, if trains and steamers fitted exactly, to return
-by Mombasa and Suez to London.
-
-Early in the morning of November 23rd our party set off upon this
-journey. Travelling by marches from camp to camp plays a regular part
-in the life of the average Central African officer. He goes "on
-Safari" as the Boer "on trek." It is a recognized state of being,
-which often lasts for weeks, and sometimes for months. He learns to
-think of ten days' "Safari" as we at home think of going to Scotland,
-and twenty days' "Safari" as if it were less than the journey to
-Paris. "Safari" is itself a Swahili word of Arabic origin, meaning an
-expedition and all that pertains to it. It comprises yourself and
-everybody and everything you take with you--food, tents, rifles,
-clothing, cooks, servants, escort, porters--but especially porters.
-Out of the range of steam the porter is the primary factor. This
-ragged figure, tottering along under his load, is the unit of
-locomotion and the limit of possibility. Without porters you cannot
-move. With them you move ten or twelve miles a day, if all is well.
-How much can he carry? How far can he carry it? These are the
-questions which govern alike your calculations and your fate.
-
-Every morning the porters are divided into batches of about twenty,
-each under its headman. The loads, which are supposed to average about
-sixty-five pounds, are also roughly parcelled out. As each batch
-starts off, the next rushes up to the succeeding heap of loads, and
-there is a quarter of an hour of screaming and pushing--the strongest
-men making a bee-line for the lightest-looking loads, and being beaten
-off by the grim but voluble headman, the weakest weeping feebly beside
-a mountainous pile, till a distribution has been achieved with rough
-justice, and the troop in its turn marches off with indescribable
-ululations testifying and ministering to the spirit in which they mean
-to accomplish the day's journey.
-
-While these problems were being imperfectly solved, I walked down
-with the Governor and one of the Engineer officers to the Ripon Falls,
-which are but half a mile from the Commissioner's house, and the sound
-of whose waters filled the air. Although the cataract is on a moderate
-scale, both in height and volume, its aspect--and still more its
-situation--is impressive. The exit or overflow of the Great Lake is
-closed by a natural rampart or ridge of black rock, broken or worn
-away in two main gaps to release the waters. Through these the Nile
-leaps at once into majestic being, and enters upon its course as a
-perfect river three hundred yards wide. Standing upon the reverse side
-of the wall of rock, one's eye may be almost on a plane with the
-shining levels of the Lake. At your very feet, literally a yard away,
-a vast green slope of water races downward. Below are foaming rapids,
-fringed by splendid trees, and pools from which great fish leap
-continually in the sunlight. We must have spent three hours watching
-the waters and revolving plans to harness and bridle them. So much
-power running to waste, such a coign of vantage unoccupied, such a
-lever to control the natural forces of Africa ungripped, cannot but
-vex and stimulate imagination. And what fun to make the immemorial
-Nile begin its journey by diving through a turbine! But to our tale.
-
-  [Illustration: FOREST SCENE NEAR RIPON FALLS.]
-
-The porters had by now got far on their road, and we must pad after
-them through the full blaze of noon. The Governor of Uganda and his
-officers have to return to Entebbe by the steamer, so it is here I bid
-them good-bye and good luck, and with a final look at Ripon Falls,
-gleaming and resounding below, I climb the slopes of the river bank
-and walk off into the forest. The native path struck north-east from
-the Nile, and led into a hilly and densely wooded region. The
-elephant-grass on each side of the track rose fifteen feet high. In
-the valleys great trees grew and arched above our heads, laced and
-twined together with curtains of flowering creepers. Here and there a
-glade opened to the right or left, and patches of vivid sunlight
-splashed into the gloom. Around the crossings of little streams
-butterflies danced in brilliant ballets. Many kinds of birds flew
-about the trees. The jungle was haunted by game--utterly lost in its
-dense entanglements. And I think it a sensation all by itself to walk
-on your own feet, and staff in hand, along these mysterious paths,
-amid such beautiful, yet sinister, surroundings, and realize that one
-is really in the centre of Africa, and a long way from Piccadilly or
-Pall Mall.
-
-Our first march was about fourteen miles, and as we had not started
-till the hot hours of the day were upon us, it was enough and to spare
-so far as I was concerned. Up-hill and down-hill wandered our path,
-now plunged in the twilight of a forest valley, now winding up the
-side of a scorched hill, and I had for some time been hoping to see
-the camp round every corner, when at last we reached it. It consisted
-of two rows of green tents and a large "banda," or rest-house, as big
-as a large barn in England, standing in a nice, trim clearing. These
-"bandas" are a great feature of African travel; and the dutiful chief
-through whose territory we are passing had taken pains to make them on
-the most elaborate scale. He was not long in making his appearance
-with presents of various kinds. A lanky, black-faced sheep, with a fat
-tail as big as a pumpkin, was dragged forward, bleating, by two
-retainers. Others brought live hens and earthenware jars of milk and
-baskets of little round eggs. The chief was a tall, intelligent-looking
-man, with the winning smile and attractive manners characteristic
-of the country, and made his salutations with a fine air of dignity
-and friendship.
-
-  [Illustration: PALM TREE NEAR THE ASUA.]
-
-  [Illustration: BANDA WITH ESCORT OF KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES.]
-
-The house he had prepared for us was built of bamboo framework,
-supported upon a central row of Y-shaped tree-stems, with a
-high-pitched roof heavily thatched with elephant-grass, and walls of
-wattled reeds. The floors of African "bandas" when newly made are
-beautifully smooth and clean, and strewn with fresh green rushes; the
-interior is often cunningly divided into various apartments, and the
-main building is connected with kitchens and offices of the same
-unsubstantial texture by veranda-shaded passages. In fact, they prove
-a high degree of social knowledge and taste in the natives, who make
-them with almost incredible rapidity from the vegetation of the
-surrounding jungle; and the sensation of entering one of these lofty,
-dim, cool, and spacious interiors, and sinking into the soft rush-bed
-of the floor, with something to drink which is, at any rate, not
-tepid, well repays the glaring severities of a march under an
-Equatorial sun. The "banda," however, is a luxury of which the
-traveller should beware, for if it has stood for more than a week it
-becomes the home of innumerable insects, many of approved malevolence
-and venom, and spirillum fever is almost invariably caught from
-sleeping in old shelters or on disused camping-grounds.
-
-Life "on Safari" is rewarded by a sense of completeness and
-self-satisfied detachment. You have got to "do" so many miles a day,
-and when you have "done" them your day's work is over. 'Tis a simple
-programme, which leaves nothing more to be demanded or desired. Very
-early in the morning, often an hour before daybreak, the bugles of the
-King's African Rifles sounded reveille. Every one dresses hurriedly by
-candle-light, eats a dim breakfast while dawn approaches; tents
-collapse, and porters struggle off with their burdens. Then the march
-begins. The obvious thing is to walk. There is no surer way of keeping
-well in Uganda than to walk twelve or fourteen miles a day. But if the
-traveller will not make the effort, there are alternatives. There is
-the rickshaw, which was described in the last chapter--restful, but
-tedious; and the litter, carried on the heads of six porters of
-different sizes, and shifted every now and then, with a disheartening
-jerk, to their shoulders and back again--this is quite as
-uncomfortable as it sounds. Ponies cannot, or at least do not, live in
-Uganda, though an experiment was just about to be made with them by
-the Chief of the Police, who is convinced that with really careful
-stable management, undertaken in detail by the owner himself, they
-could be made to flourish. Mules have a better chance, though still
-not a good one. We took one with us on the last spell of "Safari" to
-Gondokoro, and were told it was sure to die; but we left it in
-apparently excellent condition and spirits.
-
-  [Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT.]
-
-But the best of all methods of progression in Central Africa--however
-astonishing it may seem--is the bicycle. In the dry season the paths
-through the bush, smoothed by the feet of natives, afford an excellent
-surface. Even when the track is only two feet wide, and when the
-densest jungle rises on either side and almost meets above the head,
-the bicycle skims along, swishing through the grass and brushing the
-encroaching bushes, at a fine pace; and although at every few hundred
-yards sharp rocks, loose stones, a water-course, or a steep hill
-compel dismounting, a good seven miles an hour can usually be
-maintained. And think what this means. From my own experience I should
-suppose that with a bicycle twenty-five to thirty miles a day could
-regularly be covered in Uganda, and, if only the porters could keep
-up, all journeys could be nearly trebled, and every white officer's
-radius of action proportionately increased.
-
-Nearly all the British officers I met already possessed and used
-bicycles, and even the native chiefs are beginning to acquire them.
-But what is needed to make the plan effective is a good system of
-stone, fumigated, insect-proof rest-houses at stages of thirty miles
-on all the main lines of communication. Such a development would mean
-an enormous saving in the health of white officials and a valuable
-accession to their power. Had I known myself before coming to Uganda
-the advantages which this method presents, I should have been able to
-travel far more widely through the country by the simple expedient of
-trebling the stages of my journeys, and sending porters on a week in
-advance to pitch camps and deposit food at wide intervals. And then,
-instead of merely journeying from one Great Lake to the other, I
-could, _within the same limits of time_, have explored the fertile
-and populous plateau of Toro, descended the beautiful valley of the
-Semliki, and traversed the Albert Lake from end to end, and skirted
-the slopes of Ruenzori. "If youth but knew...!"
-
-But the march, however performed, has its termination; and if, as is
-recommended, you stop to breakfast and rest upon the way, the new camp
-will be almost ready upon arrival. During the heat of the day every
-one retires to his tent or to the more effective shelter of the
-"banda," to read and sleep till the evening. Then as the sun gets low
-we emerge to smoke and talk, and there is, perhaps, just time for the
-energetic to pursue an antelope, or shoot a few guinea-fowl or
-pigeons.
-
-With the approach of twilight comes the mosquito, strident-voiced and
-fever-bearing; and the most thorough precautions have to be taken
-against him and other insect dangers. We dine in a large
-mosquito-house made entirely of fine gauze, and about twelve feet
-cubically. The bedding, which should if possible be packed in tin
-boxes, is unrolled during the day, and carefully protected by
-mosquito-nets well tucked in, against all forms of vermin. Every one
-puts on mosquito-boots--long, soft, leather leggings, reaching to the
-hips. You are recommended not to sit on cane-bottomed chairs without
-putting a newspaper or a cushion on them, to wear a cap, a scarf, and
-possibly gloves, and to carry a swishing mosquito-trap. Thus one
-moves, comparatively secure, amid a chorus of ferocious buzzings.
-
-To these precautions are added others. You must never walk barefoot on
-the floor, no matter how clean it is, or an odious worm, called a
-"jigger," will enter your foot to raise a numerous family and a
-painful swelling. On the other hand, be sure when you put on boots or
-shoes that, however hurried, you turn them upside down and look
-inside, lest a scorpion, a small snake, or a perfectly frightful kind
-of centipede may be lying in ambush. Never throw your clothes
-carelessly upon the ground, but put them away at once in a tin box,
-and shut it tight, or a perfect colony of fierce-biting creatures will
-beset them. And, above all, quinine! To the permanent resident in
-these strange countries no drug can be of much avail; for either its
-protection is diminished with habit, or the doses have to be
-increased to impossible limits. But the traveller, who is passing
-through on a journey of only a few months, may recur with safety and
-with high advantage to that admirable prophylactic. Opinions differ as
-to how it should be taken. The Germans, with their love of exactness
-even in regard to the most uncertain things, prescribe thirty grains
-on each seventh day and eighth day alternately. We followed a simpler
-plan of taking a regular ten grains every day, from the moment we left
-Port Said till we arrived at Khartoum. No one in my party suffered
-from fever even for a day during the whole journey.
-
-Our second day's march was about the same in length and character,
-except that we were nearer the river, and as the path led through the
-twilight of the forest we saw every now and then a gleam of broad
-waters on our left. At frequent intervals--five or six times during
-the day--long caravans of native porters were met carrying the produce
-of the fertile districts between Lake Chioga and Mount Elgon into
-Jinja. Nothing could better show the need of improved communications
-than this incipient and potential trade--ready to begin and thrusting
-forward along bush-paths on the heads of tottering men. For the rest,
-the country near the river seemed the densest and most impenetrable
-jungle, hiding in its recesses alike its inhabitants and its game.
-
-The third morning, however, brought us among "shambas," as the patches
-of native cultivation are called; and the road was among plantations
-of bananas, millet, cotton, castor-oil, and chilies. Here in Usoga, as
-throughout Uganda, the one staple crop is the banana; and as this
-fruit, when once planted, grows and propagates of its own accord,
-requiring no thought or exertion, it finds special favour with the
-improvident natives, and sustains them year after year in leisured
-abundance, till a sudden failure and a fearful famine restore the
-harsh balances of the world.
-
-After a tramp of twelve miles, and while it was still comparatively
-early--for we had started before dawn--we reached Kakindu. The track
-led out of the forest of banana-groves downwards into more open spaces
-and blazing sunlight, and there before us was the Nile. Already--forty
-miles from its source, near four thousand from its mouth--it was a
-noble river: nearly a third of a mile in breadth of clear, deep water
-rolling forward majestically between banks of foliage and verdure. The
-"Chioga flotilla," consisting of the small steam launch, _Victoria_, a
-steel boat, and two or three dug-out canoes, scooped out of
-tree-trunks, awaited us; and after the long, hot business of embarking
-the baggage and crowding the native servants in among it, was
-completed, we parted from our first relay of escorts and porters, and
-drifted out on the flood.
-
-The next three days of our life were spent on the water--first
-cruising down the Victoria Nile till it flows into Chioga, and then
-traversing the smooth, limpid expanses of that lake. Every evening we
-landed at camps prepared by the Busoga chiefs, pitched our tents,
-lighted our fires, and erected our mosquito-houses, while dusk drew
-on, and thunderstorms--frequent at this season of the year--wheeled in
-vivid splendour about the dark horizon. All through the hot hours of
-the day one lay at the bottom of massive canoes, sheltered from the
-sun by an improvised roof of rushes and wet grass. From time to time a
-strange bird, or, better still, the rumour of a hippo--nose just
-peeping above the water--enlivened the slow and sultry passage of the
-hours; and one great rock, crowded with enormous crocodiles, all of
-whom--a score at least--leaped together into the water at the first
-shot, afforded at least one really striking spectacle.
-
-As the Victoria Nile approaches Lake Chioga, it broadens out into wide
-lagoons, and the sloping banks of forest and jungle give place to
-unbroken walls of papyrus-reeds, behind which the flat, surrounding
-country is invisible, and above which only an isolated triangular hill
-may here and there be descried, purple in the distance. The lake
-itself is about fifty miles long from east to west, and eleven broad,
-but its area and perimeter are greatly extended by a series of long
-arms, or rather fingers, stretching out in every direction, but
-especially to the north, and affording access by water to very wide
-and various districts. All these arms, and even a great part of the
-centre of the lake, are filled with reeds, grass, and water-lilies,
-for Chioga is the first of the great sponges upon which the Nile
-lavishes its waters. Although a depth of about twelve feet can usually
-be counted on, navigation is impeded by floating weeds and
-water-plants; and when the storms have swept the northern shore,
-numerous papyrus-tangled islands, complete with their populations of
-birds and animals, are detached, and swim erratically about the lake
-to block accustomed channels and puzzle the pilot.
-
-For one long day our little palpitating launch, towing its flotilla of
-canoes, plashed through this curious region, at times winding through
-a glade in the papyrus forest scarcely a dozen yards across, then
-presently emerging into wide flood, stopping often to clear our
-propeller from tangles of accumulating greenery. The middle of the
-lake unrolls large expanses of placid water. The banks and reeds
-recede into the distance, and the whole universe becomes a vast
-encircling blue globe of sky and water, rimmed round its middle by a
-thin band of vivid green. Time vanishes, and nothing is left but space
-and sunlight.
-
-All this while we must carefully avoid the northern, and particularly
-the north-western shore, for the natives are altogether
-unadministered, and nearly all the tribes are hostile. To pursue the
-elephants which, of course (so they say), abound in these forbidden
-precincts is impossible; to land for food or fuel would be dangerous,
-and even to approach might draw a splutter of musketry or a shower of
-spears from His Majesty's yet unpersuaded subjects.
-
-The Nile leaves the north-west corner of the lake at Namasali and
-flows along a broad channel above a mile in width, still enclosed by
-solid papyrus walls and dotted with floating islands. Another forty
-miles of steaming and we reach Mruli. Mruli is a representative
-African village. Its importance is more marked upon the maps than on
-the ground. An imposing name in large black letters calls up the idea
-of a populous and considerable township. All that meets the eye,
-however, are a score of funnel-shaped grass huts, surrounded by dismal
-swamps and labyrinths of reeds, over which clouds of mosquitoes danced
-feverishly. A long wattled pier had been built from terra firma to
-navigable water, but the channel by which it could be approached had
-been wholly blocked by a floating island, and this had to be towed
-painfully out of the way before we could land. Here we were met by a
-fresh escort of King's African Rifles, as spick and span in uniform,
-as precise in their military bearing, as if they were at Aldershot; by
-a mob of fresh porters, and, lastly, by the only friendly tribe
-from the northern bank of the river: and while tents were pitched,
-baggage landed, and cooking-fires began to glow, these four hundred
-wild spearmen, casting aside their leopard skins, danced naked in the
-dusk.
-
-  [Illustration: LANDING AT MRULI.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-MURCHISON FALLS
-
-
-We had intended, on leaving the Nile where it turns northward at
-Mruli, to march directly across to Hoima, on the Albert Lake; and this
-journey, by way of Masindi, would have required four marches. But
-tales of the beauty and wonder of the Murchison Falls had captivated
-my mind, and before embarking at Kakindu a new plan had been resolved.
-Runners were sent back to the telegraph wire at Jinja, and thence a
-message was flashed by Kampala to Hoima, directing the flotilla which
-awaited us there, to steam to the north end of the Albert and meet us
-by the foot of the Murchison Falls at Fajao. Thither we were now to
-proceed by five marches--two to Masindi and three more turning
-northward to the Nile.
-
-The road from Mruli consists of a sort of embanked track through
-low-lying and desolate scrub and jungle. The heavy black cotton soil,
-cracked and granulated by the heat, offered at this time a hardened if
-uneven surface to the bicycle; but in the rains such paths must become
-utterly impassable. As one advances westward the country improves
-rapidly in aspect. The dismal flats of the South Chioga shore are left
-behind, and the traveller discovers more characteristic Uganda scenery
-in a region of small hills and great trees. Before Masindi is reached
-we are again in a rich and beautiful land. Pools of shining water, set
-in verdant green, flash back the sunbeams. Bold bluffs and ridges rise
-on all sides from amid the unceasing undulations of the ground.
-Streams plash merrily downwards through rocky channels. The yellow
-grass roofs of frequent villages peep from underneath their groves of
-bananas among broad streaks of cultivated ground, and chiefs and
-headmen salute the stranger with grave yet curious politeness as the
-long "safari" winds beneath the trees.
-
-The heat grows as the altitude dwindles, and even in the early morning
-the sun sits hard and heavy on the shoulders. At ten o'clock its power
-is tremendous. So long as the roadway consisted of nobbly lumps of
-black cotton soil bicycling, though possible in places, was scarcely
-pleasant. But the change in the landscape arises from the change in
-the soil. The fields are now of bright red earth, the paths of red
-sandstone washed in places almost as smooth and as firm as asphalt by
-the rains and sparkling with crystalline dust; and when the ridges
-which form the watershed between Lake Chioga and Lake Albert had been
-topped, my bicycle glided almost without impulsion down four miles of
-gradual descent into Masindi. This station--which is the residence of
-a collector--lies embosomed in a wide bay of gently-sloping hills
-clothed with noble trees. It is indeed a pleasant spot. There are real
-houses, standing on high stone platforms, with deep verandas and wire
-gauze windows. The roads are laid out in bold geometry of broad red
-lines. There are avenues of planted trees, delicious banks of flowers,
-a prepared breakfast, _cold_, not cool, drinks, a telegraph office,
-and a file of the _Times_. What more could an explorer desire or the
-Fates accord?
-
-We were now to strike northwards to the Nile at Fajao in three long
-marches (for the porters) of about sixteen miles each. Upon the Hoima
-road some preparations had been made to make the journey easier by
-clearing the encroaching jungle from the track and constructing
-rest-houses. But my change of plan had disconcerted these
-arrangements, and on the new route we had to clear our own paths from
-the overgrowth by which even in a season, if unused, they are choked,
-and to trust to tents and improvised shelters. Progress was therefore
-slow and camps unpretentious. But all was redeemed by the wonders of
-the scene.
-
-For a whole day we crept through the skirts of the Hoima forest, amid
-an exuberance of vegetation which is scarcely describable. I had
-travelled through tropical forests in Cuba and India, and had often
-before admired their enchanting, yet sinister, luxuriance. But the
-forests of Uganda, for magnificence, for variety of form and colour,
-for profusion of brilliant life--plant, bird, insect, reptile,
-beast--for the vast scale and awful fecundity of the natural processes
-that are beheld at work, eclipsed, and indeed effaced, all previous
-impressions. One becomes, not without a secret sense of aversion, the
-spectator of an intense convulsion of life and death. Reproduction and
-decay are locked struggling in infinite embraces. In this glittering
-Equatorial slum huge trees jostle one another for room to live;
-slender growths stretch upwards--as it seems in agony--towards
-sunlight and life. The soil bursts with irrepressible vegetations.
-Every victor, trampling on the rotting mould of exterminated
-antagonists, soars aloft only to encounter another host of aerial
-rivals, to be burdened with masses of parasitic foliage, smothered in
-the glorious blossoms of creepers, laced and bound and interwoven with
-interminable tangles of vines and trailers. Birds are as bright as
-butterflies; butterflies are as big as birds. The air hums with flying
-creatures; the earth crawls beneath your foot. The telegraph-wire runs
-northward to Gondokoro through this vegetable labyrinth. Even its
-poles had broken into bud!
-
-As we advanced, continually rising or falling with the waves of the
-land, and moving in rapid alternations from a blazing patch of
-sunshine into a cloistered dimness, every now and then the path became
-smooth, broad, and of firm sandstone. And here one could watch the
-columns of marching soldier-ants. Perhaps in a hundred yards the road
-would be crossed four times by these fierce armies. They move in
-regular array, and upon purposes at once inscrutable and unswerving. A
-brown band, perhaps two inches broad and an inch and a half _deep_, is
-drawn across your track. Its ends are lost in the recesses of the
-jungle. It moves unceasingly and with a multiplied rapidity; for each
-ant runs swiftly forward, whether upon the ground or upon the backs of
-his already moving comrades. About a yard away, on each side of the
-main column, are the screening lines of the flank-guards, and for five
-yards beyond this every inch is searched, every object is examined by
-tireless and fearless reconnoitring patrols. Woe to the enemy who is
-overtaken by these hordes. No matter what his size or nature, he is
-attacked at once by an ever-increasing number of assailants, each one
-of whom, upon remorseless instinct, plunges his strong mandibles in
-the flesh, and will have his head pulled off his shoulders rather than
-let go.
-
-These ant armies fascinated me. I could not resist interfering with
-them. With my walking-stick I gently broke the column and pushed the
-swarming rope off its line of march. Their surprise, their confusion,
-their indignation were extreme. But not for an instant did they pause.
-In a second the scouts were running all over my boots eagerly seeking
-an entry, and when I looked back from this to the walking-stick I held
-it was already alive. With a gesture so nimble that it might have been
-misunderstood, I cast it from me and jumped back out of the danger
-circle until I found refuge on a large rock at a respectful distance.
-The Soudanese sergeant-major of the escort, a splendid negro, drilled
-as smart as a Grenadier Guardsman and with a good long row of medal
-ribbons on his khaki tunic, so far forgot himself as to grin from ear
-to ear. But his gravity was fully restored when I invited him to
-rescue my walking-stick, which lay abandoned on the field in the
-mandibles of the victorious enemy. The devoted man was, however, equal
-to the crisis.
-
-I have a sad tale also to tell of the perversity of butterflies. Never
-were seen such flying fairies. They flaunted their splendid liveries
-in inconceivable varieties of colour and pattern in our faces at every
-step. Swallow-tails, fritillaries, admirals, tortoise-shells,
-peacocks, orange-tips--all executed in at least a dozen novel and
-contrasted styles, with many even more beautiful, but bearing no
-resemblance to our British species--flitted in sunshine from flower to
-flower, glinted in the shadow of great trees, or clustered on the path
-to suck the moisture from any swampy patch. The butterfly is a dirty
-feeder, and if ever some piece of putrescent filth lay odorous on the
-ground, be sure it would be covered with a cloud of these greedy
-insects, come in such gay attire to eat such sorry meat. I found them
-sometimes so intoxicated with feasting that I could pick them up quite
-gently in my fingers without the need of any net at all.
-
-To any one who has ever tried to collect the modest and now all too
-rare and scattered butterflies of Britain, these sights could not but
-be a hard temptation. For a week I had resisted it, not because it was
-not easy enough to make a net, but because of the difficulty of
-setting and preserving the prizes; and it was not until the end of our
-first day's march out from Masindi that I was told that much the best
-way of sending butterflies home from Africa was to enclose them in
-neatly-folded triangles of paper and leave them to be set in London.
-Forthwith, out of telegraph-wire and mosquito-curtain, a net was made,
-and before another dawn I was fully equipped. It is almost incredible
-to state that from that very moment, except near the Murchison Falls,
-I scarcely ever saw a really fine butterfly again all the way to
-Gondokoro. Whether this was due to the intelligent perversity of these
-insects, or to the fact that we had left the deeper recesses of the
-forest region, I do not inquire; but the fact remains, and I carry
-away from the butterflies of Uganda only the haunting memories of
-unrealized opportunity.
-
-This first day's march from Masindi was a long one, and our porters
-panted and toiled under their loads through the heat of the day. It
-was not till the afternoon that the main body came into camp, and
-stragglers trickled through into the dusk. Meanwhile the local natives
-built under our eyes, with extraordinary speed and cleverness, a
-spacious dining-hall and two or three quite excellent bedrooms from
-the surrounding elephant-grass and bamboo groves; and we fared as
-comfortably in these two humble dwellings as if we dwelt in kings'
-palaces. The forest was a little thinner on the second day, although
-the jungle was of the same dense and tangled fertility. We started an
-hour before sunrise, and by eight o'clock had climbed to the saddle of
-the high rocky wall which contains the valley of the Victoria Nile.
-From this elevation of, perhaps, six hundred feet above the general
-level of the plain a comprehensive view of the landscape was for the
-first time possible. In every direction spread a wide sea of foliage,
-thinning here into bush, darkening there into forest, rising and
-falling with the waves of the land, and broken only by occasional
-peaks of rock. Far away to the north-west a long silver gleam, just
-discernible through the haze of the horizon, revealed to our eyes the
-distant prospect of the Albert Nyanza. The camera cannot do justice to
-such a panorama. In photographs these vast expanses look like mere
-scrubby commons, inhospitable and monotonous to the eye, melancholy to
-the soul. One has to remember that here are Kew Gardens and the Zoo
-combined on an unlimited scale; that Nature's central productive
-laboratory is here working night and day at full blast; and that the
-scrubby common of the picture is really a fairyland of glades and
-vistas, through which an army of a hundred thousand men might march
-without the glint of a bayonet, or even the dust of an artillery
-column, betraying their presence to the watcher on the crag.
-
-Our camp this night lay in a tiny patch cleared in the heart of this
-wild world. The cluster of tents under a canopy of palms, illumined by
-the watch-fires, bright with lanterns, and busy with the moving
-figures of men and the hum of human activity, seemed at a hundred
-yards' distance an island of society amid an ocean of Nature. To what
-strange perils--apart altogether from the certainty of losing your
-way--would a walk of a quarter of a mile in any direction expose the
-wanderer? To withdraw from the firelight was to be engulfed in the
-savage conditions of prehistoric time. Advance, and the telegraph-wire
-would tell you the latest quotations of the London markets, the
-figures of the newest by-election. An odd sensation!
-
-  [Illustration: MURCHISON FALLS.]
-
-We had scarce proceeded for an hour on our third march, when just as
-it grew daylight a low vibrant murmur began to be perceptible in the
-air. Now it was lost as we descended into some moist valley, now it
-broke even more strongly on the ear as we reached the summit of some
-ascent--the sound of the Nile plunging down the Murchison Falls. And
-by nine o'clock, when we were still about ten miles off, a loud,
-insistent, and unceasing hum had developed. These Falls are certainly
-the most remarkable in the whole course of the Nile. At Foweira the
-navigable reaches stretching from Lake Chioga are interrupted by
-cataracts, and the river hurries along in foam and rapid down a
-gradual but continuous stairway, enclosed by rocky walls, but still a
-broad flood. Two miles above Fajao these walls contract suddenly till
-they are _not six yards apart_, and through this strangling portal, as
-from the nozzle of a hose, the whole tremendous river is shot in one
-single jet down an abyss of a hundred and sixty feet.
-
-The escarpment over which the Nile falls curves away in a vast bay of
-precipitous, or almost precipitous, cliffs, broken here and there by
-more gradual rifts, and forms the eastern wall of the Albert Lake,
-from whose waters it rises abruptly in many places to a height of six
-or seven hundred feet. Arrived at the verge of this descent, the lower
-reaches of the Victoria Nile could be discerned, stretching away mile
-after mile in a broad, gleaming ribbon almost to its mouth on the
-lake. The Falls themselves were, indeed, invisible, concealed behind a
-forested bluff, but their roaring left no doubt of their presence.
-Below me a zigzag path led down by long descents to the water's edge,
-and on an open meadow a row of tents and grass houses had already been
-set up.
-
-Fajao as a native town was no more. At hardly any point in Uganda has
-the sleeping sickness made such frightful ravages. At least six
-thousand persons had perished in the last two years. Almost the whole
-population had been swept away. Scarcely enough remained to form the
-deputation, who, in their white robes, could be distinguished at the
-entrance to the cleared area of the camping-ground. And this cleared
-area was itself of the utmost importance; for all around it the powers
-of evil were strong. The groves which fringed and overhung the river
-swarmed with tsetse flies of newly-replenished venom and approved
-malignity, and no man could enter them except at a risk. After pausing
-for a few minutes to watch a troop of baboons who were leaping
-about from tree to tree on the opposite hill, and who seemed as big as
-men, I climbed down the zigzag, photographed the deputation, and shook
-hands with the chief. He was a very civilized chief--by name James
-Kago--who wore riding-breeches and leather gaiters, and who spoke a
-few unexpected sentences of excellent English. He seemed in the best
-of spirits, and so did the remnant of the population who gathered
-behind him, though whether this was due to stoical philosophy or good
-manners, I could not tell. All was smiles and bows and gurglings of
-guttural gratification. The district officer who had travelled with me
-explained that the chief had had the path up to the top of the Falls
-improved, and that he proposed, after we had lunched and rested, to
-guide us along it to the very edge of the abyss, but that the forest
-along the river-bank was so dangerous because of the tsetses that we
-should in prudence wear veils and gloves before entering it. With all
-of this I made no quarrel.
-
-  [Illustration: FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US.]
-
-In a little rocky inlet forming a small natural harbour we found the
-Albert flotilla already arrived. It consisted of the _Kenia_, a
-steam-launch about forty feet long, decked, and with a cabin, and
-drawing four feet of water, and three steel sailing-boats of different
-sizes--to wit, the _James Martin_, the _Good Intent_, and the
-_Kisingiri_. These small vessels were to carry us down the Victoria
-Nile into the Albert Nyanza, across the top end of this lake, and then
-down the hundred and seventy miles' reach of the White Nile till
-navigation is barred at Nimule by more cataracts. They were manned by
-a crew of jolly Swahili tars smartly dressed in white breeches and
-blue jerseys, on whose breasts the words "Uganda Marine" were worked
-in yellow worsted. The engineer of the steam-launch commanded the
-whole with plenary powers of discipline and diplomacy; and it was by
-means of this little group of cock-boats that trade and communications
-with the Nile province and around the whole of Lake Albert were alone
-maintained. The flotilla, nestling together in its harbour and
-sheltered by a rocky breakwater from the swift current, made a pretty
-picture; and behind it the Nile, streaked and often covered with the
-creamy foam of the Falls, swept along in majestic flood six hundred
-yards from brim to brim.
-
-  [Illustration: FLOTILLA AT FAJAO.]
-
-We began our climb to the summit of the Falls in the blazing heat
-of the day, and for the first time I was forced to confess the Central
-African sun as formidable as that which beats on the plains of India.
-Yet even at the worst moments it is more endurable, for the breeze
-does not stifle you with the breath of a furnace. First the path led
-through the deadly groves; and here, of course, the most beautiful
-butterflies--some five inches across the wings--floated tantalizingly.
-Sometimes we descended to where the river lapped along the rocks and
-curled in eddies under floating islands of froth. Precautions were
-required against diverse dangers. The Nile below the Murchison Falls
-swarms with crocodiles, some of an enormous size, and herds of
-hippopotamus are found every half mile or so; so that, what with the
-rifles which it was necessary to take for great beasts, and the gloves
-and veils which were our protection against even more villainous small
-ones, we were painfully encumbered. Indeed, the veils were such a
-nuisance and the heat was so great that I resolved to hazard the
-tsetse and took mine off. But after half an hour of menacing buzzings,
-and after a fly--presumably of the worst character--had actually
-settled on my shoulder, brushed off by the promptness of my
-companion, I changed my mind again.
-
-As we were thus scrambling along the brink of the river a crocodile
-was discovered basking in the sunshine on a large rock in mid-stream,
-about a hundred and fifty yards from the shore. I avow, with what
-regrets may be necessary, an active hatred of these brutes and a
-desire to kill them. It was a tempting shot, for the ruffian lay
-sleeping in the sun-blaze, his mouth wide open and his fat and scaly
-flanks exposed. Two or three attendant white birds hopped about him,
-looking for offal, which I have been assured (and does not Herodotus
-vouch for it?) they sometimes pick from his very teeth. I fired. What
-the result of the shot may have been I do not know, for the crocodile
-gave one leap of mortal agony or surprise and disappeared in the
-waters. But then it was my turn to be astonished. The river at this
-distance from the Falls was not broader than three hundred yards, and
-we could see the whole shore of the opposite bank quite plainly. It
-had hitherto appeared to be a long brown line of mud, on which the sun
-shone dully. At the sound of the shot the whole of this bank of the
-river, over the extent of at least a quarter of a mile, sprang into
-hideous life, and my companions and I saw hundreds and hundreds of
-crocodiles, of all sorts and sizes, rushing madly into the Nile, whose
-waters along the line of the shore were lashed into white foam,
-exactly as if a heavy wave had broken. It could be no exaggeration to
-say that at least a thousand of these saurians had been disturbed at a
-single shot. Our British friends explained that Fajao was the
-favourite haunt of the crocodiles, who lay in the water below the
-Falls waiting for dead fish and animals carried over by the river.
-Very often, they told us, hippos from the upper river and from Lake
-Chioga were caught and swept downwards, the force of the water
-"breaking every bone in their body." "Indeed," added the officer,
-somewhat obscurely, "they are _very lucky_ if they are not smashed
-into pulp."
-
-  [Illustration: THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS.]
-
-  [Illustration: UGANDA SCENERY.]
-
-At length we turned a corner and came face to face with the Falls.
-They are wonderful to behold, not so much because of their
-height--though that is impressive--but because of the immense volume
-of water which is precipitated through such a narrow outlet. Indeed,
-seeing the great size of the river below the Falls, it seemed
-impossible to believe that it was wholly supplied from this single
-spout. In clouds of rainbow spray and amid thunderous concussions of
-sound we set to work to climb the southern side of the rock wall, and
-after an hour achieved the summit. It was possible to walk to within
-an inch of the edge and, lying on one's face with a cautious head
-craned over, to look actually down upon the foaming hell beneath. The
-narrowness of the gorge at the top had not been overstated. I doubt
-whether it is fifteen feet across from sheer rock to sheer rock. Ten
-pounds, in fact, would throw an iron bridge across the Nile at this
-point. But it is evident that the falling waters must have arched and
-caved away the rock below their surface in an extraordinary degree,
-for otherwise there could not possibly be room for the whole river to
-descend.
-
-We waited long at this strange place, watching the terrible waters,
-admiring their magnificent fury, trying to compute their force. Who
-can doubt that the bridle is preparing which shall hold and direct
-their strength, or that the day will come when forlorn Fajao--now
-depopulated and almost derelict--will throb with the machinery of
-manufacture and electric production? I cannot believe that modern
-science will be content to leave these mighty forces untamed, unused,
-or that regions of inexhaustible and unequalled fertility, capable of
-supplying all sorts of things that civilized industry needs in greater
-quantity every year, will not be brought--in spite of their insects
-and their climate--into cultivated subjection. Certain it is that the
-economy of the world remains hopelessly incomplete while these
-neglects prevail, and, while it would be wasteful and foolish to
-hustle, it would be more wasteful and more foolish to abate the steady
-progress of development.
-
-From these reflections I was roused abruptly by the Nile, a wave of
-whose turbulent waters--cast up by some unusual commotion as they
-approached the verge--boiled suddenly over a ledge of rock hitherto
-high and dry, carrying an ugly and perhaps indignant swish of water to
-my very feet.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-HIPPO CAMP
-
-
-It took no little time to stow all our baggage, food and tents upon
-the launch and its steel boats, and though our camp was astir at
-half-past three, the dawn was just breaking when we were able to
-embark. And then the _James Martin_ wedged herself upon a rock a few
-yards from the shore of the sheltering inlet, and seemed to have got
-herself hard and fast; for pull as we might with all the force of the
-launch at full steam, and the added weight of the current to help us,
-not an inch would she budge. Everything had, therefore, to be unloaded
-again from the straggler, and when she had thus been lightened and her
-freight transferred to the attendant canoes, James Kago ordered his
-tribesmen to leap into the water, which was not more than five feet
-deep, and push and lift the little vessel whilst the steamer tugged.
-But this task the natives were most reluctant to perform out of
-fear of the crocodiles, who might at any moment make a pounce,
-notwithstanding all the noise and clatter. Thereupon the energetic
-chief seized hold of them one after another round the waist, and threw
-them full-splash into the stream, till at least twenty were
-accumulated round the boat, and then, what with their impatience to
-finish their uncomfortable job and our straining tow rope, the _James
-Martin_ floated free, was reloaded, and we were off.
-
-  [Illustration: THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO.]
-
-As we drifted out into mid-stream the most beautiful view of the falls
-broke upon us. It was already almost daylight, but the sun had not yet
-actually topped the great escarpment over which the Nile descends. The
-banks on both sides of the river, clad with dense and lofty forest and
-rising about twice as high as Cliveden Woods from the water's edge,
-were dark in shadow. The river was a broad sheet of steel grey veined
-with paler streaks of foam. The rock portals of the falls were jetty
-black, and between them, illumined by a single shaft of sunlight,
-gleamed the tremendous cataract--a thing of wonder and glory, well
-worth travelling all the way to see.
-
-We were soon among the hippopotami. Every two or three hundred yards,
-and at every bend of the river, we came upon a herd of from five to
-twenty. To us in a steam launch they threatened no resistance or
-danger. But their inveterate hostility to canoes leads to repeated
-loss of life among the native fishermen, whose frail craft are
-crumpled like eggshells in the snap of enormous jaws. Indeed, all the
-way from here to Nimule they are declared to be the scourge and terror
-of the Nile. Fancy mistaking a hippopotamus--almost the largest
-surviving mammal in the world--for a water lily. Yet nothing is more
-easy. The whole river is dotted with floating lilies detached from any
-root and drifting along contentedly with the current. It is the habit
-of the hippo to loll in the water showing only his eyes and the tips
-of his ears, and perhaps now and again a glimpse of his nose, and thus
-concealed his silhouette is, at three hundred yards, almost
-indistinguishable from the floating vegetation. I thought they also
-looked like giant cats peeping. So soon, however, as they saw us
-coming round a corner and heard the throbbing of the propeller, they
-would raise their whole heads out of the water to have a look, and
-then immediately dive to the bottom in disgust. Our practice was
-then to shut off steam and drift silently down upon them. In this way
-one arrives in the middle of the herd, and when curiosity or want of
-air compels them to come up again there is a chance of a shot. One
-great fellow came up to breathe within five yards of the boat, and the
-look of astonishment, of alarm, of indignation, in his large,
-expressive eyes--as with one vast snort he plunged below--was comical
-to see. These creatures are not easy to kill. They bob up in the most
-unexpected quarters, and are down again in a second. One does not like
-to run the risk of merely wounding them, and the target presented is
-small and vanishing. I shot one who sunk with a harsh sort of scream
-and thud of striking bullet. We waited about a long time for him to
-float up to the surface, but in vain, for he must have been carried
-into or under a bed of reeds and could not be retrieved.
-
-  [Illustration: EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO.]
-
-  [Illustration: FAJAO.]
-
-The Murchison, or Karuma, Falls, as the natives call them, are about
-thirty miles distance from the Albert Lake, and as with the current we
-made six or seven miles an hour, this part of our journey was short.
-Here the Nile offers a splendid waterway. The main channel is at least
-ten feet deep, and navigation, in spite of shifting sandbanks,
-islands, and entanglements of reeds and other vegetation, is not
-difficult. The river itself is of delicious, sweet water, and flows
-along in many places half-a-mile broad. Its banks for the first twenty
-miles were shaded by beautiful trees, and here and there contained by
-bold headlands, deeply scarped by the current. The serrated outline of
-the high mountains on the far side of the Albert Nyanza could soon be
-seen painted in shadow on the western sky. As the lake is approached
-the riparian scenery degenerates; the sandbanks became more intricate;
-the banks are low and flat, and huge marshes encroach upon the river
-on either hand. Yet even here the traveller moves through an imposing
-world.
-
-At length, after five or six hours' steaming, we cleared the mouth of
-the Victoria Nile and swam out on to the broad expanses of the lake.
-Happily on this occasion it was quite calm. How I wished then that I
-had not allowed myself to be deterred by time and croakers from a
-longer voyage, and that we could have turned to the south and,
-circumnavigating the Albert, ascended the Semliki river with all its
-mysterious attractions, have visited the forests on the south-western
-shores, and caught, perhaps, a gleam of the snows of Ruenzori! But we
-were in the fell grip of carefully-considered arrangements, and, like
-children in a Christmas toy shop always looking back, were always
-hurried on.
-
-Yet progress offered its prizes as well as delay. Some of my party had
-won the confidence of the engineer of the launch, who had revealed to
-them a valuable secret. It appeared that "somewhere between Lake
-Albert and Nimule"--not to be too precise--there was a place known
-only to the elect, and not to more than one or two of them, where
-elephants abounded and rhinoceros swarmed. And these rhinoceros, be it
-observed, were none of your common black variety with two stumpy horns
-almost equal in size, and a prehensile tip to their noses. Not at all;
-they were what are called "white" rhino--Burchell's white
-rhinoceros,[1] that is their full style--with one long, thin, enormous
-horn, perhaps a yard long--on their noses, and with broad, square
-upper lips. Naturally we were all very much excited, and in order to
-gain a day on our itinerary to study these very rare and remarkable
-animals more closely, we decided not to land and pitch a camp, but to
-steam on all through the night. Meanwhile our friend the engineer
-undertook to accomplish the difficult feat of finding the channel,
-with all its windings, in the dark.
-
-The scene as we left the Albert Lake and entered the White Nile was of
-surpassing beauty. The sun was just setting behind the high, jagged
-peaks of the Congo Mountains to the westward. One after another, and
-range behind range, these magnificent heights--rising perhaps to eight
-or nine thousand feet--unfolded themselves in waves of dark
-plum-coloured rock, crested with golden fire. The lake stretched away
-apparently without limit like the sea, towards the southward in an
-ever-broadening swell of waters--flushed outside the shadow of the
-mountains into a delicious pink. Across its surface our tiny
-flotilla--four on a string--paddled its way towards the narrowing
-northern shores and the channel of the Nile.
-
-  [Illustration: APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO HILLS IN THE
-    DISTANCE.]
-
-  [Illustration: WADELAI.]
-
-The White Nile leaves the Albert Lake in majesty. All the way to
-Nimule it is often more like a lake than a river. For the first twenty
-miles of its course it seemed to me to be at least two miles across.
-The current is gentle, and sometimes in the broad lagoons and bays
-into which the placid waters spread themselves it is scarcely
-perceptible. I slept under an awning in the _Kisingiri_, the last and
-smallest boat of the string, and, except for the native steersman and
-piles of baggage, had it all to myself. It was, indeed, delightful to
-lie fanned by cool breezes and lulled by the soothing lappings of the
-ripples, and to watch, as it were, from dreamland the dark outlines of
-the banks gliding swiftly past and the long moonlit levels of the
-water.
-
-At daybreak we were at Wadelai. In twenty-four hours from leaving
-Fajao we had made nearly a hundred miles of our voyage. Without the
-sigh of a single porter these small boats and launch had transported
-the whole of our "safari" over a distance which would on land have
-required the labours and sufferings of three hundred men during at
-least a week of unbroken effort. Such are the contrasts which impress
-upon one the importance of utilising the water-ways of Central
-Africa, of establishing a complete circulation along them, and of
-using railways in the first instance merely to link them together.
-
-Wadelai was deserted. Upon a high bank of the river stood a long row
-of tall, peaked, thatched houses, the walls of a fort, and buildings
-of European construction. All was newly abandoned to ruin. The
-Belgians are evacuating all their posts in the Lado enclave except
-Lado itself, and these stations, so laboriously constructed, so long
-maintained, will soon be swallowed by the jungle. The Uganda
-Government also is reducing its garrisons and administration in the
-Nile province, and the traveller sees, not without melancholy, the
-spectacle of civilization definitely in retreat after more than half a
-century of effort and experiment.
-
-We disembarked and climbed the slopes through high rank grass and
-scattered boulders till we stood amidst the rotting bungalows and
-shanties of what had been a bold bid for the existence of a town.
-Wadelai had been occupied by white men perhaps for fifty years. For
-half a century that feeble rush-light of modernity, of cigarettes, of
-newspapers, of whisky and pickles, had burned on the lonely banks of
-the White Nile to encourage and beckon the pioneer and settler. None
-had followed. Now it was extinguished; and yet when I surveyed the
-spacious landscape with its green expanses, its lofty peaks, its
-trees, its verdure, rising from the brink of the mighty and majestic
-river, I could not bring myself for a moment to believe that
-civilization has done with the Nile Province or the Lado Enclave, or
-that there is no future for regions which promise so much.
-
-All through the day we paddled prosperously with the stream. At times
-the Nile lost itself in labyrinths of papyrus, which reproduced the
-approaches to Lake Chioga, and through which we threaded a tortuous
-course, with many bumps and brushings at the bends. But more often the
-banks were good, firm earth, with here and there beautiful cliffs of
-red sandstone, hollowed by the water, and rising abruptly from its
-brim, crowned with luxuriant foliage. In places these cliffs were
-pierced by narrow roadways, almost tunnels, winding up to the high
-ground, and perfectly smooth and regular in their construction. They
-looked as if they were made on purpose to give access to and from the
-river; and so they had been--by the elephants. Legions of water-fowl
-inhabited the reeds, and troops of cranes rose at the approach of the
-flotilla. Sometimes we saw great, big pelican kind of birds, almost as
-big as a man, standing contemplative on a single leg, and often on the
-tree-tops a fish-eagle, glorious in bronze and cream, sat sunning
-himself and watching for a prey.
-
-I stopped once in the hope of catching butterflies, but found none of
-distinction--only a profuse variety of common types, a high level of
-mediocrity without beauties or commanders, and swarms of ferocious
-mosquitoes prepared to dispute the ground against all comers; and it
-was nearly four in the afternoon when the launch suddenly jinked to
-the left out of the main stream into a small semi-circular bay, five
-hundred yards across, and we came to land at "Hippo Camp."
-
-  [Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" NEARING
-    NIMULE.]
-
-  [Illustration: HIPPO CAMP.]
-
-We thought it was much too late to attempt any serious shooting that
-day. There were scarcely three and a half hours of daylight. But after
-thirty-six hours cramped on these little boats a walk through jungle
-was very attractive; and, accordingly, dividing ourselves into
-three parties, we started in three different directions--like the
-spokes of a wheel. Captain Dickinson, who commanded the escort, went
-to the right with the doctor; Colonel Wilson and another officer set
-out at right angles to the river bank; and I went to the left under
-the guidance of our friend the engineer. I shall relate very briefly
-what happened to each of us. The right-hand party got, after an hour's
-walking, into a great herd of elephants, which they numbered at over
-sixty. They saw no very fine bulls; they found themselves surrounded
-on every side by these formidable animals; and, the wind being shifty,
-the hour late, and the morrow free, they judged it wise to return to
-camp without shooting. The centre party, consisting of Colonel Wilson
-and his companion, came suddenly, after about a mile and a half's
-walk, upon a fine solitary bull elephant. They stalked him for some
-time, but he moved off, and, on perceiving himself followed, suddenly,
-without the slightest warning on his part and no great provocation on
-theirs, he threw up his trunk, trumpeted, and charged furiously down
-upon them; whereupon they just had time to fire their rifles in his
-face and spring out of his path. This elephant was followed for some
-miles, but it was not for three months afterwards that we learned that
-he had died of his wounds and that the natives had recovered his
-tusks.
-
-So much for my friends. Our third left party prowled off, slanting
-gradually away inland from the river's bank. It was a regular wild
-scrub country, with high grass and boulders and many moderate-sized
-trees and bushes, interspersed every hundred yards or so by much
-bigger ones. Near the Nile extensive swamps, with reeds fifteen feet
-high, ran inland in long bays and fingers, and these, we were told,
-were the haunts of white rhino. We must have walked along warily and
-laboriously for nearly three-quarters of an hour, when I saw through a
-glade at about two hundred yards distance a great dark animal. Judging
-from what I had seen in East Africa, I was quite sure it was a
-rhinoceros. We paused, and were examining it carefully with our
-glasses, when all of a sudden it seemed to treble in size, and the
-spreading of two gigantic ears--as big, they seemed, as the flaps of
-French windows--proclaimed the presence of the African elephant. The
-next moment another and another and another came into view, swinging
-leisurely along straight towards us--and the wind was almost dead
-wrong.
-
-We changed our position by a flank march of admirable celerity, and
-from the top of a neighbouring ant-bear hill watched, at the distance
-of about one hundred and fifty yards, the stately and awe-inspiring
-procession of eleven elephants. On they came, loafing along from foot
-to foot--two or three tuskers of no great merit, several large
-tuskless females, and two or three calves. On the back of every
-elephant sat at least one beautiful white egret, and sometimes three
-or four, about two feet high, who pecked at the tough hide--I presume
-for very small game--or surveyed the scene with the consciousness of
-pomp. These sights are not unusual to the African hunter. Those who
-dwell in the wilderness are the heirs of its wonders. But to me I
-confess it seemed a truly marvellous and thrilling experience to
-wander through a forest peopled by these noble Titans, to watch their
-mysterious, almost ghostly, march, to see around on every side, in
-large trees snapped off a few feet from the ground, in enormous
-branches torn down for sport, the evidences of their giant strength.
-And then, while we watched them roam down towards the water, I heard a
-soft swishing sound immediately behind us, and turning saw, not forty
-yards away, a splendid full-grown rhinoceros, with the long, thin horn
-of his rare tribe upon him--the famous white rhinoceros--Burchell
-himself--strolling placidly home after his evening drink and utterly
-unconscious of the presence of stranger or foe!
-
-We had very carefully judged our wind in relation to the elephants. It
-was in consequence absolutely wrong in relation to the rhinoceros. I
-saw that in another fifty yards he would walk right across it. For my
-own part, perched upon the apex of a ten-foot ant-bear cone, I need
-have no misgivings. I was perfectly safe. But my companions, and the
-native orderlies and sailors who were with us, enjoyed no such
-security. The consequences of not killing the brute at that range and
-with that wind would have been a mad charge directly through our
-party. A sense of responsibility no doubt restrained me; but I must
-also confess to the most complete astonishment at the unexpected
-apparition. While I was trying to hustle the others by signals and
-whispers into safer places; the rhino moved steadily, crossed the line
-of wind, stopped behind a little bush for a moment, and then, warned
-of his danger, rushed off into the deepest recesses of the jungle. I
-had thrown away the easiest shot I ever had in Africa. Meanwhile the
-elephants had disappeared.
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT HIPPO CAMP.]
-
-  [Illustration: BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE.]
-
-We returned with empty hands and beating hearts to camp, not without
-chagrin at the opportunity which had vanished, but with the keenest
-appetite and the highest hopes for the morrow. Thus in three hours and
-within four miles of our landing-place our three separate parties had
-seen as many of the greatest wild animals as would reward the whole
-exertion of an ordinary big-game hunt. As I dropped off to sleep that
-night in the little _Kisingiri_, moored in the bay, and heard the
-grunting barks of the hippo floating and playing all around, mingling
-with the cries of the birds and the soft sounds of wind and water, the
-African forest for the first time made an appeal to my heart,
-enthralling, irresistible, never to be forgotten.
-
-At the earliest break of day we all started in the same order, and
-with the sternest resolves. During the night the sailors had
-constructed out of long bamboo poles a sort of light tripod, which,
-serving as a tower of observation, enabled us to see over the top of
-the high grass and reeds, and this proved of the greatest convenience
-and advantage, troublesome though it was to drag along. We spent the
-whole morning prowling about, but the jungle, which twelve hours
-before had seemed so crowded with game of all kinds, seemed now
-utterly denuded. At last, through a telescope from a tree-top, we saw,
-or thought we saw, four or five elephants, or big animals of some
-kind, grazing about two miles away. They were the other side of an
-enormous swamp, and to approach them required not only traversing
-this, but circling through it for the sake of the wind.
-
-We plunged accordingly into this vast maze of reeds, following the
-twisting paths made through them by the game, and not knowing what we
-might come upon at every step. The ground under foot was quite firm
-between the channels and pools of mud and water. The air was stifling.
-The tall reeds and grasses seemed to smother one; and above, through
-their interlacement, shone the full blaze of the noonday sun. To wade
-and waddle through such country carrying a double-barrelled .450
-rifle, not on your shoulder, but in your hands for instant service,
-peering round every corner, suspecting every thorn-bush, for at least
-two hours, is not so pleasant as it sounds. We emerged at last on the
-farther side under a glorious tree, whose height had made it our
-beacon in the depths of the swamp, and whose far-spreading branches
-offered a delicious shade.
-
-It was three o'clock. We had been toiling for nine hours and had seen
-nothing--literally nothing. But from this moment our luck was
-brilliant. First we watched two wild boars playing at fighting in a
-little glade--a most delightful spectacle, which I enjoyed for two or
-three minutes before they discovered us and fled. Next a dozen
-splendid water-buck were seen browsing on the crest of a little ridge
-within easy shot, and would have formed the quarry of any day but
-this; but our ambition soared above them, and we would not risk
-disturbing the jungle for all their beautiful horns. Then, thirdly, we
-came slap up against the rhinoceros. How many I am not certain--four,
-at least. We had actually walked past them as they stood sheltering
-under the trees. Now, here they were, sixty yards away to the left
-rear--dark, dim, sinister bodies, just visible through the waving
-grass.
-
-When you fire a heavy rifle in cold blood it makes your teeth clatter
-and your head ache. At such a moment as this one is almost unconscious
-alike of report and recoil. It might be a shot-gun. The nearest rhino
-was broadside on. I hit him hard with both barrels, and down he went,
-to rise again in hideous struggles--head, ears, horn flourished
-agonizingly above the grass, as if he strove to advance, while I
-loaded and fired twice more. That was all I saw myself. Two other
-rhinos escaped over the hill, and a fourth, running the other way,
-charged the native sailors carrying our observation tower, who were
-very glad to drop it and scatter in all directions.
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS.]
-
-To shoot a good specimen of the white rhinoceros is an event
-sufficiently important in the life of a sportsman to make the day on
-which it happens bright and memorable in his calendar. But more
-excitement was in store for us before the night. About a mile from the
-spot where our victim lay we stopped to rest and rejoice, and, not
-least, refresh. The tower of observation--which had been dragged
-so painfully along all day--was set up, and, climbing it, I saw at
-once on the edge of the swamp no fewer than four more full-grown
-rhinoceros, scarcely four hundred yards away. A tall ant-hill, within
-easy range, gave us cover to stalk them, and the wind was exactly
-right. But the reader has dallied long enough in this hunter's
-paradise. It is enough to say that we killed two more of these
-monsters, while one escaped into the swamp, and the fourth charged
-wildly down upon us and galloped through our party without apparently
-being touched himself or injuring any one. Then, marking the places
-where the carcasses lay, we returned homeward through the swamp, too
-triumphant and too tired to worry about the enraged fugitives who
-lurked in its recesses. It was very late when we reached home, and our
-friends had already hewn the tusks out of a good elephant which
-Colonel Wilson had shot, and were roasting a buck which had
-conveniently replenished our larder.
-
-  [Illustration: COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT.]
-
-  [Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" ON THE
-    WHITE NILE.]
-
-Such was our day at Hippo Camp, to which the ardent sportsman is
-recommended to repair, when he can get some one to show him the way.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[1] "I am informed by the courtesy of Mr. Lydekker of the British
-Natural History Museum, that the true name of the white rhinoceros
-found in Uganda is _Rhinoceros Simus Cottoni_. 'Burchell's white
-rhinoceros' is the designation of the southern race; but I have
-preserved in the text the name commonly used in Uganda."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-DOWN THE WHITE NILE
-
-
-We lingered lovingly around Hippo camp for two more days, moving to
-other lagoons and overflows of the river with the launch, and striking
-out inland in search of the great herd of elephants. But although
-their recent presence was on all sides proclaimed by snapped-off trees
-and trampled ground, and broad lanes cut through the grass, we saw
-none of them; and a tribe of natives who helped to carry home a
-variety of buck one afternoon, informed us upon expert authority that
-the whole herd had been alarmed by the arrival of strangers and the
-sound of firing, and had retired three days' journey from the river's
-bank. These natives--of the Lado Enclave--were gentleman-like folk,
-and I parleyed long with them upon their affairs. They were stark
-naked and very dignified, with graceful athletic bodies, long
-tapering well-bred hands, and bright keen eyes. The local chief
-exhibited all these characteristics in a superior degree, and his
-natural preeminence was recognized with instantaneous obedience by his
-followers. We loaded them with gifts. First, quantities of meat and
-hides; then chocolate all round--they love sweet things--three pieces
-of sugar for each, at least one empty bottle per man, and tin pots and
-card-board boxes almost without limit. The chief showed a fine taste
-in all these things, and annexed at once in the Imperial style
-whatever took his fancy, to whomsoever it belonged. I cast about for
-some means of doing him especial honour, and luckily remembered that I
-had bought a Japanese _kimono_ for a dressing-gown in passing through
-Port Said on the journey out. With this he was forthwith enrobed, and
-I must say he assumed the flowing garment with that easy grace and
-natural self-possession which are the gifts of a wilderness life. Thus
-the fabrics of Cathay were by the enterprise of Europe introduced into
-the heart of Africa.
-
-When, finally, with much reluctance we left this attractive place and
-pushed off determinedly into the stream, we lost no time in making
-Nimule. Steaming throughout the night and all next day along a broad
-flood contained by high and healthy slopes--now clothed with forest,
-now with waving grass--we approached, at about four in the afternoon,
-the mountains beneath which is the administrative station of Nimule.
-Hitherto the course of the Nile since it left the Albert Lake had been
-smooth and open--a broad, steady-flowing river everywhere navigable to
-vessels of not more than four feet draught. But at Nimule, after a
-reach of more than a hundred and seventy miles of unobstructed
-waterway, the river turns a sharp right angle and enters a long
-succession of granite gorges, through which it plunges in ceaseless
-cataract for a hundred and twenty miles. It is here at the head of
-these rapids that one of the great reservoirs of the Upper Nile must
-some day be constructed. "I spent hours," said Sir William Willcocks,
-the "practical mystic" of hydraulic engineering, "looking at the site,
-and seeing in a vision a great regulating work of the future." And
-indeed the exact scientific control of the whole vast system of
-Central African waters, of the levels of every lake, of the flow of
-every channel, from month to month and from day to day throughout the
-year, is a need so obvious and undisputed as to leave argument
-unemployed.
-
-The change in the character of the river separated us finally from our
-flotilla. From Nimule to Gondokoro we must again proceed by land, and
-the swift and easy progress of the last few days must be exchanged for
-the steady grind of marches. It was this stage which had always been
-painted to me as the most dangerous and unhealthy in our whole
-journey, and I had pictured to myself eight days of toil through swamp
-and forest amid miasma and mosquitoes. These anticipations were not
-sustained. Of the disadvantages of the track along the river bank I
-cannot speak; but the upper road over the hills is certainly excellent
-and healthy, and runs throughout over firm dry undulations of a
-bright, breezy, scrub-covered country.
-
-At Nimule we touched the telegraph wire again, and from the Reuter's
-accumulations which I studied, I learned that Parliament would not
-meet till the 19th of January. This gave another ten days' more rope,
-and I began to realize how much the spirit of these wonderful lands
-had taken possession of me, for it was only with the greatest
-reluctance and difficulty, that I forced myself to continue my
-homeward journey without first turning back with the launch and
-circumnavigating Lake Albert. No exertion or inconvenience seemed too
-great to win a few more glimpses of these enchanted seas and gardens,
-on which I may perhaps not look again, but from whose spell I can
-never be free. Porters to be fed from day to day, the Sirdar's steamer
-waiting at the Soudan frontier, public meetings looming heavily in the
-far-off distance, drove me onward; and with feelings of keen and
-genuine regret we addressed ourselves to the march to Gondokoro.
-
-  [Illustration: FORDING THE ASUA.]
-
-This was accomplished uneventfully in six stages, three of which were
-double marches. The country was pleasant and healthy, the scenery
-imposing, and, under a fierce sun, the air was cool. Each morning we
-started before dawn, and by noon had camped by the side of one of the
-tributary rivers or streams which flow into the Nile. Of these the
-Asua was the most important, and the picture of the long _safari_
-fording it and coming into camp among the palm-trees of the southern
-bank is one which lingers pleasantly in my memory. But this I must
-say--somehow after Nimule the charm was broken, and none of the
-regions through which the traveller passes in the long-drawn descent
-of the Nile revive in any degree those delicious sensations of wonder
-and novelty which are associated with the great lakes and the kingdoms
-of Uganda, Usoga, and Unyoro, to say nothing of what I have not been
-fortunate enough to see--Toro, Ankole, the Semliki, and the Mountains
-of the Moon.
-
-At the end of the sixth day we arrived at Gondokoro. The last march
-had been long and scorching. The moisture seemed to have gone from the
-air, and the vegetation, abundant though it was, seemed parched and
-stunted. The approaches to Gondokoro are beset by a herd of three
-hundred elephants of peculiar ill-fame. Nearly all the eligible
-tuskers have been killed. The females and young bulls are fierce and
-wary, and, taught by frequent contact with the white man, and
-protected by the sacred game laws, exercise a lawless and tyrannical
-power over the whole region. On every side their depredations are to
-be seen. Great trees pushed over in careless sport, native plantations
-trampled into ruin, the roads rendered precarious for the traveller,
-the mails often interrupted for days at a time, and occasional loss of
-life, are the features of this domination. And it seems likely to last
-a long time, for I was informed that the young bulls would not be
-sufficiently grown for about forty years, and even then, as the two
-white officers in the station are not allowed to shoot more than one
-elephant apiece each year, the nuisance will only gradually be abated.
-
-Rogue elephants are of course fair game at any time, and the day
-before we arrived at Gondokoro, the young civil officer of the station
-had encountered one in a manner which he was scarcely likely to
-forget. For, having pursued this evil-doer for some time, he at last
-got into an excellent position, and was about to fire at a distance of
-thirty yards when suddenly the elephant, without even trumpeting
-rushed furiously upon him, and, paying no attention to the two heavy
-bullets which struck him in the head, chased the officer twice round
-an uncommonly small bush; and then, distracted by the spectacle of the
-native gun-bearer in flight, turned off after this new prey, and,
-overtaking the poor wretch, smashed him to pieces with one blow of
-his terrible trunk. "Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque,
-il se defend." We reached the bungalow, which serves as the seat of
-government, in time to see the tusks of this man-slayer, who had died
-of his wounds, brought in by the tribe whose plantations he had so
-often ravaged.
-
-Gondokoro, like most of the names which figure so imposingly upon the
-African map, is not a numerously populated town. There are about six
-houses and a number of native huts. There is, however, a telegraph
-station, a prison, a court-house, and the lines of a company of native
-police and King's African Rifles. Here the Nile again becomes
-navigable, and offers an unbroken waterway open to large vessels until
-the Shabluka cataract is reached, a hundred miles below Khartoum and
-fifteen hundred miles from Gondokoro. And here at the river's bank,
-seen through a tracery of palms, were the white funnel and
-superstructure of the Sirdar's steamer with all the letters and
-newspapers; and which, instead of pursuing us across Uganda, had "come
-through the other way."
-
-"Had come through the other way"--it is an easy phrase to write: but
-how much it signifies in the modern history of Africa! Ten or eleven
-years ago this journey which I was now able to make so easily, so
-prosperously, so comfortably, would have been utterly impossible. The
-Dervish empire, stretching from Wady Halfa or Abu Hamed to Wadelai,
-interposed a harsh barrier which nothing but a stricken field could
-sweep away; and these long reaches of the Nile which now bore a fleet
-of fifty steamers were silent in the embrace of a devastating
-barbarism. A grim slaughter which had strewn the sands of Kerreri,
-twelve hundred miles to the North, with _jibba_-clad corpses "like
-snow-drifts" had blasted a passage, and the Nile was free.
-
-Embarked at Gondokoro we passed out of the sphere of the Colonial
-Office into the domain of that undefined joint authority which
-regulates the Soudan, which flies two flags side by side on every
-public building, and which you can only correspond with through the
-British Foreign Office.
-
-  [Illustration: THE BELGIAN OFFICIALS AT LADO.]
-
-  [Illustration: GONDOKORO.]
-
-Henceforward our journey was comfortable, and regular. Yet though I
-had no official work to do and was merely coming home the shortest
-way, I could not traverse the Soudan without the keenest interest.
-When one has started from Cairo and padded up the Nile to Wady Halfa,
-crossed the desert railway to the Atbara, marched thence two hundred
-miles to the battle of Omdurman, one feels one has seen something of
-the Nile. Yet now we had followed it the other way from its source for
-nearly five hundred miles, and yet twelve hundred more intervened
-before even Omdurman was reached; and as the mighty and peerless river
-unrolled its length and immemorial history, the feelings of reverence,
-without which no traveller can drink its sweet waters, grew in
-intensity.
-
-I yield to no one in recognition of the constructive and
-reconstructive work which Sir Reginald Wingate and his able officers
-have, with scanty means and in spite of grave military dangers,
-wrought in the Soudan. Yet it is not possible to descend the Nile
-continuously from its source at Ripon Falls without realizing that the
-best lies behind one. Uganda is the pearl. The Nile province and the
-Lado Enclave present splendid and alluring panoramas. Even the march
-from Nimule to Gondokoro is through a fertile and inspiring region.
-But thereafter the beauty dies out of the landscape and the richness
-from the land. We leave the regions of abundant rainfall, of
-Equatorial luxuriance, of docile peoples, of gorgeous birds and
-butterflies and flowers. We enter stern realms of sinister and
-forbidding aspect, where nature is cruel and sterile, where man is
-fanatical and often rifle-armed. Cultivation--nay, vegetation, is but
-a strip along the river bank: and even there thorn-bushes and prickly
-aloes are its chief constituents. We enter two successive deserts as
-contrasted in their character, as redoubtable in their inhospitality,
-as Dante's Circles of the Inferno: the Desert of Sudd and the Desert
-of Sand.
-
-  [Illustration: REVIEW AT KHARTOUM.]
-
-  [Illustration: SOUDAN GOVERNMENT STEAMER "DAL."]
-
-About a hundred miles from Gondokoro the White Nile enters and spills
-itself in a vast and appalling swamp. Of the action of this tremendous
-sponge, whether beneficial in regulating the flow, or harmful in
-wasting the water through evaporation, nothing need here be said. But
-its aspect is at once so dismal and so terrifying that to travel
-through it is a weird experience. Our steamer, with the favouring
-current, made at least seven miles an hour, and, as the moon was full,
-we travelled night and day. For three days and three nights we were
-continuously in this horrible swamp into which the whole of the United
-Kingdom could be easily packed. By day from the roof of the high
-pilot-house a commanding view revealed hour after hour, in every
-direction, one uninterrupted ocean of floating vegetation spreading to
-far horizons. The papyrus-plant is in itself a beautiful, graceful,
-and venerable thing. To travel through the _sudd_, is to hate it for
-evermore. Rising fifteen feet above the level of the water, stretching
-its roots twenty or even thirty feet below, and so matted and tangled
-together that elephants can walk safely upon its springy surface,
-papyrus is the beginning and end of this melancholy world. For
-hundreds of miles nothing else is to be perceived--not a
-mountain-ridge blue on the horizon, scarcely a tree, no habitation of
-man, no sign of beast. The silence is broken only by the croaking of
-innumerable frog armies, and the cry of dreary birds.
-
-The vigorous operations of the _sudd_-cutters have opened, and the
-constant traffic of steamers has preserved and improved, a channel
-about a hundred yards wide, winding by loops and corkscrews through
-the swamp. The river presents a depth of thirty feet along this
-course, and greater vessels could thread its length for nearly a
-thousand miles. The navigation is intricate and peculiar. Indeed, it
-would seem to be an art by itself. No effort is made by the Arab
-pilots, who alone are employed, to avoid collisions with the banks. On
-the contrary, they rely upon them as an essential feature of their
-management of the steamer. The vessel bumps regularly at almost every
-corner from one cushion of _sudd_ to the other, or plunges its nose
-into the reeds and waits for the currents to carry its stern round,
-bumps again and recovers its direction. Sometimes where the twists
-were very sharp we would turn completely round, not once but two or
-three times, and our movements round an S-curve were even more
-complicated. The bumps occasionally swept us out of our chairs and
-sent us sprawling on the deck. In this strange fashion we waltzed
-along at full speed for about seventy or eighty hours.
-
-Meanwhile the Nile was accomplishing its destiny. Its vast tributary
-rivers, the Sobat and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, came to reinforce its flow.
-The miles spread out behind us in a long succession of hundreds. At
-length the _sudd_ expanses begin to contract. Distant mountains rise
-against the steel-blue sky in serrated silhouette, and gradually draw
-in upon the river. Islands of earth and trees, peaks of sharp rock
-break here and there the awful monotony of waving reeds. At last the
-banks become firm and clear-cut walls of yellow sand, fringed in
-places with palms and shady trees, and everywhere bristling with
-undergrowth of thorns. We leave the wilderness of moisture, we
-approach the wilderness of drought. But first, in a middle region,
-vast areas of dusty scrub-covered plains, not wholly incapable of
-cultivation in the rainy season, supporting always flocks and herds,
-now flank both sides of the river. The camel caravans pad slowly
-across them under the blaze and glitter of the heat. The mirage begins
-to twist and blur the landscape with deceptive waters. At intervals of
-forty or fifty miles are the stations of the Soudan Government, each
-trim and regular with its public buildings, its storehouses, the lines
-of beehive huts of its garrison, a tangle of native sailing-craft, and
-always, or nearly always, one or two white gunboats of war-time days
-now turned policemen of the river.
-
-Thus we reach in time Fashoda--now called Kodok for old sake's sake;
-and here are clusters of Shillooks who (by request) stand pensively on
-one leg in their natural attitude, and smart companies of Soudanese
-troops and British officers, civil and military--the whole clear-cut
-under sun-blaze dry light, veiled only in dancing dust-devils
-piteously whipped by strong hot winds. All this was like a piece of
-the Omdurman campaign to me--the old familiar Soudan, so often made
-known to British minds by pen, pencil, and photograph during nearly
-twenty years of war, unfolded itself feature by feature. Yet we were
-still five hundred miles south of Khartoum!
-
-  [Illustration: A SHELUK AT KODOK (FASHODA).]
-
-At Meshra-er-Zeraf we stopped for two days to shoot, by the Sirdar's
-invitation, in the extensive game reserve, and were fortunate in
-securing a buffalo and various antelope. We wandered through a harsh
-country, of white sand and tussocks of coarse grass, more grey than
-green, with leafless black thorn-trees densely tangled; yet it seemed
-full of game. In three hours' walk on the second morning I shot a fine
-waterbuck, two reed-bucks, and two of a beautiful herd of roan
-antelope, who walked slowly down to water past our ambuscade. And,
-be it remembered, that the pleasure and excitement of such sport are
-in these lands always heightened by the possibility that at any moment
-the hunters may come upon game of much more serious quality--lion or
-buffalo; so that no one cares to be more than a few yards from his
-heavy rifle or give his mind wholly to the buck he stalks. Surely they
-are perverse, unenterprising folk who spend fortunes each year in
-preserving with so much artificial care, and to the inconvenience of
-other dwellers in a small island, well-counted herds of more or less
-tame deer, when in a month, and for less expense than the year's rent
-of their forests, they could pursue wild animals of every kind in
-their natural haunts and gain experiences that would last them all
-their lives.
-
-I was so much elated by this jolly morning's sport and the near
-approach of civilized conditions--for after all, contrast is an
-element in pleasure--that I permitted myself to rejoice at the safe
-and happy outcome of this long journey, and to exult in our complete
-immunity from serious accident or illness or even fever. How
-extravagant were the accounts of the dangers of African travel! How
-easy to avoid the evil chances of the road! Reasonable precautions,
-steady exercise, regular quinine--were these not in themselves the
-guarantees of safety? Thus I reckoned, and with specious reasons, but
-in a bad hour. We were not yet at our journey's end.
-
-Twenty-four hours' steaming from Meshra-er-Zeraf brought us near
-Khartoum. The character of the country was unchanged. Yellow
-sand-slopes drank at the Nile brim; thorn-scrub fringed the river on
-either side; but date-palms mingled even more frequently and
-numerously with the vegetation, and brown mud-built villages with
-brown mud-coloured populations multiplied as the miles slipped swiftly
-by. At length a solitary majestic tree, beneath whose spacious
-branches and luxuriant foliage a hundred persons might have found
-shelter from the relentless sun--Gordon's tree--advertised us of the
-proximity of Khartoum. Soon on the one bank came into view the vast
-mud labyrinth of Omdurman, with forests of masts rising along the
-shore, and on the other, among palm-groves ever clustering thicker,
-sprang the blue and pink and crimson minarets of new Khartoum.
-Khartoum--the new Khartoum, risen from its ruins in wealth and
-beauty--a smiling city sitting like a queen throned at the
-confluence of the Niles, the heart and centre of a far-reaching and
-formidable authority, disclosed herself to the traveller's eye. Sharp
-to the right turns the steamer, leaving the dull placid waters of the
-sovereign river we have so long followed, and shouldering a more
-turbulent current of clearer water, swings up-stream along its noble
-feudatory, the Blue Nile. And passing by the side of high stone
-embankments crowned by palms, the steamer enters into a modern
-Oriental port and city, and is soon surrounded by its palaces, its
-mosques, its warehouses and its quays.
-
-  [Illustration: THE PALACE, KHARTOUM.]
-
-Nearly ten years have passed since the Dervish domination was
-irretrievably shattered on the field of Omdurman, and every year has
-been attended by steady and remarkable progress in every sphere of
-governmental activity in every province of the Soudan. Order has been
-established, and is successfully, though precariously, maintained even
-in the remotest parts of Kordofan. The railway has reached the
-Southern bank of the Blue Nile, connects Khartoum with Cairo and with
-the Red Sea, waits only for the construction of a bridge to cross the
-river and enter the fertile regions of the Ghezireh. A numerous fleet
-of steamers maintains swift and regular communication along the great
-waterways. The revenue has risen from a few thousands a year in 1899
-to considerably over a million pounds in 1907. Improved methods of
-agriculture have increased the wealth of the country; the prevention
-of massacre and famine has begun to restore its population. Slavery
-has been abolished, and without affronting the religion or seriously
-disturbing the customs of the people, a measure of education and
-craftsmanship has been introduced.
-
-These great changes which are apparent throughout the whole Soudan are
-nowhere presented in so striking and impressive form as in the
-capital. A spacious palace, standing in a beautiful garden, has risen
-from the ruins where Gordon perished. Broad thoroughfares lighted by
-electricity, and lined with excellent European shops, lead with
-geometrical precision through the city. A system of steam tramways in
-connection with ferry boats, patronized chiefly by the natives,
-renders communication easy throughout Khartoum, and between Khartoum,
-Omdurman, and Halfyah. A semi-circle of substantial barracks, arranged
-upon a defensive scheme, protects the landward approaches. The
-Gordon College hums with scholarly activity--Moslem and Christian,
-letters or crafts; and seven thousand soldiers of all dress march past
-the British and Egyptian flags on occasions of ceremony.
-
-  [Illustration: GEORGE SCRIVINGS.]
-
-Yet neither these inspiring facts--the more impressive by contrast
-with my memories of ten years before--nor the gracious hospitality of
-the Sirdar--more responsible than any other man for the whole of this
-tremendous task of reconstruction and revival--were to prevent me from
-taking away a sombre impression of Khartoum. As our steamer approached
-the landing-stage I learned that my English servant, George Scrivings,
-had been taken suddenly ill, and found him in a condition of
-prostration with a strange blue colour under his skin. Good doctors
-were summoned. The hospital of Khartoum, with all its resources, was
-at hand. There appeared no reason to apprehend a fatal termination.
-But he had been seized by a violent internal inflammation, the result
-of eating some poisonous thing which we apparently had escaped, and
-died early next morning after fifteen hours' illness, with almost
-every symptom of Asiatic cholera.
-
-Too soon, indeed, had I ventured to rejoice. Africa always claims its
-forfeits; and so the four white men who had started together from
-Mombasa returned but three to Cairo. A military interment involves the
-union of the two most impressive rituals in the world. The day after
-the Battle of Omdurman it fell to my lot to bury those soldiers of the
-21st Lancers, who had died of their wounds during the night. Now after
-nine years, in very different circumstances, from the other end of
-Africa, I had come back to this grim place where so much blood has
-been shed, and again I found myself standing at an open grave, while
-the yellow glare of the departed sun still lingered over the desert,
-and the sound of funeral volleys broke its silence.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The remainder of our journey lay in tourist lands, and the comfortable
-sleeping-cars of the Desert Railway, and the pleasant passenger
-steamers of the Wady Haifa and Assouan reach soon carried us
-prosperously and uneventfully to Upper Egypt; and so to Cairo, London,
-and the rest.
-
-  [Illustration: PHILAE.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT RAILWAY
-
-
-My journey is at an end, the tale is told, and the reader who has
-followed so faithfully and so far has a right to ask what message I
-bring back. It can be stated in three words. Concentrate upon Uganda!
-
-Over the greater part of the north-east quarter of Africa, British
-influence or authority in one form or another is supreme. But when I
-turn my mind over all those vast expanses, excluding only Egypt, there
-is no region which offers prospects to compare in hopefulness with
-those of the Protectorate of Uganda. The Soudan is far greater in
-extent and importance, and Great Britain is at no charge in respect to
-it. But the Soudan is clearly inferior in fertility. The East African
-Protectorate possesses not only enormous coast-lands of great value,
-but noble plateaux where the air is as cool as an English spring. But
-we already spend on East Africa--and upon the needs of its expensive
-white settlers--more than the whole revenue of Uganda; and yet the
-promise is not so bright. Northern Somaliland is a desert of rocks and
-thorn bushes peopled by rifle-armed fanatics, on which we spend nearly
-half as much as the whole annual grant-in-aid of Uganda. And between
-Somaliland and Uganda there is this contrast presented in its crudest
-form--a barren land with dangerous inhabitants; and a fruitful land
-with a docile people. What is least worth having, is most difficult to
-hold: what is most worth having, is easiest.
-
-The union under scientific direction in Uganda (and I include in this
-popular name Usoga, Unyoro, Toro and Ankole, etc.) of unequalled
-fertility with a population of high intelligence and social quality,
-in a region of extraordinary waterways, must, unless some grievous
-error or neglect should intervene, result in remarkable economic
-developments. Already more than half the traffic which passes down the
-railway to Mombasa comes from beyond the lake. Yet scarcely any money
-has ever been spent on Uganda. No European roads exist, no railways
-have been built, no waterfalls are harnessed, no public works of any
-serious description have been undertaken. A poor little grant-in-aid
-has barely supported the day-to-day cost of European administration,
-and practically nothing in cash or credit has been available for the
-development of the country. But it is alive by itself. It is vital;
-and in my view, in spite of its insects and its diseases, it ought in
-the course of time to become the most prosperous of all our East and
-Central African possessions, and perhaps the financial driving wheel
-of all this part of the world. It is far from my desire to disparage
-the East African Protectorate, or to suggest diminution of activity or
-support. Both Protectorates are necessary to each other and should
-advance together; but in view of their relative positions, and looking
-at the situation as it is to-day, my counsel plainly is--"Concentrate
-upon Uganda!" Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far.
-Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or
-more rapidly realized.
-
-Cotton alone should make the fortune of Uganda. All the best qualities
-of cotton can be grown in the highest perfection, a hundred thousand
-intelligent landowners occupying twenty thousand square miles of
-suitable soil are eager to engage in the cultivation. An industrious
-and organized population offers the necessary labour. Merely at the
-request of the Government cotton has been planted experimentally on a
-considerable scale throughout Uganda. The figures of production--though
-of course they are only the first beginnings--show a surprising
-expansion. Great care is required, and steps have already been taken
-to secure that the quality of cotton exported from Uganda is not
-deteriorated or its reputation prejudiced by hasty or untutored
-action, that only the seeds which yield the best results should be
-distributed, and that no indiscriminate mixture should be permitted.
-The Government must control the culture. Experts must watch the
-ginneries and educate the native cultivator. Roads must be made to
-enable the crop to be marketed. The scientific organization of the
-cotton-growing resources of Uganda has now been definitely undertaken.
-A special grant of L10,000 a year will in future be devoted to this
-purpose, and the whole process will be supervised by European officers
-in close touch through the Colonial Office with the highest
-Manchester authorities and the British Cotton-Growing Association. In
-the opinion of the ablest observers the next five years will see a
-very remarkable development in cotton production, even though the
-means available to foster it continue to be slender.
-
-But cotton is only one of those tropical products for which the demand
-of civilized industry is almost insatiable, and which can nowhere in
-the world be grown more cheaply, more easily, more perfectly than
-between the waters of the two great lakes. Rubber, fibre, cinnamon,
-cocoa, coffee, sugar may all be cultivated upon the greatest scale;
-virgin forests of rare and valuable timber await the axe; and even
-though mineral wealth may perhaps never lend its hectic glory to
-Uganda, the economic foundations of its prosperity will stand securely
-upon a rich and varied agriculture. A settler's country it can never
-be. Whatever may be the destinies of the East African Highlands, the
-shores of the great lakes will never be the permanent residence of a
-white race. It is a planter's land, where the labours of the native
-population may be organized and directed by superior intelligence and
-external capital. For my own part I rejoice that the physical
-conditions of the country are such as to prevent the growth in the
-heart of happy Uganda of a petty white community, with the harsh and
-selfish ideas which mark the jealous contact of races and the
-exploitation of the weaker. Let it remain a "planter's land." Let the
-planters, instead of being the agents of excited syndicates with minds
-absorbed in the profits of shareholders thousands of miles away, be
-either Europeans of substance and character who have given proofs of
-their knowledge of natives and their ability to deal skilfully and
-justly with them, or better still--say I--let them be the
-disinterested officers of the Government, directing the development of
-the country neither in their own, nor any other pecuniary interest,
-but for the general good of its people and of the Empire of which it
-forms a part.
-
-But if the immediate inflexion of British policy in Eastern Africa
-should be, without prejudice, but with precedence of other provinces,
-to accelerate the economic and social development of Uganda, what are
-the first steps to take? I might have much to say of Forestry and
-Agriculture; of an extended system of technical education similar to
-that given at the Gordon College at Khartoum, here perhaps in part to
-be achieved through grants in aid of the existing missionary schools;
-of road-making, indispensable to progress, of motor-transport, and of
-water-power. But let me make my message brief and unclouded, and as
-before expressed in three words, "Build a Railway."
-
-The clusters of colonial possessions which have been acquired on the
-east and west coasts of Africa, so rapidly and with so little cost or
-bloodshed, will unquestionably prove an invaluable, if not indeed a
-necessary feature of the British Empire. From these vast plantations
-will be drawn the raw materials of many of our most important
-industries; to them will flow a continuous and broadening train of
-British products; and in them the peculiar gifts for administration
-and high civic virtues of our race may find a healthy and an
-honourable scope. Some of these great estates, like Southern Nigeria
-on the west coast, are already so prosperous as not only to be
-self-supporting, but able to assist with credit and subvention the
-progress of neighbours less far advanced. Others are still a charge
-upon our estimates. We are annually put to the expense of
-grants-in-aid more or less considerable for Northern Somaliland, the
-East African Protectorate, Nyassaland and Uganda. Heavy upon the
-finance of all the East Coast hangs the capital charge of the Uganda
-Railway. In no way will these charges be eased or removed except by
-the rise of one or more of the territories concerned to economic
-buoyancy, or by the growth of railway traffic down the Uganda trunk
-consequent upon development. Under present conditions the progress
-made from year to year is steady and encouraging. The charges upon the
-Colonial Estimates diminish regularly every year. Every year the
-administration of the different Governments increases in elaboration,
-in efficiency and consequently in cost. The extra charge is met ever
-more fully by the returning yield of a grateful soil. Except for the
-chances of war, rebellion, pestilence, and famine which brood over the
-infancy of tropical protectorates, but which may be averted or
-controlled, it would be easy to calculate a date--not too remote--by
-which all contribution from the British tax-payer would be
-unnecessary. The movement of events is encouraging; but there is one
-method by which it can be made far more sure and far more swift, by
-which all adverse chances are minimized, and all existing resources
-stimulated and multiplied--railways.
-
-I would go so far as to say that it is only wasting time and money to
-try to govern, or still more develop, a great African possession
-without a railway. There can be no security, progress, or prosperity
-without at least one central line of rapid communication driven
-through the heart of the country. Where, as in Northern Somaliland,
-the land itself is utterly valueless, a mere desert of rocks and
-scrub, or where the military dangers are excessive and utterly
-disproportioned to any results that can ever be reaped--withdrawal and
-concentration are the true policy. But if for any reason it be decided
-to remain and to administer, a railway becomes the prime of absolute
-necessities. Till then all civilized government is extravagant and
-precarious, and all profitable commerce practically impossible. These
-considerations have lately led a British Government to sanction the
-extensive railways, nearly 600 miles long, now being rapidly
-constructed in Northern and Southern Nigeria; and the same arguments
-apply, though in my view with increased force, to the Uganda
-Protectorate.
-
-It is not usually realized that the Uganda railway does not pass
-through Uganda. It is the railway _to_ Uganda and not _of_ Uganda. It
-stops short of the land from which it takes its name, and falls
-exhausted by its exertions and vicissitudes, content feverishly to lap
-the waters of the Victoria Nyanza. Uganda is reached, but not
-traversed by steam communication in any form. Yet the extension of the
-railway from the western shores of the Victoria to the Albert Nyanza
-would not only carry it through much of the most valuable and fertile
-country within its radius, but as I shall show could far more than
-double its effective scope.
-
-It may be accepted as an axiom that in the present state of
-development in these African protectorates, it is scarcely ever, and
-indeed I think never, worth while to build railways in competition
-with waterways. Railways should in new countries be in supplement of,
-and not in substitution for, lakes and navigable rivers. No doubt
-direct through-routes of railway, where bulk is not broken and all
-delays and changings are avoided, show an imposing advantage in
-comparison with a mere alternation of water stages and railway links.
-There could be no doubt which was the better if only you leave out
-the question of cost. But it is just this question of cost which
-cannot be left out, which clamorously dominates the proposition from
-the beginning. For first-class countries may afford first-class
-railways and _trains de luxe_, but second-class countries must be less
-ambitious, and young new jungle-born countries are satisfied, or ought
-to be, if they get any railway at all. The differences between the
-best railway in the world and the worst, are no doubt impressive; but
-they become utterly insignificant when contrasted with the difference
-between the worst railway in the world and no railway at all. For
-observe, the comparison is not with perfect lines of European
-communication, nor with anything like them, nor even with a waggon on
-a turnpike road. It is with a jogging, grunting, panting, failing line
-of tottering coolies, men reduced to beasts of burden, that the new
-pioneer line must be compared--that is to say, with the most painful,
-most degrading, slowest and feeblest method of transportation which
-has ever disgraced the world. And compared with that, any line of
-steam-communication, however primitive, however light, however
-interrupted, is heaven.
-
-I am endeavouring to guide the reader to a positive proposal of a
-modest and practical character, I mean the construction of a new
-railway which might be called "The Victoria and Albert Railway,"
-although it would virtually be an extension of the existing Uganda
-line. This railway should traverse the country between the great
-lakes, and join together these two noble reservoirs with all their
-respective river connections. The distance is not great. Two hundred
-and fifty miles would exceed the largest computation; and perhaps a
-line of one hundred and fifty miles would suffice. If the cost of this
-railway were estimated, as I am informed is reasonable, at a maximum
-figure of L5,000 a mile, the total sum involved would be between
-L1,250,000 and L750,000.
-
-The supreme advantage of making a railway debouch upon a great lake,
-is that every point on the lake shore is instantly put in almost equal
-communication with railhead. Steamers coast round on circular tours,
-and whatsoever trade or traffic may offer along the whole
-circumference, is carried swiftly to the railway. Lakes are in fact
-the catchment areas of trade, and it is by tapping and uniting them
-that the economic life of Central Africa can be most easily and
-swiftly stimulated.
-
-Two routes present themselves with various competing advantages by
-which the Victoria and Albert Railway may proceed. The first, the most
-obvious, most desirable and most expensive, is straight across the
-Highlands of Toro, through the best of the cotton country, from a
-point on the Victoria Lake in the neighbourhood of Entebbe, to where
-the Semliki river runs into the southern end of Lake Albert. The
-second would practically follow the footsteps recorded in these pages.
-It does not offer a direct line. It does not pass during the whole of
-its length through cultivated and inhabited country. It does not reach
-the Albert Lake at the most convenient end. But it is far cheaper than
-the other. It is only 135 miles long instead of nearly 250. It
-connects not only the two great lakes, but also Lake Chioga with all
-its channels and tributaries, in one system of unbroken steam
-communication.
-
-Briefly this latter project would consist of two links of railway: the
-first about sixty miles long from Jinja (or Ripon Falls) to Kakindu,
-the first point where the Victoria Nile becomes navigable: the second
-about seventy-five miles long from the neighbourhood of Mruli to the
-Nile below the Murchison Falls and near its mouth on the Albert. By
-these two sections of railway, together only 135 miles in length, a
-wonderful extent of waterways would be commanded; to wit: 1. Thirty
-miles of the Victoria Nile navigable from Kakindu to Lake Chioga. 2.
-Lake Chioga itself, with its long arms and gulfs stretching deeply
-into the whole of the fertile regions to the south-west of Mount
-Elgon, and affording a perimeter of navigable coastline accessible by
-steamers, of certainly not less than 250 miles. 3. All that reach of
-the Victoria Nile navigable from Lake Chioga to Foweira when the
-rapids ending in the Murchison Falls begin again--70 miles. 4. Thirty
-miles from below the falls to the Albert Lake. 5. The whole of the
-Albert Lake shores--250 miles. 6. The Semliki river navigable (once a
-sandbar has been passed) for sixty miles. 7. The glorious open reach
-of the White Nile from the Albert Lake to Nimule--120 miles. Thus by
-the construction of only 135 miles of railroad, swift modern
-communication would be established over a total range of 800 miles: or
-for an addition of one-fifth to its length and one-eighth to its cost
-the effective radius of the Uganda railway would be more than doubled.
-Such railway propositions are few and far between.
-
-I do not prejudge the choice of these two routes. Both are now being
-carefully surveyed. The advantages of the longer and more ambitious
-line across Toro are perhaps superior. But the cost is also nearly
-twice as great; and cost is a vital factor--not merely to the
-government called upon to find money, but still more to the commercial
-soundness of an enterprise which is permanently crippled, if its
-original capital charges are allowed notably to exceed what the
-estimated earnings would sustain. The question is one which will
-require severe and patient examination, the nicest balancings between
-competitive advantages, the smoothest compromises between the
-practical and the ideal.
-
-But let us now look forward to a time--not, I trust, remote--when by
-one route or the other the distance between the Victoria and Albert
-Lakes has been spanned by a railway, and when the Mountains of the
-Moon are scarcely four days' journey from Mombasa. The British
-Government will then be possessed of the shortest route to the
-Eastern Congo. The Uganda railway will be able to offer rates for
-merchandise and railway material with which no other line that can
-ever be constructed will ever be able to compete. The whole of that
-already considerable, though as yet stifled trade, which feebly
-trickles back half across Africa by Boma to the Atlantic, which is
-looking desperately for an outlet to the northward, which percolates
-in driblets through Uganda to-day, will flow swiftly and abundantly to
-the benefit of all parties concerned down the Uganda trunk, raising
-that line with steady impulse from the _status_ of a political railway
-towards the level of a sound commercial enterprise. In no other way
-will the British tax-payer recover his capital. The advantages are
-great and the expense moderate. Larger considerations may postpone,
-and the imperative need of the fullest surveys will in any case delay
-construction; but I cannot doubt that the Victoria and Albert railway
-is now the most important project awaiting action in the whole of that
-group of Protectorates which Sir Frederick Lugard used proudly to call
-"our East African Empire."
-
-But let us proceed one step further in the development of the
-communications of north-east Africa. When an extension of the Uganda
-railway has reached the Albert Nyanza, only one link will be missing
-to connect the whole of the rail and waterway system of East Africa
-and Uganda with the enormous system of railways and riverways of Egypt
-and the Soudan, to connect the Uganda with the Desert railway, to join
-the navigation of the great lakes to the navigation of the Blue and
-White Niles. Only one link will be missing, and that a very short one;
-the distance of 110 miles from Nimule to Gondokoro, where the Nile is
-interrupted by cataracts. Of the commercial utility of such a link _in
-itself_ I have nothing to say; but as a means of marrying two gigantic
-systems of steam communication, it will some day possess a high
-importance; and thereafter over the whole of the north-east quarter of
-the African continent under the influence or authority of the British
-Crown, comprising a total mileage by rail and river of perhaps 20,000
-miles, uninterrupted steam communication will prevail.
-
-The adventurous and the imaginative may peer out beyond these compact
-and practicable steps into a more remote and speculative region.
-Perhaps by the time that the junction between the Uganda and Soudan
-rail and water systems has been effected, the Rhodes Cape to Cairo
-railway will have reached the southern end of Lake Tanganyika: and
-then only one comparatively short hiatus will bar a complete
-transcontinental line, if not wholly of railroad, at least of steam
-traffic and of comfortable and speedy travel.
-
-Then, perhaps it will be time to make another journey; but as the
-reader, who will no doubt take care to secure a first-class tourist
-ticket, will no longer require my services as guide, I shall take this
-opportunity of making him my bow.
-
-
-
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
-  been preserved.
-
-  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-
-
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diff --git a/43035.zip b/43035.zip
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook, My African Journey, by Winston Churchill,
-Illustrated by Winston Churchill and Gordon Wilson
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: My African Journey
-
-
-Author: Winston Churchill
-
-
-
-Release Date: June 25, 2013  [eBook #43035]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY AFRICAN JOURNEY***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
-available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
-
-
-
-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
-      file which includes the original 61 photographic
-      illustrations and 3 maps.
-      See 43035-h.htm or 43035-h.zip:
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43035/43035-h/43035-h.htm)
-      or
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43035/43035-h.zip)
-
-
-      Images of the original pages are available through
-      Internet Archive. See
-      https://archive.org/details/myafricanjourney00churuoft
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
-
-      On page 6, "full tale of steamers" should possibly be
-      "full tail of steamers."
-
-
-
-
-
-MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA.
-      _Frontispiece._]
-
-
-MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-
-by
-
-THE RIGHT HON.
-WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL, M.P.
-
-Author of "The Story of the Malakand Field Force,"
-"The River War," "London to Ladysmith," "Ian Hamilton's March,"
-"Savrola," "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill"
-
-With Sixty-One Illustrations from Photographs by
-the Author and Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon Wilson,
-and Three Maps
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Toronto
-William Briggs
-1909
-
-Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
-Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
-Bungay, Suffolk.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-In so far as the collection of information is concerned, the
-advantages of travel may often be over-stated. So much has been
-written, so many facts are upon record about every country, even the
-most remote, that a judicious and persevering study of existing
-materials would no doubt enable a reader to fill himself with
-knowledge almost to repletion without leaving his chair. But for the
-formation of opinion, for the stirring and enlivenment of thought, and
-for the discernment of colour and proportion, the gifts of travel,
-especially of travel on foot, are priceless. It was with the design
-and in the hope of securing such prizes, that I undertook last year
-the pilgrimage of which these pages give account. I cannot tell
-whether I have succeeded in winning them; and still less whether, if
-won, they are transferable. I therefore view these letters with a
-modest eye. They were written mainly in long hot Uganda afternoons,
-after the day's march was done. The larger portion has already
-appeared in the _Strand Magazine_, and what has been added was
-necessary to complete the story.
-
-They present a continuous narrative of the lighter side of what was to
-me a very delightful and inspiring journey; and it is in the hope that
-they may vivify and fortify the interest of the British people in the
-wonderful estates they have recently acquired in the northeastern
-quarter of Africa, that I offer them in a connected form to the
-indulgence of the public.
-
-     WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
-
-_London_, 1908.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                                              PAGE
-     CHAPTER I
-
-     THE UGANDA RAILWAY                                          1
-
-
-     CHAPTER II
-
-     AROUND MOUNT KENYA                                         19
-
-
-     CHAPTER III
-
-     THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA                               45
-
-
-     CHAPTER IV
-
-     THE GREAT LAKE                                             66
-
-
-     CHAPTER V
-
-     THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA                                      86
-
-
-     CHAPTER VI
-
-     KAMPALA                                                   104
-
-
-     CHAPTER VII
-
-     'ON SAFARI'                                               127
-
-
-     CHAPTER VIII
-
-     MURCHISON FALLS                                           148
-
-
-     CHAPTER IX
-
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                168
-
-
-     CHAPTER X
-
-     DOWN THE WHITE NILE                                       188
-
-
-     CHAPTER XI
-
-     THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT RAILWAY                           209
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-                                                    _To face page_
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA      _Frontispiece_
-
-     ON THE COW-CATCHER                                          7
-
-     THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA                                    12
-
-     GUARD OF HONOUR, KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES                     20
-
-     BREAKDOWN ON THE WAY TO THIKA CAMP                         22
-
-     SHOOTING PARTY AT THIKA CAMP                               24
-
-     THE BANDA AT THIKA CAMP                                    28
-
-     COLONEL WILSON'S LION                                      28
-
-     "DURBAR" AT KIAMBU                                         30
-
-     THE RIFT VALLEY FROM THE KIKUYU ESCARPMENT                 66
-
-     GOVERNMENT STOCK FARM AT NAIVASHA                          68
-
-     THE LAIBON'S WIVES                                         71
-
-     RAILHEAD AT KISUMU                                         71
-
-     KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU                               80
-
-     NANDI AND KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU                     84
-
-     KISUMU                                                     86
-
-     GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ENTEBBE                                  90
-
-     THE GOVERNOR WITH BAGANDA GROUP                           102
-
-     BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA                               106
-
-     KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA                          108
-
-     WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA                         109
-
-     ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA                                     110
-
-     ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA                        110
-
-     WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA--"THE BRAVEST MAN
-     IN THE ARMY"                                              112
-
-     WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA                                      112
-
-     THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA                     114
-
-     CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION,
-     KAMPALA                                                   114
-
-     INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL                           116
-
-     THE RIPON FALLS (SOURCE OF THE NILE)                      120
-
-     BETWEEN NIMULE AND GONDOKORO                              128
-
-     FOREST SCENE NEAR RIPON FALLS                             133
-
-     PALM TREE NEAR THE ASUA                                   134
-
-     BANDA WITH ESCORT OF KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES                134
-
-     AN ENCAMPMENT                                             136
-
-     LANDING AT MRULI                                          146
-
-     MURCHISON FALLS                                           159
-
-     FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US               160
-
-     FLOTILLA AT FAJAO                                         162
-
-     THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS                            164
-
-     UGANDA SCENERY                                            164
-
-     THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO                                169
-
-     EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO                        170
-
-     FAJAO                                                     170
-
-     APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO
-     HILLS IN THE DISTANCE                                     174
-
-     WADELAI                                                   174
-
-     THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
-     NEARING NIMULE                                            178
-
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                178
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT
-     HIPPO CAMP                                                182
-
-     BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE                                 182
-
-     MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS             186
-
-     COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT                                 187
-
-     THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
-     ON THE WHITE NILE                                         187
-
-     FORDING THE ASUA                                          192
-
-     THE BELGIAN OFFICIALS AT LADO                             196
-
-     GONDOKORO                                                 196
-
-     REVIEW AT KHARTOUM                                        198
-
-     SOUDAN GOVERNMENT STEAMER "DAL"                           198
-
-     A SHELUK AT KODOK (FASHODA)                               202
-
-     THE PALACE, KHARTOUM                                      204
-
-     GEORGE SCRIVINGS                                          207
-
-     PHILAE                                                    208
-
-
-MAPS
-
-     EASTERN AFRICA                                              2
-
-     BRITISH EAST AFRICA                                        16
-
-     UGANDA                                                     92
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE UGANDA RAILWAY
-
-
-The aspect of Mombasa as she rises from the sea and clothes herself
-with form and colour at the swift approach of the ship is alluring and
-even delicious. But to appreciate all these charms the traveller
-should come from the North. He should see the hot stones of Malta,
-baking and glistening on a steel-blue Mediterranean. He should visit
-the Island of Cyprus before the autumn rains have revived the soil,
-when the Messaoria Plain is one broad wilderness of dust, when every
-tree--be it only a thorn-bush--is an heirloom, and every drop of water
-is a jewel. He should walk for two hours at midday in the streets of
-Port Said. He should thread the long red furrow of the Suez Canal, and
-swelter through the trough of the Red Sea. He should pass a day among
-the cinders of Aden, and a week among the scorched rocks and stones of
-Northern Somaliland; and then, after five days of open sea, his eye
-and mind will be prepared to salute with feelings of grateful delight
-these shores of vivid and exuberant green. On every side is
-vegetation, moist, tumultuous, and varied. Great trees, clad in dense
-foliage, shrouded in creepers, springing from beds of verdure, thrust
-themselves through the undergrowth; palms laced together by flowering
-trailers; every kind of tropical plant that lives by rain and
-sunshine; high waving grass, brilliant patches of purple
-bougainvillea, and in the midst, dotted about, scarcely keeping their
-heads above the fertile flood of Nature, the red-roofed houses of the
-town and port of Mombasa.
-
-  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF
-    "MY AFRICAN JOURNEY"]
-
-The vessel follows a channel twisting away between high bluffs, and
-finds a secure anchorage, land-locked, in forty feet of water at a
-stone's throw from the shore. Here we are arrived at the gate of
-British East Africa; and more, at the outlet and debouchment of all
-the trade of all the countries that lap the Victoria and Albert Lakes
-and the head-waters of the Nile. Along the pier now being built at
-Kilindini, the harbour of Mombasa Island, must flow, at any rate for
-many years, the main stream of East and Central African commerce.
-Whatever may be the produce which civilized government and enterprise
-will draw from the enormous territories between Southern Abyssinia and
-Lake Tanganyika, between Lake Rudolf and Ruenzori, as far west as the
-head-streams of the Congo, as far north as the Lado enclave; whatever
-may be the needs and demands of the numerous populations comprised
-within those limits, it is along the unpretentious jetty of Kilindini
-that the whole traffic must pass.
-
-For Kilindini (or Mombasa, as I may be permitted to call it) is the
-starting-point of one of the most romantic and most wonderful railways
-in the world. The two iron streaks of rail that wind away among the
-hills and foliage of Mombasa Island do not break their smooth monotony
-until, after piercing Equatorial forests, stretching across immense
-prairies, and climbing almost to the level of the European snow-line,
-they pause--and that only for a time--upon the edges of the Great
-Lake. And thus is made a sure, swift road along which the white man
-and all that he brings with him, for good or ill, may penetrate into
-the heart of Africa as easily and safely as he may travel from London
-to Vienna.
-
-Short has been the life, many the vicissitudes, of the Uganda Railway.
-The adventurous enterprise of a Liberal Government, it was soon
-exposed, disowned, to the merciless criticism of its parents. Adopted
-as a cherished foundling by the Conservative party, it almost perished
-from mismanagement in their hands. Nearly ten thousand pounds a mile
-were expended upon its construction; and so eager were all parties to
-be done with it and its expense that, instead of pursuing its proper
-and natural route across the plateau to the deep waters of Port
-Victoria, it fell by the way into the shallow gulf of Kavirondo, lucky
-to get so far. It is easy to censure, it is impossible not to
-criticize, the administrative mistakes and miscalculations which
-tarnished and nearly marred a brilliant conception. But it is still
-more easy, as one traverses in forty-eight hours countries which ten
-years ago would have baffled the toilsome marches of many weeks, to
-underrate the difficulties in which unavoidable ignorance and
-astonishing conditions plunged the pioneers. The British art of
-"muddling through" is here seen in one of its finest expositions.
-Through everything--through the forests, through the ravines, through
-troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five
-years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the
-railway; and here at last, in some more or less effective fashion, is
-it arrived at its goal. Other nations project Central African railways
-as lightly and as easily as they lay down naval programmes; but here
-is a railway, like the British Fleet, "in being"--not a paper plan or
-an airy dream, but an iron fact grinding along through the jungle and
-the plain, waking with its whistles the silences of the Nyanza, and
-startling the tribes out of their primordial nakedness with
-"Americani" piece goods _made in Lancashire_.
-
-Let us, then, without waiting in Mombasa longer than is necessary to
-wish it well and to admire the fertility and promise of the coastal
-region, ascend this railway from the sea to the lake. And first, what
-a road it is! Everything is in apple-pie order. The track is smoothed
-and weeded and ballasted as if it were the London and North-Western.
-Every telegraph-post has its number; every mile, every hundred yards,
-every change of gradient has its mark; not in soft wood, to feed the
-white ant, but in hard, well-painted iron. Constant labour has
-steadily improved the grades and curves of the permanent-way, and the
-train--one of those comfortable, practical Indian trains--rolls along
-as evenly as upon a European line.
-
-Nor should it be supposed that this high standard of maintenance is
-not warranted by the present financial position of the line. The
-Uganda Railway is already doing what it was never expected within any
-reasonable period to do. It is paying its way. It is beginning to
-yield a profit--albeit a small profit--upon its capital charge.
-Projected solely as a political railway to reach Uganda, and to secure
-British predominance upon the Upper Nile, it has already achieved a
-commercial value. Instead of the annual deficits upon working expenses
-which were regularly anticipated by those most competent to judge,
-there is already a substantial profit of nearly eighty thousand pounds
-a year. And this is but the beginning, and an imperfect beginning; for
-at present the line is only a trunk, without its necessary limbs and
-feeders, without its deep-water head at Kilindini, without its full
-tale of steamers on the lake; above all, without its natural and
-necessary extension to the Albert Nyanza.
-
-  [Illustration: ON THE COW-CATCHER.
-    (Mr. Currie, Mr. Marsh, Col. Wilson, Sir J. Hayes-Sadler, Mr.
-    Churchill.)]
-
-We may divide the journey into four main stages--the jungles, the
-plains, the mountains, and the lake, for the lake is an essential part
-of the railway, and a natural and inexpensive extension to its length.
-In the early morning, then, we start from Mombasa Station, taking our
-places upon an ordinary garden seat fastened on to the cow-catcher of
-the engine, from which position the whole country can be seen. For a
-quarter of an hour we are still upon Mombasa Island, and then the
-train, crossing the intervening channel by a long iron bridge,
-addresses itself in earnest to the continent of Africa. Into these
-vast regions the line winds perseveringly upon a stiff up-grade, and
-the land unfolds itself ridge after ridge and valley after valley,
-till soon, with one farewell glance at the sea and at the
-fighting-tops of His Majesty's ship _Venus_ rising queerly amid the
-palms, we are embraced and engulfed completely. All day long the train
-runs upward and westward, through broken and undulating ground clad
-and encumbered with super-abundant vegetation. Beautiful birds and
-butterflies fly from tree to tree and flower to flower. Deep, ragged
-gorges, filled by streams in flood, open out far below us through
-glades of palms and creeper-covered trees. Here and there, at
-intervals, which will become shorter every year, are plantations of
-rubber, fibre, and cotton, the beginnings of those inexhaustible
-supplies which will one day meet the yet unmeasured demand of Europe
-for those indispensable commodities. Every few miles are little trim
-stations, with their water-tanks, signals, ticket-offices, and
-flower-beds complete and all of a pattern, backed by impenetrable
-bush. In brief one slender thread of scientific civilization, of
-order, authority, and arrangement, drawn across the primeval chaos of
-the world.
-
-In the evening a cooler, crisper air is blowing. The humid coast
-lands, with their glories and their fevers, have been left behind. At
-an altitude of four thousand feet we begin to laugh at the Equator.
-The jungle becomes forest, not less luxuriant, but distinctly
-different in character. The olive replaces the palm. The whole aspect
-of the land is more friendly, more familiar, and no less fertile.
-After Makindu Station the forest ceases. The traveller enters upon a
-region of grass. Immense fields of green pasture, withered and
-whitened at this season by waiting for the rains, intersected by
-streams and watercourses densely wooded with dark, fir-looking trees
-and gorse-looking scrub, and relieved by bold upstanding bluffs and
-ridges, comprise the new panorama. And here is presented the wonderful
-and unique spectacle which the Uganda Railway offers to the European.
-_The plains are crowded with wild animals._ From the windows of the
-carriage the whole zoological gardens can be seen disporting itself.
-Herds of antelope and gazelle, troops of zebras--sometimes four or
-five hundred together--watch the train pass with placid assurance, or
-scamper a hundred yards farther away, and turn again. Many are quite
-close to the line. With field-glasses one can see that it is the same
-everywhere, and can distinguish long files of black wildebeeste and
-herds of red kongoni--the hartebeeste of South Africa--and wild
-ostriches walking sedately in twos and threes, and every kind of small
-deer and gazelle. The zebras come close enough for their stripes to be
-admired with the naked eye.
-
-We have arrived at Simba, "The Place of Lions," and there is no reason
-why the passengers should not see one, or even half-a-dozen, stalking
-across the plain, respectfully observed by lesser beasts. Indeed, in
-the early days it was the custom to stop and sally out upon the royal
-vermin whenever met with, and many the lion that has been carried back
-to the tender in triumph before the guard, or driver, or any one else
-could think of timetables or the block system, or the other
-inconvenient restrictions of a regular service. Farther up the line,
-in the twilight of the evening, we saw, not a hundred yards away, a
-dozen giraffes lollopping off among scattered trees, and at Nakuru six
-yellow lions walked in leisurely mood across the rails in broad
-daylight. Only the rhinoceros is absent, or rarely seen, and after one
-of his species had measured his strength, unsuccessfully, against an
-engine, he has confined himself morosely to the river-beds and to the
-undisturbed solitudes which, at a distance of two or three miles,
-everywhere engulf the Uganda Railway.
-
-Our carriage stopped upon a siding at Simba Station for three days, in
-order that we might more closely examine the local fauna. One of the
-best ways of shooting game in this part of the world, and certainly
-the easiest, is to get a trolly and run up and down the line. The
-animals are so used to the passage of trains and natives along the one
-great highway that they do not, as a rule, take much notice, unless
-the train or trolly stops, when their suspicions are at once aroused.
-The sportsmen should, therefore, slip off without allowing the vehicle
-or the rest of the party to stop, even for a moment; and in this way
-he will frequently find himself within two hundred and fifty or three
-hundred yards of his quarry, when the result will be governed solely
-by his skill, or want of skill, with the rifle.
-
-There is another method, which we tried on the second day in the hopes
-of finding a waterbuck, and that is, to prowl about among the trees
-and undergrowth of the river-bed. In a few minutes one may bury
-oneself in the wildest and savagest kind of forest. The air becomes
-still and hot. The sun seems in an instant to assert his just
-prerogative. The heat glitters over the open spaces of dry sand and
-pools of water. High grass, huge boulders, tangled vegetation,
-multitudes of thorn-bushes, obstruct the march, and the ground itself
-is scarped and guttered by the rains into the strangest formations.
-Around you, breast-high, shoulder-high, overhead, rises the African
-jungle. There is a brooding silence, broken only by the cry of a bird,
-or the scolding bark of baboons, and the crunching of one's own feet
-on the crumbling soil. We enter the haunt of the wild beasts; their
-tracks, their traces, the remnants of their repasts, are easily and
-frequently discovered. Here a lion has passed since the morning. There
-a rhinoceros has certainly been within the hour--perhaps within ten
-minutes. We creep and scramble through the game paths, anxiously,
-rifles at full cock, not knowing what each turn or step may reveal.
-The wind, when it blows at all, blows fitfully, now from this quarter,
-now from that; so that one can never be certain that it will not
-betray the intruder in these grim domains to the beast he seeks, or to
-some other, less welcome, before he sees him. At length, after two
-hours' scramble and scrape, we emerge breathless, as from another
-world, half astonished to find ourselves within a quarter of a mile of
-the railway line, with its trolly, luncheon, soda-water, ice, etc.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA]
-
-But if one would seek the rhinoceros in his open pastures, it is
-necessary to go farther afield; and accordingly we started the next
-morning, while the stars were still shining, to tramp over the
-ridges and hills which shut in the railway, and overlook remoter
-plains and valleys beyond. The grass grows high from ground
-honeycombed with holes and heaped with lava boulders, and it was
-daylight before we had stumbled our way to a spur commanding a wide
-view. Here we halted to search the country with field-glasses, and to
-brush off the ticks--detestable insects which infest all the resorts
-of the game in innumerable swarms, ready to spread any poison among
-the farmers' cattle. The glass disclosed nothing of consequence.
-Zebra, wildebeeste, and kongoni were to be seen in troops and herds,
-scattered near and far over the plains, but never a rhinoceros! So we
-trudged on, meaning to make a wide circle. For an hour we found
-nothing, and then, just as we were thinking of turning homewards
-before the sun should get his full power, three beautiful oryx, great,
-dark-coloured antelope with very long, corrugated horns, walked over
-the next brow on their way to water. Forthwith we set off in pursuit,
-crouching and creeping along the valley, and hoping to intercept them
-at the stream. Two passed safely over before we could reach our point.
-The third, seeing us, turned back and disappeared over the hill,
-where, a quarter of an hour later, he was stalked and wounded.
-
-It is always the wounded beast that leads the hunter into adventures.
-Till the quarry is hit every one walks delicately, avoids going the
-windward side of unexplored coverts, skirts a reed-bed cautiously,
-notices a convenient tree, looks often this way and that. But once the
-prize is almost within reach, you scramble along after it as fast as
-your legs will carry you, and never trouble about remoter
-contingencies, be they what they may. Our oryx led us a mile or more
-over rocky slopes, always promising and never giving a good chance for
-a shot, until at last he drew us round the shoulder of a hill--and
-there, abruptly, was the rhinoceros. The impression was extraordinary.
-A wide plain of white, withered grass stretched away to low hills
-broken with rocks. The rhinoceros stood in the middle of this plain,
-about five hundred yards away, in jet-black silhouette; not a
-twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the
-Stone Age. He was grazing placidly, and above him the vast snow dome
-of Kilimanjaro towered up in the clear air of morning to complete a
-scene unaltered since the dawn of the world.
-
-The manner of killing a rhinoceros in the open is crudely simple. It
-is thought well usually to select the neighbourhood of a good tree,
-_where one can be found_, as the centre of the encounter. If no tree
-is available, you walk up as near as possible to him from any side
-except the windward, and then shoot him in the head or the heart. If
-you hit a vital spot, as sometimes happens, he falls. If you hit him
-anywhere else, he charges blindly and furiously in your direction, and
-you shoot him again, or not, as the case may be.
-
-Bearing all this carefully in mind, we started out to do battle with
-Behemoth. We had advanced perhaps two hundred yards towards him, when
-a cry from one of the natives arrested us. We looked sharply to the
-right. There, not a hundred and fifty paces distant, under the shade
-of a few small trees, stood two other monsters. In a few more steps we
-should have tainted their wind and brought them up with a rush; and
-suppose this had happened, when perhaps we were already compromised
-with our first friend, and had him wounded and furious on our hands!
-Luckily warned in time, to creep back to the shoulder of the hill, to
-skirt its crest, and to emerge a hundred and twenty yards from this
-new objective was the work of a few minutes. We hurriedly agree to
-kill one first before touching the other. At such a range it is easy
-to hit so great a target; but the bull's-eye is small. I fired. The
-thud of a bullet which strikes with an impact of a ton and a quarter,
-tearing through hide and muscle and bone with the hideous energy of
-cordite, came back distinctly. The large rhinoceros started, stumbled,
-turned directly towards the sound and the blow, and then bore straight
-down upon us in a peculiar trot, nearly as fast as a horse's gallop,
-with an activity surprising in so huge a beast, and instinct with
-unmistakable purpose.
-
-  [Illustration: BRITISH EAST AFRICA]
-
-Great is the moral effect of a foe who advances. Everybody fired.
-Still the ponderous brute came on, as if he were invulnerable; as if
-he were an engine, or some great steam barge impervious to bullets,
-insensible to pain or fear. Thirty seconds more, and he will close. An
-impalpable curtain seems to roll itself up in the mind, revealing a
-mental picture, strangely lighted, yet very still, where objects have
-new values, and where a patch of white grass in the foreground,
-four or five yards away, seems to possess astonishing significance. It
-is there that the last two shots that yet remain before the resources
-of civilization are exhausted must be fired. There is time to reflect
-with some detachment that, after all, we were the aggressors; we it is
-who have forced the conflict by an unprovoked assault with murderous
-intent upon a peaceful herbivore; that if there is such a thing as
-right and wrong between man and beast--and who shall say there is
-not?--right is plainly on his side; there is time for this before I
-perceive that, stunned and dazed by the frightful concussions of
-modern firearms, he has swerved sharp to the right, and is now moving
-across our front, broadside on, at the same swift trot. More firing,
-and as I reload some one says he is down, and I fire instead at his
-smaller companion, already some distance off upon the plain. But one
-rhinoceros hunt is like another, except in its details, and I will not
-occupy the reader with the account of this new pursuit and death.
-Suffice it to say that, in all the elements of neurotic experience,
-such an encounter seems to me fully equal to half an hour's brisk
-skirmish at six or seven hundred yards--and with an important
-addition. In war there is a cause, there is duty, there is the hope
-of glory, for who can tell what may not be won before night? But here
-at the end is only a hide, a horn, and a carcase, over which the
-vultures have already begun to wheel.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-AROUND MOUNT KENYA
-
-
-The town of Nairobi, the capital of the East Africa Protectorate,
-stands on the base of wooded hills at the three hundred and
-twenty-seventh mile of the railroad. Originally chosen as a convenient
-place for assembling the extensive depots and shops necessary to the
-construction and maintenance of the railway, it enjoys no advantages
-as a residential site. The ground on which the town is built is low
-and swampy. The supply of water is indifferent, and the situation
-generally unhealthy. A mile farther on, however, upon the rising
-ground a finer position could have been found, and this quarter is
-already being occupied sparsely by Government buildings, hospitals,
-and barracks. It is now too late to change, and thus lack of foresight
-and of a comprehensive view leaves its permanent imprint upon the
-countenance of a new country.
-
-Our train traverses the Athi plains, more crowded perhaps with game
-than any other part of the line, and approaches swiftly the long rows
-of one-storeyed tin houses which constitute the town. Nairobi is a
-typical South African township. It might be Pietermaritzburg or
-Ladysmith of twenty years ago, before blue gum-trees and stone
-buildings had waxed and multiplied. In its present stage perhaps it
-resembles Buluwayo most. The population is also South African in its
-character and proportions. There are five hundred and eighty whites,
-three thousand one hundred Indians, and ten thousand five hundred and
-fifty African natives. The shops and stores are, however, much more
-considerable than these figures would appear to warrant, and are fully
-capable of supplying the varied needs of settlers and planters over a
-wide area. Nairobi is also the headquarters of a brigade of the King's
-African Rifles, the central office and depot of the Uganda Railway,
-and the seat of the Administration, with its numerous official
-_personnel_. The dinner of the Colonists' Association, to which I was
-invited, afforded the familiar, yet in Central Africa not
-unimpressive, spectacle of long rows of gentlemen in evening dress;
-while the ball given by the Governor to celebrate the King's birthday
-revealed a company gay with uniforms, and ladies in pretty dresses,
-assembled upon a spot where scarcely ten years before lions hunted
-undisturbed.
-
-  [Illustration: GUARD OF HONOUR, KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES.]
-
-Every white man in Nairobi is a politician; and most of them are
-leaders of parties. One would scarcely believe it possible, that a
-centre so new should be able to develop so many divergent and
-conflicting interests, or that a community so small should be able to
-give to each such vigorous and even vehement expression. There are
-already in miniature all the elements of keen political and racial
-discord, all the materials for hot and acrimonious debate. The white
-man _versus_ the black; the Indian _versus_ both; the settler as
-against the planter; the town contrasted with the country; the
-official class against the unofficial; the coast and the highlands;
-the railway administration and the Protectorate generally; the King's
-African Rifles and the East Africa Protectorate Police; all these
-different points of view, naturally arising, honestly adopted,
-tenaciously held, and not yet reconciled into any harmonious general
-conception, confront the visitor in perplexing disarray. Nor will he
-be wise to choose his part with any hurry. It is better to see
-something of the country, of its quality and extent, of its promises
-and forfeits, of its realities and illusions, before endeavouring to
-form even a provisional opinion.
-
-The snow-clad peak of Mount Kenya, a hundred miles away, can on a
-clear morning be easily seen from the slopes above Nairobi--a sharp,
-serrated summit veined with gleaming white. A road--passable, albeit
-unmetalled, for wagons and even a motor-car--runs thitherward by Fort
-Hall and across the Tana River. On the way there is much to see. A
-wild, ragged-looking, but fertile region, swelling into successive
-undulations and intersected by numerous gorges whose streams are
-shaded by fine trees, unfolds itself to the eye. Scattered about upon
-spacious estates of many thousand acres are a score or two of
-colonists, each gradually making himself a home and a living in his
-own way. One raises stock; another plants coffee, which grows so
-exuberantly in this generous soil as to threaten the speedy exhaustion
-of the plant. Here are ostriches, sheep, and cattle standing
-placidly together in one drove under the guardianship of a native
-child of eleven. There is a complete dairy farm, admirably equipped.
-One of the streams has been dammed effectively, and turbines are
-already in position to light Nairobi with electricity. Upon the banks
-of another there is talk of building an hotel.
-
-  [Illustration: BREAKDOWN ON THE WAY TO THIKA CAMP.]
-
-At one place I found a family of good people from Hightown,
-Manchester, grappling courageously with an enormous tract of ten
-thousand acres. Hard by, an old Boer, who has trekked the length of
-Africa to avoid the British flag, sits smoking stolidly by his grass
-house, reconciled to British rule at last by a few months' experience
-of paternal government in a neighbouring Protectorate. He has few
-cattle and less cash, but he holds decided views as to the whereabouts
-of lions; there, moreover, stands the heavy tilted wagon of the Great
-Trek--an ark of refuge when all else fails; and for the rest there is
-plenty of game, few people, and the family grows from year to year. In
-short, one sees a sparse, heterogeneous population engaged in varied
-labours; but everywhere hard work, straitened resources, hopes
-persisting through many disappointments, stout hospitable hearts, and
-the beginnings, at any rate, of progress.
-
-A camp has been prepared for me in a very beautiful spot at the
-juncture of the Chania and Thika rivers. Tents are pitched and grass
-shelters are erected in a smooth meadow. Southwards, a hundred yards
-away, a fine waterfall plunges downwards over enormous boulders amid
-tall, interlacing trees. The muffled roar of another rises from a deep
-ravine an equal distance to the north; and the Philistine computes,
-with a frown, four thousand horse-power expending itself upon the
-picturesque.
-
-Nothing causes the East African colonist more genuine concern than
-that his guest should not have been provided with a lion. The
-knowledge preys upon his mind until it becomes a veritable obsession.
-He feels some deep reproach is laid upon his own hospitality and the
-reputation of his adopted country. How to find, and, having found, to
-kill, a lion is the unvarying theme of conversation; and every place
-and every journey is judged by a simple standard--"lions or no lions."
-At the Thika camp, then, several gentlemen, accomplished in this
-important sport, have come together with ponies, rifles, Somalis,
-and all the other accessories. Some zebras and kongoni have been
-killed and left lying in likely-looking places to attract the lions;
-and at 4 a.m., rain or shine, we are to go and look for them.
-
-  [Illustration: SHOOTING PARTY AT THIKA CAMP.
-    From left to right--Capt. Sadler, Major Riddell, Mr. Marsh,
-    Marquis Gandolfi-Hornyold, Hon. K. Dundas, Mr. Percival, Mr.
-    Churchill, Mr. D. J. Wilson.]
-
-The young Englishman, be he officer or settler in the East African
-Highlands, cuts a hardy figure. His clothes are few and far between: a
-sun hat, a brown flannel shirt with sleeves cut above the elbow and
-open to the chest, a pair of thin khaki knickerbockers cut short five
-inches--_at least_--above the knee, boots, and a pair of putties
-comprise the whole attire. Nothing else is worn. The skin, exposed to
-sun, thorns, and insects, becomes almost as dark as that of the
-natives, and so hardened that it is nothing to ride all day with bare
-knees on the saddle; a truly Spartan discipline from which at least
-the visitor may be excused.
-
-This is the way in which they hunt lions. First find the lion, lured
-to a kill, driven from a reed-bed, or kicked up incontinently by the
-way. Once viewed he must never be lost sight of for a moment. Mounted
-on ponies of more or less approved fidelity, three or four daring
-Britons or Somalis gallop after him, as in India they ride the
-pig--that is to say, neck or nothing--across rocks, holes, tussocks,
-nullahs, through high grass, thorn scrub, undergrowth, turning him,
-shepherding him, heading him this way and that until he is brought to
-bay. For his part the lion is no seeker of quarrels; he is often
-described in accents of contempt. His object throughout is to save his
-skin. If, being unarmed, you meet six or seven lions unexpectedly, all
-you need do--according to my information--is to speak to them sternly
-and they will slink away, while you throw a few stones at them to
-hurry them up. All the highest authorities recommend this.
-
-But when pursued from place to place, chased hither and thither by the
-wheeling horsemen, the naturally mild disposition of the lion becomes
-embittered. First he begins to growl and roar at his enemies, in order
-to terrify them, and make them leave him in peace. Then he darts
-little short charges at them. Finally, when every attempt at peaceful
-persuasion has failed, he pulls up abruptly and offers battle. Once he
-has done this, he will run no more. He means to fight, and to fight
-to the death. He means to charge home; and when a lion, maddened with
-the agony of a bullet-wound, distressed by long and hard pursuit, or,
-most of all, a lioness in defence of her cubs, is definitely committed
-to the charge, death is the only possible conclusion. Broken limbs,
-broken jaws, a body raked from end to end, lungs pierced through and
-through, entrails torn and protruding--none of these count. It must be
-death--instant and utter--for the lion, or down goes the man, mauled
-by septic claws and fetid teeth, crushed and crunched, and poisoned
-afterwards to make doubly sure. Such are the habits of this cowardly
-and wicked animal.
-
-It is at the stage when the lion has been determinedly "bayed" that
-the sportsman from London is usually introduced upon the scene. He
-has, we may imagine, followed the riders as fast as the inequalities
-of the ground, his own want of training, and the burden of a heavy
-rifle will allow him. He arrives at the spot where the lion is
-cornered in much the same manner as the matador enters the arena, the
-others standing aside deferentially, ready to aid him or divert the
-lion. If his bullet kills, he is, no doubt, justly proud. If it only
-wounds, the lion charges the nearest horseman. For forty yards the
-charge of a lion is swifter than the gallop of a racehorse. The
-riders, therefore, usually avoid waiting within that distance. But
-sometimes they do not; or sometimes the lion sees the man who has shot
-him; or sometimes all sorts of things happen which make good
-stories--afterwards.
-
-After this general description no particular example is required, and
-the reader need not be disappointed to learn that our lion escaped
-what, no doubt, would have been his certain destruction by the
-breaking of a single link in the regular chain of circumstances. He
-was not found upon the kill. His place was taken by a filthy hyena,
-and it was not until we had beaten thoroughly for two hours more than
-three miles of reed-bed that we saw him--a splendid great yellow cat,
-looking as big as a bullock--bounding away up the opposite hill. Off
-started our riders like falcons; but alas!--if "alas!" is the proper
-word--a deep and impassable nullah intervened, necessitating large
-circuits and long delays; so that the lion got clean away out of sight
-of all men, and we were reduced to the slow and tedious process of
-tracking him footprint by footprint through waving grass, breast-high,
-hour after hour, always expecting to tread on his tail, and
-always--disappointed!
-
-  [Illustration: THE BANDA AT THIKA CAMP.]
-
-  [Illustration: COLONEL WILSON'S LION.]
-
-In the afternoon I had to ride to Fort Hall, where there was to be a
-great gathering of Kikuyu chiefs and thousands of their warriors and
-women. The country is much the same as that traversed on the previous
-day, but greener, smoother, and more pleasant-looking. Fort Hall is
-not a fort in any military sense, but the Commissioner's house with a
-ditch round it, a jail, a few houses, and an Indian bazaar. The
-station is hardly well selected, being perched up on a hill out of the
-reach of any railway--and unhealthy nevertheless. The whole place was
-crowded with natives in their most highly ornamented and elaborate
-nudity, waiting for the war-dance.
-
-This ceremony was performed the next morning. Long before daylight the
-beating of drums, the blowing of horns, and the rhythm of loud, yet
-not altogether unmelodious chanting awakened the weariest sleeper; and
-when, at eight o'clock the _indaba_ began, the whole space in front of
-the fort was densely packed with naked, painted, plumed, and gyrating
-humanity, which seethed continually to and fro, and divided from time
-to time as particular chiefs advanced with their followers, or as
-gifts of struggling sheep and bulls were brought forward. In his war
-dress the Kikuyu, and, still more, the Masai warrior, is a striking,
-if not impressive, figure. His hair and body are smeared with the red
-earth of his native land, compounded into a pigment by mixture with
-the slimy juice of the castor-oil plant, which abounds. Fantastic
-headdresses, some of ostrich feathers, others of metal or leather;
-armlets and leglets of twisted wire; stripes of white clay rubbed
-across the red pigment; here and there an old pot-hat or some European
-garment, incongruously contrasted with leopard-skins and bulls' horns;
-broad, painted cow-hide shields, and spears with soft iron blades
-nearly four feet long, complete a grotesque and indecorous picture.
-Still, there is a sleek grace about these active forms--bronze statues
-but for their frippery--which defeats all their own efforts to make
-themselves hideous. The chiefs, however, succeed in reducing
-themselves to regular guys. Any old, cast-off khaki jacket or tattered
-pair of trousers; any fragment of weather-stained uniform, a
-battered sun-helmet with a feather stuck lamely into the top of it, a
-ragged umbrella, is sufficient to induce them to abandon the ostrich
-plume and the leopard-skin kaross. Among their warriors in ancient
-gear they look ridiculous and insignificant--more like the commonest
-kind of native sweeper than the hereditary rulers of some powerful and
-numerous tribe.
-
-  [Illustration: "DURBAR" AT KIAMBU.]
-
-It is unquestionably an advantage that the East African negro should
-develop a taste for civilized attire. In no more useful and innocent
-direction could his wants be multiplied and his desires excited, and
-it is by this process of assimilation that his life will gradually be
-made more complicated, more varied, less crudely animal, and himself
-raised to a higher level of economic utility. But it would surely be
-worth while to organize and guide this new motive force within
-graceful and appropriate limits. A Government runs risks when it
-intrudes upon the domain of fashion; but when a veritable abyss of
-knowledge and science separates the rulers from the ruled, when
-authority is dealing with a native race still plunged in its primary
-squalour, without religion, without clothes, without morals, but
-willing to emerge and capable of emerging, such risks may fairly be
-accepted; and the Government might well prescribe or present suitable
-robes for ceremonial occasions to the chiefs, and gradually encourage,
-and more gradually still enforce, their adoption throughout the
-population.
-
-After the dance it had been arranged that I should go as far as the
-bank of the Tana River to see the view of Mount Kenya, and then return
-to the Thika camp before night. But when the whole splendid panorama
-of the trans-Tana country opened upon us, I could not bring myself to
-stop short of the promised land; and, casting away material cares of
-luncheon and baggage, I decided to ride through to Embo, twenty-eight
-miles from Fort Hall, and our most advanced post in this direction. We
-crossed the Tana by a ferry which travels along a rope under the
-impulsion of the current. The ponies swam the deep, strong, sixty-yard
-stream of turbulent red water. On the farther bank the country is
-really magnificent in quality and aspect. The centre of the picture is
-always Mount Kenya; but there never was a mountain which made so
-little of its height. It rises by long gentle slopes, more like a
-swelling of ground than a peak, from an immense upland plain, and so
-gradual is the acclivity that, but for the sudden outcrop of snow-clad
-rock which crowns the summit, no one would believe it over eighteen
-thousand feet high. It is its gradual rise that imparts so great a
-value to this noble mountain; for about its enormous base and upon its
-slopes, traversed by hundreds of streams of clear perennial water,
-there grows, or may grow, in successive, concentric belts, every kind
-of crop and forest known in the world, from the Equator to the Arctic
-Circle. The landscape is superb. In beauty, in fertility, in verdure,
-in the coolness of the air, in the abundance of running water, in its
-rich red soil, in the variety of its vegetation, the scenery about
-Kenya far surpasses anything I have ever seen in India or South
-Africa, and challenges comparison with the fairest countries of
-Europe. Indeed, looking at it with an eye fresh from Italy, I was most
-powerfully reminded of the upper valleys of the Po.
-
-We rode on all day through this delicious country, along a well-kept
-native road, smooth enough for a bicycle, except where it crossed
-stream after stream on primitive bridges. On every side the soil was
-cultivated and covered with the crops of a large and industrious
-population. It is only a year since regular control was established
-beyond the Tana, not without some bloodshed, by a small military
-expedition. Yet so peaceful are the tribes--now that their intertribal
-fighting has been stopped--that white officers ride freely about among
-their villages without even carrying a pistol. All the natives met
-with on the road were armed with sword and spear, and all offered us
-their customary salutations, while many came up smiling and holding
-out long, moist, delicate-looking hands for me to shake, till I had
-quite enough of it. Indeed, the only dangers of the road appear to be
-from the buffaloes which infest the country, and after nightfall place
-the traveller in real peril. We were very glad for this reason, and
-also because we had eaten nothing but a banana each since early
-morning, to see at last on the top of the next hill the buildings of
-Embo just as the sun sank beneath the horizon.
-
-Embo is a model station, only five months old--one small, three-roomed
-house for the District Commissioner, one for the military officer, an
-office, and a tiny jail, all in good dressed stone; two Indian shops
-in corrugated iron; and seven or eight long rows of beehive grass huts
-for a hundred and fifty soldiers and police. Two young white
-officers--a civilian and a soldier--preside from this centre of
-authority, far from the telegraph, over the peace and order of an area
-as large as an English county, and regulate the conduct and fortunes
-of some seventy-five thousand natives, who have never previously known
-or acknowledged any law but violence or terror. They were uncommonly
-surprised to see four horsemen come riding up the zigzag path to their
-dwelling; but their astonishment was no bar to their hospitality, and
-we were soon rewarded for our journey and our fasting in most
-excellent fashion.
-
-I had just time before the darkness flooded the land and blotted out
-the mighty mountain and its wreaths of fire-tipped cloud to walk round
-this station. The jail consisted of a single room, barred and bolted.
-Inside not a prisoner was to be seen. I inquired where they were, and
-was shown two little groups seated round fires in the open. They were
-chained together by a light running chain, and after a hard day's
-miscellaneous work about the station they chatted peacefully as they
-cooked and ate their evening meal. The prison was only their shelter
-for the night--primitive arrangements, no doubt, but are they more
-barbarous than the hideous, long-drawn precision of an English convict
-establishment?
-
-The African protectorates now administered by the Colonial Office
-afford rare scope for the abilities of earnest and intelligent youth.
-A man of twenty-five may easily find himself ruling a large tract of
-country and a numerous population. The Government is too newly
-established to have developed the highly centralized and closely
-knit--perhaps too closely knit--hierarchy and control of the Indian
-system. It is far too poor to afford a complete Administration. The
-District Commissioner must judge for himself, and be judged upon his
-actions. Very often--for tropical diseases make many gaps in the
-ranks, and men must often return to England to recruit their
-health--the officer is not a District Commissioner at all, but a
-junior acting in his stead or in some one's stead, sometimes for a
-year or more. To him there come day by day the natives of the
-district with all their troubles, disputes, and intrigues. Their
-growing appreciation of the impartial justice of the tribunal leads
-them increasingly to carry all sorts of cases to the District
-Commissioner's Court. When they are ill they come and ask for
-medicine. When they are wounded in their quarrels it is to the white
-man they go to have the injuries dressed. Disease and accident have to
-be combated without professional skill. Courts of justice and forms of
-legality must be maintained without lawyers. Taxes have to be
-collected by personal influence. Peace has to be kept with only a
-shadow of force.
-
-All these great opportunities of high service, and many others, are
-often and daily placed within the reach of men in their twenties--on
-the whole with admirable results. It was most pleasant to hear with
-what comprehension and sympathy the officers of the East Africa
-Protectorate speak about their work; and how they regard themselves as
-the guardians of native interests and native rights against those who
-only care about exploiting the country and its people. No one can
-travel even for a little while among the Kikuyu tribes without
-acquiring a liking for these light-hearted, tractable, if brutish
-children, or without feeling that they are capable of being instructed
-and raised from their present degradation. There are more than four
-million aboriginals in East Africa alone. Their care imposes a grave,
-and I think an inalienable, responsibility upon the British
-Government. It will be an ill day for these native races when their
-fortunes are removed from the impartial and august administration of
-the Crown and abandoned to the fierce self-interest of a small white
-population. Such an event is no doubt very remote. Yet the speculator,
-the planter, and the settler are knocking at the door. There are many
-things which ought to be done--good, wise, scientific, and justly
-profitable. If the Government cannot find the money to develop the
-natural economic strength of the country, to make its communications,
-to start its industries, can it with any reason bar the field to
-private enterprise? Can it prevent the ingress of a white population?
-Ought it to do so, and for how long? What is to happen when there are
-thirty thousand white people in East Africa, instead of the three
-thousand or so who make so much stir at the present time? Perhaps the
-course of these chapters will lead us back again to these questions.
-I am very doubtful whether it will supply their answers.
-
-We have a discussion in the evening on a much more manageable subject.
-The District Commissioner at Embo has been ordered by the High Court
-of the Protectorate to retry a criminal case which he had settled some
-months before, on account of an informality in the report of the
-proceedings, which had excited the attention of the revising
-authority. It is pointed out that neither the accused nor his
-fellow-natives understand, or can ever be made to understand, the
-meaning of this repetition of a trial; that they are bewildered; that
-their confidence in their personal ruler may be weakened; that endless
-practical difficulties--for instance, the collection of witnesses
-scattered about in distant villages, and the disquietude caused to
-them by a second summons from the strange, mysterious power called
-"Government"--arise out of an error which only a lawyer could detect,
-and which only appears upon a piece of paper. "Some one," quaintly
-says a young civil officer, who has ridden over with us, "forgot to
-say 'Bo!' in the right place." I ask the nature of the "Bo!" It is
-certainly substantial. No mention was made in the report of the trial
-that the accused was given the opportunity of cross-examining the
-hostile witnesses. Therefore, although this was in fact done, the
-trial is held to be no trial, and ordered anew.
-
-Now, here is again a balancing of disadvantages; but without here
-examining whether a simple release would not have been better than a
-retrial, I find myself plainly on the side of the "Bo!" There is
-scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the
-exact--I will even say the pedantic--observance of the regular forms
-by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.
-Those forms are designed to protect the prisoner, not merely from the
-consequences of honest forgetfulness in his judges, but from
-systematic carelessness and possible oppression. Once they are allowed
-to be loosely construed the whole system of civilized jurisprudence
-begins to crumble, and in its place there is gradually erected a
-rough-and-ready practice dependent entirely for its efficiency and
-fairness upon the character and intelligence of the individual
-responsible. Necessary as it is to trust to personal authority in the
-control of native races of the lowest standard, it is not less
-necessary to assign well-marked limits to that authority, and, above
-all, to place the simple primary rights of accused persons to what we
-at home are accustomed to call a "fair trial" outside its scope. Nor
-does the administrator really suffer in native eyes from the
-apparition into his domain of superior authority. The tribesmen see
-that their ruler--to them all-powerful, the man of soldiers and
-police, of punishment and reward--is himself obedient to some remote
-external force, and they wonder what that mysterious force can be and
-marvel dimly at its greatness. Authority is enhanced and not impaired
-by the suggestion of immense reserves behind and above the immediate
-ruler--strong though he be. But upon this, as upon other matters, it
-is not necessary for every one to be of the same opinion; and even
-lawyers are not always wise.
-
-On our homeward ride in the early morning we passed a Swahili village.
-These Mohammedans have penetrated deeply and established themselves
-widely in the Eastern parts of Africa. Armed with a superior religion
-and strengthened with Arab blood, they maintain themselves without
-difficulty at a far higher level than the pagan aboriginals among
-whom they live. Their language has become a sort of _lingua franca_
-over all this part of the world. As traders they are welcomed, as
-fighting men they are respected, and as sorcerers they are feared by
-all the tribes. Their Khan had supplied us with bananas on the
-previous day with many expressions of apology that, as we were
-unexpected, he had no "European food." To-day all this was repaired.
-The men of the village, to the number of perhaps fifty, walked
-sedately out to meet us, their long white smocks in striking contrast
-to the naked, painted barbarians who surrounded them. The Khan led up
-a white Arab stallion, of vicious temper and tripling gait, to replace
-my wearied pony; and then produced tea and a familiar tin of mixed
-biscuits, which he had over-night sent runners to procure, that his
-hospitality might incur no reproach.
-
-While we were eating and parleying with the Khan there arrived on the
-scene a mounted Kikuyu chief, with chair, umbrella, khaki helmet, and
-other insignia, and attended by about a hundred warriors in full
-feather. In order to show their respect they began at once their
-war-dance, and we left them a quarter of an hour later still circling
-and hopping to and fro with quivering spears and nodding plumes to
-their monotonous chorus, while the white-robed Swahilis stood gravely
-by and bade us farewell in the dignified manners of the East. I
-reflected upon the interval that separates these two races from each
-other, and on the centuries of struggle that the advance had cost, and
-I wondered whether that interval was wider and deeper than that which
-divides the modern European from them both; but without arriving at
-any sure conclusion.
-
-Our journey to Embo had been so delightful that I was not inclined to
-hanker after rejected alternatives. But when we drove in to the Thika
-camp as the sun was setting, tired out by fifty miles of road, the
-first spectacle which saluted my eyes was a lion's skin spread out
-upon the ground and Colonel Wilson engaged in sprinkling it with
-arsenical powder. Then we were told the tale, which in brief was that
-they were driving a long reed-bed, when the lion sprang out and ran
-obliquely across the line of beaters. Wilson fired and the lion
-bounded back into the reeds, whence stones, fires, shoutings, shots,
-and all other disturbances failed to move him. Whereupon, after two
-hours, being impatient and venturesome, they had marched in upon him
-shoulder to shoulder, to find him, fortunately, quite dead.
-
-My friends endeavoured to console me by the news that lions had now
-been heard of in two other places, and that we should be sure to find
-one in the morning; and next day, after we had driven three miles of
-reeds, it seemed that their hopes were well founded, for a large
-animal of some kind could be seen moving swiftly to and fro under
-cover, and every one declared this must be the lion. At last only one
-more patch of reeds remained to beat, and we took up our positions,
-finger on trigger, about sixty yards from the farther edge of it,
-while the beaters, raising an astonishing tumult with yells and the
-beating of tin cans, plunged boldly in. _Parturiunt montes_--out
-rushed two enormous wart-hogs. Let no one reproach the courage of the
-pig. These great fierce boars, driven from their last shelter, charged
-out in gallant style--tusks gleaming, tails perpendicular--and met a
-fate prepared for a king. With these and another which we galloped
-down and pistolled on the way home I had to be content, and can now,
-so far as I am concerned, sadly write, in the expressive words of
-Reuter, "No lions were 'bagged.'"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA
-
-
-"Colour" is already the dominant question at Nairobi. "We mean to make
-East Africa a white man's country," cries, in strident tones, the
-Colonists' Association on every occasion. Truly a respectable and
-impressive policy; but one which seems, at first sight, rather
-difficult to achieve in a land where there are, so far, fewer than two
-thousand five hundred whites and more than four million black
-aboriginals. Can East Africa ever become a white man's country? Can
-even the Highlands, with their cool and buoyant breezes and temperate,
-unchanging climate, become a white man's country? Never, certainly, in
-the sense that Canada, or, indeed, the United Kingdom, are white men's
-countries--that is to say, countries inhabited wholly by white people
-and subsisting upon an economic basis of white unskilled labour.
-
-It is scarcely worth while even to imagine the Highlands of East
-Africa denuded of their native inhabitants and occupied solely by
-Europeans. Such an idea is utterly impossible. Whatever may be the
-increase in the white population in the future, it is safe to say that
-it will be far more than counter-balanced by the multiplication of the
-natives, as they are guarded against famine and prevented from civil
-war. But were such a solution possible, it would be almost the last
-thing in the world desired by those who clamour for "a white man's
-country." For observe it is not against the black aboriginal that the
-prejudices and interests of the white settler or trader are arrayed.
-The African, it is conceded, is welcome to stay in his own country. No
-economic competition has yet arisen or is likely to arise between him
-and the new-comers. Their spheres of activity lie wholly apart, for
-the white man absolutely refuses to do black man's work; not for that
-harsh toil does he exile himself from the land of his birth; while the
-native could not, in his present state of development, displace the
-white man in skilled employments and the superintendence and the
-organization of industry--even if he would--and nothing is farther
-from his ambitions.
-
-It is the brown man who is the rival. The European has neither the
-wish nor the power to constitute a white proletariat in countries like
-East Africa. In his view the blacks should be the private soldiers of
-the army, but the non-commissioned officers and the commanders must be
-white. This should not be dismissed as a mere assertion of racial
-arrogance. It is an obstinate fact. It is already a grave defect for a
-community to found itself upon the manual labour of an inferior race,
-and many are the complications and perils that spring therefrom. But
-what of the second storey? If there is to be any kind of white society
-dwelling together year after year within the standards of life and
-comfort to which Europeans have universally been accustomed to aspire,
-and largely to attain, this middle stage in the economic system must
-provide that white society with the means of earning--as professional
-men, as planters, merchants, traders, farmers, bankers, overseers,
-contractors, builders, engineers, accountants, clerks--a living for
-themselves and their families. And here strikes in the Asiatic. In
-every single employment of this class, his power of subsisting upon a
-few shillings a month, his industry, his thrift, his sharp business
-aptitudes give him the economic superiority, and if economic
-superiority is to be the final rule--as it has never been and never
-will be in the history of the world--there is not a single employment
-of this middle class, from which he will not, to a very large extent,
-clear the white man, as surely and as remorselessly as the brown rat
-extirpated the black from British soil.
-
-Then what remains? What sort of social organizations shall we be
-building up with so much thought and labour in these new lands under
-the British Crown? There is already no white working class. There is
-to be no white middle class. Room is left only for the capitalist
-_pure and simple_--if one may so describe him. A vast army of African
-labourers, officered by educated Indians or Chinese, and directed by a
-few individuals of diverse nationalities employing cosmopolitan
-capital--that is the nightmare which haunts the white population of
-South Africa, and at which what there is of a white population in East
-Africa is already shrieking vigorously.
-
-Yet hear the other side. How stands the claim of the British Indian?
-His rights as a human being, his rights as a British subject, are
-equally engaged. It was the Sikh soldier who bore an honourable part
-in the conquest and pacification of these East African countries. It
-is the Indian trader who, penetrating and maintaining himself in all
-sorts of places to which no white man would go or in which no white
-man could earn a living, has more than any one else developed the early
-beginnings of trade and opened up the first slender means of
-communication. It was by Indian labour that the one vital railway on
-which everything else depends was constructed. It is the Indian banker
-who supplies perhaps the larger part of the capital yet available for
-business and enterprise, and to whom the white settlers have not
-hesitated to recur for financial aid. The Indian was here long before
-the first British official. He may point to as many generations of
-useful industry on the coast and inland as the white settlers--especially
-the most recently-arrived contingents from South Africa (the loudest
-against him of all)--can count years of residence. Is it possible for
-any Government with a scrap of respect for honest dealing between man
-and man, to embark upon a policy of deliberately squeezing out the
-native of India from regions in which he has established himself under
-every security of public faith? Most of all must we ask, is such a
-policy possible to the Government which bears sway over three hundred
-millions of our Indian Empire?
-
-We are in presence of one of those apparently hopeless antagonisms of
-interests which baffle and dispirit all who are concerned in their
-adjustment. And these questions are not confined to East Africa or to
-South Africa. A whole series of new problems has arisen, and will grow
-graver and larger as the immediate history of the British Empire
-unfolds. They erect themselves upon a field almost wholly unstudied,
-and familiar only by the prejudices which in every direction obstruct
-movement and view. The entry of the Asiatic as labourer, trader, and
-capitalist into competition in industry and enterprise not only
-_with_, but _in_, the Western world is a new fact of first importance.
-Cheap, swift, easy means of communication, the establishment of peace
-and order over land and sea, the ever-growing inter-dependence of all
-men and all countries upon one another, have given wings to Asiatic
-commercial ambition and rendered Asiatic manual labour fluid, as it
-has never before been fluid since the beginning of things.
-
-Unless these new elements in the economic life of mankind can be
-scientifically and harmoniously controlled and assimilated, great and
-novel dangers menace alike the Asiatic and the European he supplants.
-On the one hand we see the possible exploitation under various
-unhealthy conditions of immense masses of Asiatic labour, to the moral
-injury of the employer and to the degradation and suffering of the
-employed; on the other the overturn of the standards of living
-laboriously achieved or long obstinately battled for among Europeans.
-Superadded to these we must foresee the confusion of blood, of
-manners, of morals, amounting, where operative upon any extensive
-scale, almost to the disintegration of the existing order of society.
-And behind--very close behind--lie the appeals to force, by mobs or
-Empires, to decide in a brutal fashion the brutal question which of
-two sets of irreconcilable interests shall prevail. It is not easy to
-measure the degree of political instability that will be introduced
-into international relations, when the subjects of a powerful
-military and naval State are continually exposed to penal legislation
-and open violence, and into private life when the white artisan is
-invited to acquiesce in his own extinction, in virtue of laws which he
-himself controls, by a competitor whom, he believes, he could strike
-down with his hands.
-
-Yet the Asiatic, and here I also include the African native, has
-immense services to render and energies to contribute to the happiness
-and material progress of the world. There are spacious lands whose
-promise can never be realized, there are unnumbered harvests which can
-never be garnered, without his active co-operation. There are roads
-and railways and reservoirs which only he can make. There are mines
-and forests which will slumber for ever without his aid. The mighty
-continent of tropical Africa lies open to the colonizing and
-organizing capacities of the East. All those new products which modern
-industry insistently demands are offered in measureless abundance to
-the West--if only we could solve the Sphinx's riddle in its newest
-form.
-
-And is it after all beyond our reach to provide, if not a perfect, at
-any rate a practical answer? There ought to be no insuperable
-difficulty, in the present state of political knowledge and social
-organization, in assigning different spheres to the external activity
-of different races. The Great Powers have partitioned Africa
-territorially; is it beyond the wit of man to divide it economically?
-The co-operation of many different kinds of men is needed for the
-cultivation of such a noble estate. Is it impossible to regulate in
-full and intricate detail the conditions under which that co-operation
-shall take place? Here white men can live and thrive; there they
-cannot. Here is a task for one, there the opportunity of another. The
-world is big enough. [I write as the stream of the Nile bears me
-between the immense spaces of beautiful, fertile, unpopulated country
-that lie north of the Albert Lake.] There is plenty of room for all.
-Why cannot we settle it fairly?
-
-It must be noted that the question of Asiatic immigration presents
-itself to the Imperial point of view in several quite distinct forms.
-There are, first of all, colonies which stand on the basis of a white
-proletariat, and whose inhabitants, rich and poor, employers and
-employed, are all Europeans. The right of such colonies to forbid the
-entry of large numbers of Asiatics, and to preserve themselves from
-the racial chaos and economic disturbance inseparable from such
-immigration, cannot be denied, although its exercise ought no doubt to
-be governed by various prudential and other considerations. But these
-colonies differ markedly from those where the mass of the population
-is not white, but black. Again, there are colonies which possess
-responsible government, and where the number of the white middle-class
-inhabitants very largely exceeds the Asiatic community. It is evident
-that these stand in a wholly different position from that of places
-like the tropical Protectorates of East and West Africa.
-
-Indeed, it may be contended that the very fact that the native of
-British India will undoubtedly, wisely or unwisely, rightly or
-wrongly, be refused access in any large numbers to several South
-African and all Australian Colonies by their respective Governments,
-makes it all the more desirable that the Imperial Government should
-afford in the tropical Protectorates outlet and scope to the
-enterprise and colonizing capacity of Hindustan. And, as I have
-written, these countries are big enough for all. There is no reason
-why those Highland areas which promise the white man a home and a
-career, and where alone he can live in comfort, should not, as a
-matter of practical administration, be in the main reserved for him.
-Nor, on the other hand, why the Asiatic, if only he does not teach the
-African natives evil ways--a contingency which must not be
-forgotten--should not be encouraged to trade and settle as he will in
-the enormous regions of tropical fertility to which he is naturally
-adapted. Somewhere in this direction--I do not wish to dogmatize--the
-immediate course of sound policy would seem to lie, and, guided by the
-lights of science and tolerance, we may easily find it.
-
-But the course of these reflections has carried me a good deal farther
-than the politics of Nairobi would seem to justify; and I hasten to
-return to the question with which I started: "Can the Highlands of
-East Africa be made 'a white man's country'?" Let us examine this by a
-fresh process. As one rides or marches through the valleys and across
-the wide plateaux of these uplands, braced by their delicious air,
-listening to the music of their streams, and feasting the eye upon
-their natural wealth and beauty, a sense of bewilderment overcomes the
-mind. How is it they have never become the home of some superior race,
-prosperous, healthy, and free? Why is it that, now a railway has
-opened the door and so much has been published about them, there has
-not been one furious river of immigration from the cramped and
-insanitary jungle-slums of Europe? Why, most of all, are those who
-have come--the pioneers, the men of energy and adventure, of large
-ambitions and strong hands--why are they in so many cases only just
-keeping their heads above water? Why should complaint and discontent
-and positive discouragement be so general among this limited class?
-
-I have always experienced a feeling of devout thankfulness never to
-have possessed a square yard of that perverse commodity called "land."
-But I will confess that, travelling in the East African Highlands for
-the first time in my life, I have learned what the sensation of
-land-hunger is like. We may repress, but we cannot escape, the desire
-to peg out one of these fair and wide estates, with all the rewards
-they offer to industry and inventiveness in the open air. Yet all
-around are men possessing thousands of fertile acres, with mountains
-and rivers and shady trees, acquired for little or nothing, all
-struggling, all fretful, nervous, high-strung, many disappointed, some
-despairing, some smashed.
-
-What are the true lineaments concealed behind the veil of boundless
-promise in which this land is shrouded? Are they not stamped with
-mockery? Is not the eye that regards you fierce as well as bright?
-"When I first saw this country," said a colonist to me, "I fell in
-love with it. I had seen all the best of Australia. I had prospered in
-New Zealand. I knew South Africa. I thought at last I had struck
-'God's own country.' I wrote letters to all my friends urging them to
-come. I wrote a series of articles in the newspapers praising the
-splendours of its scenery and the excellence of its climate. Before
-the last of the articles appeared my capital was nearly expended, my
-fences had been trampled down by troops of zebra, my imported stock
-had perished, my title-deeds were still blocked in the Land Office,
-and I myself had nearly died of a malignant fever. Since then I have
-left others to extol the glories of East Africa."
-
-These second thoughts err, no doubt, as much on the side of
-extravagant depression as the first impression was over-sanguine. But
-that there is a rude reverse to the East African medal is a fact which
-cannot be disputed, and which ought not, in the interests either of
-the immigrant or of the country to be concealed. It is still quite
-unproved that a European can make even the Highlands of East Africa
-his permanent home--that is to say, that he can live there without
-sensible degeneration for fifteen or twenty years at a stretch without
-ever returning to the temperate zones; still less that he can breed
-and rear families through several generations. The exhilaration of the
-air must not lead people to forget that an altitude of from five to
-eight thousand feet above the sea-level is an unusual condition,
-producing results, not yet ascertained, upon the nervous system, the
-brain, and the heart. Its coolness can never remove the fact that we
-are upon the Equator. Although the skies look so familiar and kindly
-with their white fleecy clouds and passing showers, the direct ray of
-the sun--almost vertical at all seasons of the year--strikes down on
-man and beast alike, and woe to the white man whom he finds
-uncovered! Although sheep and oxen multiply so rapidly, although
-crossing them with imported stock produces in each generation
-astonishing improvements in quality, they are subject to many perils
-little understood and often fatal. And if the landscape recalls to the
-pensive traveller the peaceful beauties of gentler climes at home, let
-him remember that it nurses with blithe fecundity poisonous reptiles,
-and pest-spreading insects, and terrible beasts of prey.
-
-There is no reason, however, for doubting that modern science
-possesses, or will discover, the means of eradicating or mitigating
-many of these evils. As the development of the country and the
-scientific investigation of tropical agriculture and tropical disease
-proceed, the difficulties which beset the early settler will gradually
-be removed. He will learn how to clothe and house himself; what to
-plant, what to breed, and what to avoid. The spread of East Coast
-fever, now carried by the ticks from one animal to another, and
-carried by the infected animals from one district to another, will be
-arrested, and controlled by a proper system of wire-fencing and
-quarantine. Remedies will be discovered against the various diseases
-which attack sheep or horses. Zebra, rhinoceros, buffalo, and other
-picturesque and fascinating nuisances will be driven from or
-exterminated within the settled areas, and confined to the ample
-reserves of uninhabited land. The slow but steady growth of a white
-population will create a market for local agricultural produce. The
-powerfully equipped Scientific Departments, the Veterinary and
-Forestry Departments, and the Department of Agriculture newly
-established on a considerable scale, will be able to guide and assist
-the enterprise of the new-comer, and save him from repeating the
-ill-starred experiments of the pioneer. Roads will improve, and
-railways and mono-rail tramways will extend. Step by step life and the
-means of living will become easier and more secure. Still it will not
-be proved that the pure-bred European can rear his children under the
-Equatorial sun and at an elevation of more than six thousand feet; and
-till that is proved "the white man's country" will remain a white
-man's dream.
-
-I have written of Europeans and Asiatics. What of the African? About
-four millions of these dark folk are comprised within the districts
-of the East Africa Protectorate which are actually or partially
-administered. Many more lie beyond those wide and advancing
-boundaries. What is to be their part in shaping the future of their
-country? It is, after all, _their_ Africa. What are they going to do
-for it, and what is it going to do for them? "The natives," says the
-planter, "evince a great reluctance to work, especially to work
-regularly." "They must be made to work," say others. "Made to work for
-whom?" we innocently ask. "For us, of course," is the ready answer;
-"what did you think we meant?" And here we run into another herd of
-rhinoceros questions--awkward, thick-skinned, and horned, with a short
-sight, an evil temper, and a tendency to rush blindly up wind upon any
-alarm. Is the native idle? Does he not keep himself and pay his taxes?
-Or does he loll at his ease while his three or four wives till the
-soil, bear the burden, and earn his living? And if idle, has he a
-right to remain idle--a naked and unconscious philosopher, living "the
-simple life," without cares or wants,--a gentleman of leisure in a
-panting world? Is that to be the last word? Is civilization to say
-definitely that when the African native has kept himself, or made his
-women keep him, she has no further claim upon him? The white man shall
-do the rest. He shall preserve the peace, that the tribes may prosper
-and multiply. His watchful and foreseeing eye, strained and weary with
-the effort, shall still make provision against famine; his science,
-though he himself goes down in the struggle, shall grapple with
-pestilence and cure disease. Far from his home or from his family he
-shall hew the trees and dig the wells, shall dam the streams and build
-the roads, with anxious heart and "in the sweat of his brow,"
-according to the curse laid upon the child of many wants, while the
-child of few wants watches him from the shade and thinks him mad.
-
-And to compare the life and lot of the African aboriginal--secure in
-his abyss of contented degradation, rich in that he lacks everything
-and wants nothing--with the long nightmare of worry and privation, of
-dirt and gloom and squalour, lit only by gleams of torturing knowledge
-and tantalizing hope, which constitutes the lives of so many poor
-people in England and Scotland, is to feel the ground tremble under
-foot. "It would never do to have a lot of 'mean whites' in this
-country," I heard one day a gentleman say. "It would destroy the
-respect of the native for the white man, if he saw what miserable
-people we have got at home." So here, at any rate, the boot is on the
-other leg, and Civilization is ashamed of her arrangements in the
-presence of a savage, embarrassed lest he should see what lies behind
-the gold and purple robe of State, and begin to suspect that the
-all-powerful white man is a fraud. But this is an irrelevancy!
-
-I am clearly of opinion that no man has a right to be idle, whoever he
-be or wherever he lives. He is bound to go forward and take an honest
-share in the general work of the world. And I do not except the
-African native. To a very much larger extent than is often recognized
-by some who discuss these questions, the natives are industrious,
-willing to learn, and capable of being led forward. Live for a few
-weeks, as I have done, in close association with the disciplined
-soldiers of the King's African Rifles, or with the smart sailors of
-the Uganda Marine, and it seems wonderful to contrast them with the
-population from which they have emerged. How strong, how good-natured,
-how clever they are! How proud their white officers are of them! What
-pains they take to please the travellers whom they escort; how frankly
-they are delighted by a word of praise or thanks! Just and honourable
-discipline, careful education, sympathetic comprehension, are all that
-is needed to bring a very large proportion of the native tribes of
-East Africa to a far higher social level than that at which they now
-stand. And why should men only be taught to be soldiers? Is war always
-to have the best of everything? Cannot peaceful industry be made as
-attractive, be as highly organized, as carefully studied as the
-combined use of deadly weapons? "Why," as Ruskin asks, "cannot men
-take pride in _building_ villages instead of only _carrying_ them?"
-
-I wonder why my pen slips off into these labyrinths, when all I set
-out to do was to give some general idea of politics at Nairobi? But in
-truth the problems of East Africa are the problems of the world. We
-see the social, racial, and economic stresses which rack modern
-society already at work here, but in miniature; and if we choose to
-study the model when the whole engine is at hand, it is because on the
-smaller scale we can see more clearly, and because in East Africa and
-Uganda the future is still uncompromised. The British Government has
-it in its hands to shape the development and destiny of these new
-countries and their varied peoples with an authority and from an
-elevation far superior to that with which Cabinets can cope with the
-giant tangles at home. And the fact stirs the mind. But by this time
-the reader will have had as much of East African politics as I had
-when, after three days of deputations and disputations, the train
-steamed out of Nairobi to take us to the Great Lake and beyond.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE GREAT LAKE
-
-
-We are off again on the Uganda Railway. Interesting and beautiful as
-is the country through which the line passes from Mombasa to Nairobi,
-it is surpassed by the magnificent scenery of the journey to the Lake.
-First in order and in rank is the Great Rift. This curious fault in
-the earth's surface, which geologists trace across the four thousand
-miles of land and sea which separate us from Palestine, and onward
-still to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, is traversed by the
-Uganda Railway at one of its most remarkable stages. For sixty miles
-the Highland plateau has been rising steadily by a succession of
-wooded undulations to a level of over six thousand feet. Now it falls
-abruptly, almost precipitously, more than two thousand feet. This
-frowning wall of rock and forest, which extends straight as a ruler
-farther than eye can see, is the Kikuyu Escarpment. As the train
-claws its way downwards by slant and zigzag along its face, a majestic
-panorama breaks upon the view. Far below, bathed in sunshine,
-stretching away to misty purple horizons, lie the broad expanses of
-the Rift Valley. Its level surface is broken by strangely moulded
-volcanic hills and shattered craters. The opposite mountain wall looms
-up in the far distance, brown and blue. We gaze down upon the plain as
-from a balloon, mistaking forests for patches of green grass, and
-mighty trees for thorn-scrub.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RIFT VALLEY FROM THE KIKUYU ESCARPMENT.]
-
-Another hour or so and Lake Naivasha comes into view. This sheet of
-water is about ten miles square, and the rim of a submerged crater
-makes an odd, crescent-shaped island in its midst. Its brackish waters
-repel the inhabitants, but afford shelter to numberless wild-fowl and
-many hippopotami. At Naivasha there is the Government stock farm. One
-may see in their various flocks the native sheep, the half-bred
-English, the three-quarter-bred, etc. The improvement is amazing. The
-native sheep is a hairy animal, looking to the unpractised eye more
-like a goat than a sheep. Crossed with Sussex or Australian blood,
-his descendant is transformed into a woolled beast of familiar
-aspect. At the next cross the progeny is almost indistinguishable from
-the pure-bred English in appearance, but better adapted to the African
-sun and climate. It is the same with cattle. In the first generation
-the hump of the African ox vanishes. In the second he emerges a
-respectable British Shorthorn. The object of this farm is twofold:
-first, to find the type best adapted to local conditions; secondly, to
-supply the settlers and the natives with a steadily broadening
-fountain of good blood by which their flocks and herds may be trebled
-and quadrupled in value. The enthusiasm and zeal of those in charge of
-this work were refreshing. At present, however, their operations are
-restricted by insufficient funds and by the precautions which must be
-taken against East Coast fever. The first of these impediments may be
-removed; the second is less tractable.
-
-East Coast fever came across the German border a year and a half ago,
-and since then, in spite of such preventive measures as our scanty
-means allow, it has been gradually and slowly spreading through the
-Protectorate. A diseased cow may take thirty days to die. In the
-meantime wherever it goes the swarming ticks are infected. They hold
-their poison for a year. If, during that time, other cattle pass over
-the ground the ticks fasten upon them and inoculate them with the
-sickness. And each new victim wanders off to spread the curse to new
-ticks, who cast it back to new cattle, and so on till the end of the
-story. At each point fresh areas of ground become distempered, and
-fresh cows begin to drop off one by one, leaving their evil
-inheritance to the ravening insects.
-
-  [Illustration: GOVERNMENT FARM AT NAIVASHA.]
-
-So here we see the two principles of Nature at work
-simultaneously--the blood-stock rams and bulls spreading their
-healthy, fruitful life in ever-widening circles through the land; the
-infected cattle carrying their message of death in all directions.
-Every point that either attains, becomes at once a new centre of
-vitality or dissolution. Both processes march deliberately forward to
-limitless multiplications. The native is helpless in the face of
-advancing ruin. Left to itself the evil would assuredly devour the
-good, till the cattle were exterminated and the sickness starved to
-death for lack of prey. But at this moment the white biped with
-faculties of ratiocination intervenes from the tin-roofed Department
-of Agriculture; discovers, for instance, that ground may be purified
-by putting upon it sheep, into whom the ticks discharge their poison
-harmlessly and are thereafter purged; erects hundreds of miles of wire
-fencing to cut the country up into compartments, as a warship is
-divided by bulkheads; encloses infected areas; destroys suspected
-animals; searches methodically and ever more hopefully for
-prophylactics and remedies; with one hand arrests the curse, with the
-other speeds the blessing, and in so doing is surely discharging
-rather an important function from a good many points of view.
-
-My friends and I took four days in travelling to the Victoria Nyanza,
-although the distance can be covered in twenty-four hours; for we
-turned aside every day for sport or business, while our train waited
-obligingly in a siding. Of the latter, indeed, there was no lack, for
-the Governor and the heads of several departments were in the train,
-and we laboured faithfully together at many prickly things. Then at
-the stations came farmers, surveyors, and others, with words of
-welcome or complaint, and a deputation of Boer settlers with many
-expressions of loyalty to the Crown, and the chiefs of the Lumbwa and
-Nandi tribes, with a crowd of warriors, and their Laibon with his four
-wives, all in a row, till I was as tired of making "brief and
-appropriate" speeches as my companions must have been of hearing them.
-
-  [Illustration: THE LAIBON'S WIVES.]
-
-  [Illustration: RAILHEAD AT KISUMU.]
-
-But Elmenteita was all holiday. Lord Delamere met us at the station
-with Cape carts, ponies, and hog-spears, and we drove off in search of
-pig over an enormous plain thickly peopled with antelope and gazelle.
-I cannot pretend to the experience of both countries necessary to
-compare the merits of pig-sticking in India and in East Africa in
-respect of the fighting qualities of the animal, nor the ground over
-which he is pursued. But I should think the most accomplished member
-of the Meerut Tent Club would admit that the courage and ferocity of
-the African wart-hog, and the extreme roughness of the country, heaped
-as it is with boulders and pitted with deep ant-bear holes concealed
-by high grass, make pig-sticking in East Africa a sport which would
-well deserve his serious and appreciative attention. At present it is
-in its infancy, and very few even of the officers of the King's
-African Rifles can boast the proficiency of the Indian expert.
-But everything in East Africa is at its first page; and besides,
-the wart-hog is, at present at any rate, regarded as dangerous
-vermin who does incredible damage to native plantations, and whose
-destruction--by any method, even the most difficult--is useful as well
-as exciting.
-
-Our first pig was a fine fellow, who galloped off with his tail
-straight up in the air and his tusks gleaming mischievously, and
-afforded a run of nearly three miles before he was killed. The risk of
-the sport consists in this--that the pig cannot be overtaken and
-effectively speared except by a horse absolutely at full gallop. The
-ground is so trappy that one hardly cares to take one's eyes off it
-for a moment. Yet during at least a hundred yards at a time the whole
-attention of the rider must be riveted on the pig, within a few yards
-of whom he is riding, and who may be expected to charge at any second.
-A fall at such a climax is necessarily very dangerous, as the wart-hog
-would certainly attack the unhorsed cavalier; yet no one can avoid the
-chance. I do not know whether Anglo-India will shudder, but I should
-certainly recommend the intending hunter in East Africa to strap a
-revolver on his thigh in case of accidents. "You do not want it
-often," as the American observed; "but when you do, you want it
-badly."
-
-We passed a jolly morning riding after these brutes and shooting a few
-_Gazella Granti_ and _Gazella Thomsoni_, or "Grants" and "Tommies" as
-they are familiarly called, and in looking for eland in the intervals.
-At the end of Lake Elmenteita, a beautiful sheet of water, unhappily
-brackish, a feast had been prepared, to which a number of gentlemen
-from Lord Delamere's estates and the surrounding farms had been
-bidden. A long array of flocks and herds was marshalled on both sides
-of the track in due order, native-bred, half-bred, three-quarter-bred,
-pure. Through these insignia of patriarchal wealth, which would have
-excited the keenest interest in any traveller less hungry and more
-instructed in such matters than I, we made our way to an excellent
-luncheon, which, be sure, was not unaccompanied by the usual
-discussion on East African politics.
-
-It was late in the afternoon when we started back to the train, which
-lay eight miles off in a siding. On the way we fell in with a most
-fierce and monstrous pig, who led us a nice dance through bush and
-grass and boulder. As he emerged into a patch of comparatively smooth,
-open ground I made up my mind to spear him, urged my pony to her top
-speed, and was just considering how best to do the deed when, without
-the slightest provocation, or, at any rate, before he had been even
-pricked, the pig turned sharp round and sprang at me, as if he were a
-leopard. Luckily, my spear got in the way, and with a solid jar, which
-made my arm stiff for a week, drove deep into his head and neck before
-it broke, so that he was glad to sheer off with eighteen inches of it
-sticking in him, and after a dash at my companion he took refuge in a
-deep hole, from which no inducements or insults could draw him.
-
-Later we rode and killed another pig and chased a fourth
-unsuccessfully, and it was nearly dark before the railway was reached.
-As I was getting into my carriage they calmly told me that _six lions_
-had walked across the line a quarter of a mile away and a quarter of
-an hour before. A settler who had been to lunch at Elmenteita was
-loading a hastily-borrowed revolver before starting on his homeward
-ride to Nakuru, and as I gave him some cartridges, I reflected that,
-whatever may be the shortcomings of East Africa, the absence of an
-interesting and varied fauna is certainly not among them.
-
-Next day our train is climbing through dense and beautiful forests to
-the summit of the Mau Escarpment. Admiration of the wealth and
-splendour of the leafy kingdom is mingled with something very like awe
-at its aggressive fertility. The great trees overhang the line. The
-creepers trail down the cuttings, robing the red soil with cloaks of
-flowers and foliage. The embankments are already covered. Every
-clearing is densely overgrown with sinuous plants. But for the
-ceaseless care with which the whole line is scraped and weeded it
-would soon become impassable. As it is, the long fingers of the
-encroaching forest are everywhere stretching out enviously towards the
-bright metals. Neglect the Uganda Railway for a year, and it would
-take an expedition to discover where it had run.
-
-At Nyoro station nearly nine hundred natives were at work cutting
-timber for the railway, which is entirely dependent on wood fuel. The
-contractor in charge, a young English gentleman, who was described to
-me as being a model employer of native labour in Government contracts,
-had taken the trouble to cut a path through the forest across a loop
-of the line in order that I might see what it was like inside. Through
-this leafy tunnel, about a mile and a half long, we all accordingly
-dived. There was nothing sinister in the aspect of this forest, for
-all its density and confusion. The great giants towered up
-magnificently to a hundred and fifty feet. Then came the ordinary
-forest trees, much more thickly clustered. Below this again was a
-layer of scrub and bushes; and under, around, and among the whole
-flowed a vast sea of convolvulus-looking creeper. Through all this
-four-fold veil the sunlight struggled down every twenty yards or so in
-gleaming chequers of green and gold.
-
-On the way the method of fuel-cutting is explained. So far as the
-labourer is concerned, it is an elaborate system of piece-work, very
-accurately and fairly adjusted, and, as is so often the case where the
-white employer takes personal care of his men, there appeared to be no
-difficulty in finding any number of natives. But they are a plaguey
-company. Few will stay for more than a month or two, however
-satisfied they may be with their work and its rewards; and just as
-they begin to get skilful, off they go to their villages to cultivate
-their gardens and their families, promising to come back another year,
-or after the harvest, or at some other remote and indefinite date. And
-meanwhile the railway must have its fuel every day and day after day,
-with the remorseless monotony of the industrial machine.
-
-But what a way to cut fuel! A floating population of clumsy barbarians
-pecking at the trees with native choppers more like a toy hoe than an
-axe, and carrying their loads when completed a quarter of a mile on
-their heads to the wood-stack, while the forest laughs at the
-feebleness of man. I made a calculation. Each of the nine hundred
-natives employed costs on the whole six pounds a year. The price of a
-steam tree-felling plant, with a mile of mono-rail tram complete, is
-about five hundred pounds. The interest and sinking fund on this
-capital outlay represent the wages of four natives, to which must be
-added the salary of a competent white engineer, equal to the wage of
-forty natives, and the working expenses and depreciation roughly
-estimated at the wage of twenty natives more; in all the wage of
-sixty-five natives. Such a plant, able to cut trees six feet in
-diameter through in four or five minutes, to cut timber as well as
-fuel, to saw it into the proper lengths for every purpose with the
-utmost rapidity, and to transport it by whole truck-loads when sawn to
-the railway siding, would accomplish a week's work of the sixty-five
-natives it replaced in a single day, and effect a sevenfold
-multiplication of power. It is no good trying to lay hold of Tropical
-Africa with naked fingers. Civilization must be armed with machinery
-if she is to subdue these wild regions to her authority. Iron roads,
-not jogging porters; tireless engines, not weary men; cheap power, not
-cheap labour; steam and skill, not sweat and fumbling: there lies the
-only way to tame the jungle--more jungles than one.
-
-On this we talked--or at least I talked--while we scrambled across the
-stumps of fallen trees or waded in an emerald twilight from one
-sunbeam to another across the creeper flood. It is of vital importance
-that these forests should not be laid waste by reckless and
-improvident hands. It is not less important that the Uganda Railway
-should have cheap fuel. For a long time fuel alone was the object, but
-now that an elaborate Forestry Department has been established on the
-most scientific lines, there is a danger that forestry will be the
-only object, and the cost of fuel so raised by regulations, admirable
-in themselves, that the economy of the Uganda Railway may be impaired.
-And let us never forget that the Uganda Railway is the driving-wheel
-of the whole concern. What is needed here, as elsewhere, is a
-harmonious compromise between opposite and conflicting interests. That
-is all.
-
-Presently our guide began to tell us of the strange creatures who live
-in the forest, and are sometimes seen quite close by the
-fuel-cutters--very rare antelope, enormous buffaloes, and astonishing
-birds and butterflies beyond imagination. He had managed to make
-friends with the Wandorobo--a tribe of forest-dwelling natives who
-live plunged in these impenetrable shades, who are so shy that, if
-once a stranger does but set eye upon their village, forthwith they
-abandon it; yet who are at the same time so teased by curiosity that
-they cannot resist peeping, peeping ever nearer and nearer to the
-fuel-cutters, until one day commercial relations are established on
-the basis of sugar for skins. I was just becoming interested in these
-wood-squirrels when we broke into the hot blaze of the noonday sun
-beating down on the polished railway track, and had to climb up on to
-our cowcatcher in order to hurry on to a real steam saw-mill ten miles
-farther up the line.
-
-As the journey advances, the train mounts steadily higher and the
-aspect of the country changes. The forest, which has hitherto lapped
-the line closely on every side, now makes fair division with rolling
-hills of grass. And there is this extraordinary feature about it:
-where the forest areas end, they end abruptly. There is no ragged belt
-of trees less thickly grown; no transition. Smooth slopes of grass run
-up to the very edge of virgin forest, just as in England the meadow
-runs to the edge of the covert. The effect is to make the landscape
-surprisingly homelike. It is like travelling through a series of
-gigantic parks, where the hand of man has for hundreds of years
-decided exactly where trees shall grow and where they shall not.
-
-  [Illustration: KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU.]
-
-Towards the west great plains are visible, in misty apparition,
-through rifts in the plateau. At length we arrive at the summit of the
-escarpment, and stop for luncheon by an indicator, which registers
-eight thousand two hundred and ninety feet above the sea-level.
-Southward rises a hill perhaps five hundred feet above us, from the
-top of which the waters of the Great Lake can be seen, like the waters
-of a distant ocean.
-
-Geographically we have now reached the culminating point in this long
-journey. Henceforward, to find our way home, we have only to descend,
-guided by the force of gravity, first swiftly along the railroad to
-the Victoria Lake, then sedately with the stream of the Nile to the
-Mediterranean. The lofty table-lands of East Africa, with their crisp,
-chill air and English aspect, must now be left behind--not without
-many regrets--and the traveller will alight upon a middle world spread
-at a level of about four thousand feet, in which an entirely different
-order of conditions prevails. Downward then at thirty miles an hour,
-along the side of spacious valleys, around the shoulders of the hills,
-across thin-spun iron bridges, through whose girders one glances down
-at torrents flashing far below, onward to the Lake. Within an hour the
-temperature has sensibly altered. An overcoat is no longer necessary,
-even if you ride in front of the engine. In two hours the climate is
-warm and damp with the steamy heat of the Tropics. The freshness has
-gone out of the air, and in its place is that sense of sultry
-oppression which precedes the thunderstorms so common at this season
-of the year.
-
-In order to avoid a hot night on the Lake shore we stopped at Fort
-Ternan, a placeless name, some forty miles from Kisumu, and rather
-more than a thousand feet above it. And here the storm which had been
-brooding all the afternoon over the western face of the Mau Escarpment
-burst upon us. Even after ten months on the South African veldt I was
-astonished by its fury. For nearly two hours the thunder crashed and
-roared in tremendous peals--
-
-     "Like water flung from some high crag,
-     The lightning fell with never a jag,
-         A river steep and wide,"
-
-while the rain dashed down in sheets of water, one single gust of
-which would drench you to the skin. But our train is an effective
-shelter. We dine comfortably in the midst of the tempest, and
-afterwards in a cooler atmosphere look up towards repentant stars and
-a tear-stained sky.
-
-At dawn we are at Kisumu. There is a stir of men, a crowded platform,
-soldiers in order, groups of Indian traders, hundreds of Kavirondo
-natives in their fullest undress, bunting, and introductions. Large
-white steamers lie alongside the jetty, and beyond these the waters of
-the Lake gleam their broad welcome to the sunrise. Kisumu, or Port
-Florence as it is sometimes called, is the western terminus of the
-Uganda Railway and the chief port on Lake Victoria. It possesses what
-I am told is the highest dockyard in the world, and is the place at
-which all the steamers now plying on the Lake have been put together.
-One eight-hundred-ton cargo boat is actually in process of
-construction, and will be launched in a few months' time to meet the
-growing traffic of the Nyanza. The station itself is pretty; its trim
-houses and shady trees, backed against the hills, overlook the wide
-expanse of Kavirondo Bay and its encircling promontories. Unluckily,
-it is unhealthy, for the climate is depressing and the sewage
-accumulates in the tideless and shallow inlet. Some day one of two
-things will happen: either the waters of the Victoria Nyanza will be
-raised by a dam across the Ripon Falls and Kavirondo Bay will be
-proportionately deepened and cleansed, or the railway will be
-deflected and prolonged to its natural terminus on the deep waters of
-the lake at Port Victoria.
-
-The Kavirondo tribe, the greatest in this part of the country, had
-organized an imposing demonstration. In dense array they lined the
-road from the station to the Commissioner's house, and our party
-walked through their midst in a perfect hubbub of horns and drums and
-shrill salutations. All the warriors carried their spears, shields,
-and war-paint, and most of them wore splendid plumes of ostrich
-feathers. The Kavirondo are naked and unashamed. Both sexes are
-accustomed to walk about in the primitive simplicity of Nature. Their
-nudity is based not upon mere ignorance but reasoned policy. They have
-a very strong prejudice against the wearing of clothes, which they
-declare lead to immorality; and no Kavirondo woman can attire herself
-even in the most exiguous raiment without sullying her reputation.
-They are said to be the most moral of all the tribes dwelling on the
-Lake shore. It is a pity that Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, of the
-University of Weissnichtwo, did not meet them in his rugged
-wanderings, for they would surely have enabled him to add another page
-to his monumental work on the functions of the tailor.
-
-  [Illustration: NANDI AND KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU.]
-
-I wake up the next morning to find myself afloat on a magnificent
-ship. Its long and spacious decks are as snowy as those of a pleasure
-yacht. It is equipped with baths, electric light, and all modern
-necessities. There is an excellent table, also a well-selected
-library. Smart bluejackets--with ebon faces--are polishing the
-brasswork; dapper, white-clad British naval officers pace the bridge.
-We are steaming ten miles an hour across an immense sea of fresh water
-as big as Scotland, and uplifted higher than the summit of Ben Nevis.
-At times we are in a complete circle of lake and sky, without a sign
-of land. At others we skirt lofty coasts covered with forest and
-crowned with distant blue-brown mountains, or thread our course
-between a multitude of beautiful islands. The air is cool and fresh,
-the scenery splendid. We might be yachting off the coast of Cornwall
-in July. We are upon the Equator, in the heart of Africa, and crossing
-the Victoria Nyanza, four thousand feet above the sea!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA
-
-
-The East Africa Protectorate is a country of the highest interest to
-the colonist, the traveller, or the sportsman. But the Kingdom of
-Uganda is a fairy tale. You climb up a railway instead of a beanstalk,
-and at the end there is a wonderful new world. The scenery is
-different, the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and,
-most of all, the people are different from anything elsewhere to be
-seen in the whole range of Africa. Instead of the breezy uplands we
-enter a tropical garden. In the place of naked, painted savages,
-clashing their spears and gibbering in chorus to their tribal chiefs,
-a complete and elaborate polity is presented. Under a dynastic King,
-with a Parliament, and a powerful feudal system, an amiable, clothed,
-polite, and intelligent race dwell together in an organized monarchy
-upon the rich domain between the Victoria and Albert Lakes. More
-than two hundred thousand natives are able to read and write. More
-than one hundred thousand have embraced the Christian faith. There is
-a Court, there are Regents and Ministers and nobles, there is a
-regular system of native law and tribunals; there is discipline, there
-is industry, there is culture, there is peace. In fact, I ask myself
-whether there is any other spot in the whole earth where the dreams
-and hopes of the negrophile, so often mocked by results and stubborn
-facts, have ever attained such a happy realization.
-
-  [Illustration: KISUMU.]
-
-Three separate influences, each of them powerful and benevolent,
-exercise control over the mass of the Baganda nation. First, the
-Imperial authority, secular, scientific, disinterested, irresistible;
-secondly, a native Government and feudal aristocracy, corrected of
-their abuses, yet preserving their vitality; and thirdly, missionary
-enterprise on an almost unequalled scale. Under the shelter of the
-British Flag, safe from external menace or internal broil, the
-child-King grows to a temperate and instructed maturity. Surrounded by
-his officers of State, he presides at the meetings of his council and
-Parliament, or worships in the huge thatched cathedral which has been
-reared on Namirembe Hill. Fortified in their rights, but restrained
-from tyrannical excess, and guided by an outside power, his
-feudatories exercise their proper functions. The people, relieved from
-the severities and confusions of times not long ago, are apt to learn
-and willing to obey. And among them with patient energy toils a large
-body of devoted Christian men of different nations, of different
-Churches, but of a common charity, tending their spiritual needs,
-enlarging their social and moral conceptions, and advancing their
-education year by year.
-
-An elegance of manners springing from a naive simplicity of character
-pervades all classes. An elaborate ritual of friendly salutations
-relieves the monotony of the wayfarer's journey. Submission without
-servility or loss of self-respect is accorded to constituted
-authority. The natives evince an eagerness to acquire knowledge and a
-very high observant and imitative faculty. And then Uganda is from end
-to end one beautiful garden, where the staple food of the people grows
-almost without labour, and where almost everything else can be grown
-better and easier than anywhere else. The planter from the best
-islands in the West Indies is astonished at the richness of the soil.
-Cotton grows everywhere. Rubber, fibre, hemp, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee,
-tea, coca, vanilla, oranges, lemons, pineapples are natural or thrive
-on introduction. As for our English garden products, brought in
-contact with the surface of Uganda they simply give one wild bound of
-efflorescence or fruition and break their hearts for joy. Does it not
-sound a paradise on earth? Approach and consider it more closely.
-
-The good ship _Clement Hill_, named after a well-known African
-explorer, has carried us smoothly and prosperously across the northern
-corner of the Victoria Nyanza, and reaches the pier of Entebbe as the
-afternoon draws towards its close. The first impression that strikes
-the eye of the visitor fresh from Kavirondo is the spectacle of
-hundreds of natives all dressed in long clean white garments which
-they wear with dignity and ease. At the landing-place a sort of
-pavilion has been erected, and here come deputations from the Chamber
-of Commerce--a limited body of Europeans--from the Goanese community,
-and from the numerous Indian colony of merchants. A tonga drawn by
-two mules takes me to Government House, and from a wide
-mosquito-proof veranda I am able to survey a truly delightful
-prospect. The most beautiful plants and trees grow in profusion on all
-sides. Beyond a blaze of violet, purple, yellow, and crimson blossoms,
-and an expanse of level green lawns, the great blue lake lies in all
-its beauty. The hills and islands on the horizon are just beginning to
-flush to the sunset. The air is soft and cool. Except that the picture
-actually looks more English in its character, one would imagine it was
-the Riviera. It must be too good to be true.
-
-It _is_ too good to be true. One can hardly believe that such an
-attractive spot can be cursed with malignant attributes. Yet what is
-true of the East Africa Protectorate is even more true of Uganda. The
-contrast between appearance and reality is more striking and more
-harsh. Behind its glittering mask Entebbe wears a sinister aspect.
-These smiling islands which adorn and diversify the scenery of the
-lake supported a few years ago a large population. To-day they are
-desolate. Every white man seems to feel a sense of undefinable
-oppression. A cut will not heal; a scratch festers. In the third
-year of residence even a small wound becomes a running sore. One day a
-man feels perfectly well; the next, for no apparent cause, he is
-prostrate with malaria, and with malaria of a peculiarly persistent
-kind, turning often in the third or fourth attack to blackwater fever.
-In the small European community at Entebbe there have been quite
-recently two suicides. Whether, as I have suggested in East Africa, it
-be the altitude, or the downward ray of the Equatorial sun, or the
-insects, or some more subtle cause, there seems to be a solemn veto
-placed upon the white man's permanent residence in these beautiful
-abodes.
-
-  [Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ENTEBBE.]
-
-There are many who advocate the abandonment of Entebbe as the
-administrative capital and the restoration of the seat of Government
-to Kampala. But the expense of transferring public offices and
-buildings lately erected to another site is altogether beyond the
-slender resources and not among the most urgent needs of the Uganda
-Protectorate. Great improvements have been effected recently in the
-sanitation of Entebbe. The bush and trees, which added so greatly to
-its picturesque appearance, have been ruthlessly cut down; and with
-them, _mirabile dictu_, have vanished the mosquito and the
-sleeping-sickness tsetse-fly. Half a mile away on either side of the
-settlement are groves which it might easily be death to enter; but the
-inhabited area is now quite clear.
-
-Besides, the general unhealthiness of the country so far as the
-European is concerned is not local to Entebbe. It is widely spread in
-slightly different degrees throughout the whole of Uganda; and Kampala
-is certainly not exempt. Finally, there is a reason of a different
-character which ought to impose a final bar on any return of the
-Imperial Government to the native city. Uganda is a native state. Much
-of our success in dealing with its population arises from the fact
-that we work through and by the native Government. And that Government
-could not fail to lose much, if not all, of its separate and natural
-identity if it were overwhelmed by the immediate proximity of the
-supreme Administration.
-
-  [Illustration: UGANDA
-    Founded by permission of the War Office on the Map of Africa
-    No 1539.]
-
-For a new station in an almost unknown land, Entebbe certainly
-presents many remarkable evidences of progress. The slopes of the lake
-shore are covered with pretty villas, each standing in its own
-luxuriant garden. There is an excellent golf course, and a very
-bright and pleasant society. Guardian over all this stands the Sikh.
-There are two companies of these soldiers, one at Entebbe and the
-other at Kampala, who, being entirely immune to local influences of
-all kinds, constitute what Mr. Gladstone used to call the "motor
-muscle" of Imperial authority. I have always admired the Sikh in
-India, both in his cantonments and in the field. But somehow his
-graceful military figure and grave countenance under the turban as he
-stands erect beside his rifle on guard over British interests six
-thousand miles from the Punjab, impresses the eye and the imagination
-with an added force. He is a picked volunteer from all the Sikh
-regiments, who delights in Uganda, thrives under its, to him, milder
-sun, lives on nothing, saves his doubled pay, and returns to India
-enriched and proud of his service across the sea. If at any time
-considerations of expense, or the desire to obtain a complete
-homogeneity in the military forces of the Protectorate, should lead to
-the disbandment or withdrawal of these two companies, those who take
-the decision will have incurred a responsibility which few would care
-to share with them.
-
-So far as human force is concerned, the British power in these regions
-is at present beyond challenge. No man can withstand it. But a new
-opponent has appeared and will not be denied. Uganda is defended by
-its insects. It would even seem that the arrival of the white man and
-the increased movement and activity which his presence has engendered
-have awakened these formidable atoms to a realization of their powers
-of evil. The dreaded _Spirillum_ tick has begun to infest the roads
-like a tiny footpad, and scarcely any precautions avail with certainty
-against him. This tick is a dirty, drab-coloured creature the size and
-shape of a small squashed pea. When he bites an infected person he
-does not contract the Spirillum fever himself, nor does he transmit it
-directly to other persons. By a peculiarly malevolent provision of
-Nature this power is exercised not by him but by his descendants, who
-are numbered in hundreds. So the poison spreads in an incalculable
-progression. Although this fever is not fatal, it is exceptionally
-painful in its course and distressing in its consequences. There are
-five or six separate and successive attacks of fever, in which the
-temperature of the victim may rise even to 107 degrees; and
-afterwards the eyes and hearing are temporarily affected by a kind of
-facial paralysis. Road after road has been declared infected by this
-scourge, and officer after officer struck down as he moves on duty
-from place to place. The only sure preventive seems to be the
-destruction of all old grass-huts and camping-grounds, and the
-erection along the roads of a regular system of stone-built, properly
-maintained and disinfected rest-houses, in which the traveller may
-take refuge from the lurking peril. And this will have to be done.
-
-But a far more terrible shadow darkens the Uganda Protectorate. In
-July, 1901, a doctor of the Church Missionary Society Hospital at
-Kampala noticed eight cases of a mysterious disease. Six months later
-he reported that over two hundred natives had died of it in the Island
-of Buvuma, and that thousands appeared to be infected. The pestilence
-swiftly spread through all the districts of the lake shore, and the
-mortality was appalling. No one could tell where it had come from or
-what it was caused by. It resisted every kind of treatment and
-appeared to be universally fatal. Scientific inquiries of various
-kinds were immediately set on foot, but for a long time no results
-were obtained, and meanwhile the disease ran along the coasts and
-islands of the great lake like fire in a high wind. By the middle of
-1902 the reported deaths from _Trypanosomiasis_, or "sleeping
-sickness," as it has come to be called, numbered over thirty thousand.
-It was still spreading rapidly upon all sides, and no clue whatever to
-its treatment or prevention had been obtained. It seemed certain that
-the entire population of the districts affected was doomed.
-
-On April 28th, 1903, Colonel Bruce, whose services had been obtained
-for the investigation of "sleeping sickness" through the
-instrumentality of the Royal Society, announced that he considered the
-disease to be due to a kind of trypanosome, conveyed from one person
-to another by the bite of a species of tsetse-fly called _Glossina
-palpalis_. His theory was strongly supported by the fact that the
-disease appeared to be confined to the localities infested by the fly.
-The fly-belt also could be defined with precision, and was rarely
-found to extend more than a mile or two from water. The news that
-Europeans could no longer consider themselves immune from the
-infection caused, as might be imagined, much consternation in the
-white community. Nearly everybody had been bitten by tsetses at one
-time or another, but whether by this particular species when actually
-infected, remained in suspense. Moreover, tsetse-flies abounded in
-such numbers on all parts of the lake shore that their wholesale
-destruction seemed quite impossible. What then?
-
-For a time Colonel Bruce's discovery almost paralyzed all preventive
-and restrictive measures. The scourge fell unchecked. By the end of
-1903 the reported deaths numbered over ninety thousand, and the lake
-shores were becoming fast depopulated. Whole villages were completely
-exterminated, and great tracts in Usoga, which had formerly been famed
-for their high state of cultivation, relapsed into forests. The
-weakness of the victims and the terror or apathy of the survivors
-permitted a sudden increase in the number of leopards, and these
-fierce animals preyed with daring and impunity upon the living, the
-dying, and the dead.
-
-Further investigations, which were anxiously pushed on in many
-directions, revealed the existence of the tsetse-fly over widespread
-areas. In the interior of Usoga, on the banks of many rivers, in
-swamps on the shores of the Albert Lake and Lake Albert Edward, these
-swarming emissaries of death were found to be awaiting their message.
-All that was needed to arm them with their fatal power was the arrival
-of some person infected with the microbe. The Albert shores and
-several parts of the Upper Nile soon became new centres of pestilence.
-Thousands of deaths occurred in Unyoro. By the end of 1905
-considerably more than two hundred thousand persons had perished in
-the plague-stricken regions, _out of a population_ in those regions
-_which could not have exceeded three hundred thousand_.
-
-Any decrease in the mortality in any district up to the present time
-is due, not to any diminution in the virulence of the disease, but
-simply to the reduction of possible victims, owing to the
-extermination of the inhabitants. Buvuma, a few years ago one of the
-most prosperous of all the islands, contains fewer than fourteen
-thousand out of thirty thousand. Some of the islands in the Sesse
-group have lost every soul, while in others a few moribund natives,
-crawling about in the last stages of the disease, are all that are
-left to represent a once teeming population.
-
-"It might have been expected," writes Sir H. Hesketh Bell, the
-Governor of Uganda, to whom I am indebted for much valuable
-information on this subject, "that, even though the negroes showed
-inability to grasp the theory of the transmission of disease by the
-agency of insects, the undeniable deadliness of the countries
-bordering on the lake shore would have induced them to flee from the
-stricken land and to have sought in the healthier districts inland a
-refuge from the pestilence that was slaying them by thousands. An
-extraordinary fatalism, however, seems to have paralyzed the natives,
-and, while deploring the sadness of their fate, they appear to have
-accepted death almost with apathy."
-
-The police of science, although arrived late on the scene of the
-tragedy, were now following many converging clues. Therapeutic
-investigation into the treatment and origin of the disease,
-entomological examination of the resorts, habits, dangers, and
-life-history of the fly, and thirdly administrative measures of
-drastic authority are now being driven sternly forward. Knowledge has
-accumulated. Fighting the sleeping sickness is like laying a vampire.
-To make the spell work, five separate conditions must be
-present--water, bushes, trees, the tsetse-fly (_Glossina palpalis_),
-and one infected person. Remove any one of these and the curse is
-lifted. But let them all be conjoined, and the sure destruction of
-every human being in the district is only a matter of time.
-
-The Government of Uganda is now pursuing a policy based on the
-appreciation of these facts. Wherever it is necessary to come to the
-lake shores, as at Entebbe, Munyonyo, Ripon Falls, Fajao, etc., the
-tsetse-fly is banished or eliminated by cutting down the trees,
-clearing away the bush, and planting in its place the vigorous,
-rapid-growing _citronella_ grass, which, once firmly established,
-holds its own against invading vegetation. Wherever it is not possible
-to clear the shores of tsetse-flies, they must be cleared of
-inhabitants. And the extraordinary operation of moving entire
-populations from their old homes to new places--often against their
-will--has been actually accomplished within the last year by a
-combined dead-lift effort of these three tremendous forces of
-Government which regulate from such different points of view the
-lives and liberties of the Baganda.
-
-It does not follow that the lake shores will have to be abandoned for
-ever. In a very short time--some say two days, some eleven hours--the
-infected tsetse is free from poison and can no longer communicate it;
-and once the disease has been eradicated from the population, healthy
-people might return and be bitten with impunity. Nor, on the other
-hand, can we hope, unless some cure capable of being applied on a
-large scale can be perfected, that the mortality in the immediate
-future will sensibly diminish. For there are many thousands of persons
-still affected, and for these segregation, nursing, and compassion
-comprise the present resources of civilization.
-
-One thing is, however, above all things important. There must be no
-losing heart. At any moment the researches which are being conducted
-in so many laboratories, and in which Professor Koch has taken a
-leading part, may produce an absolute therapeutic remedy. By the
-administrative measures now vigorously enforced it is believed that
-the fatal contact between infected persons and uninfected flies,
-between infected flies and uninfected persons, will have been
-effectively broken. We cannot fail to learn more of the tsetse. The
-humble black horse-fly, indistinguishable to the casual observer from
-harmless types, except that his wings are folded neatly like a pair of
-shut scissors, instead of splaying out on either side of his back, is
-now under a bright, searching, and pitiless eye. Who are his enemies?
-What are his dangers? What conditions are essential to his existence?
-What conditions are fatal or inimical? International Commissions
-discuss him round green tables, grave men peer patiently at him
-through microscopes, active officers scour Central Africa to plot him
-out on charts. A fine-spun net is being woven remorselessly around
-him. And may not man find allies in this strange implacable warfare?
-There are fishes which destroy mosquitoes, there are birds which prey
-upon flies, there are plants whose scent or presence is abhorrent or
-injurious to particular forms of insect life. In what places and for
-how long will the tsetse continue to fly, as he is wont, over the
-smooth, gleaming water, just above the reeds and bushes, just below
-the branches of the overhanging trees? _Glossina palpalis contra
-mundum!_
-
-  [Illustration: THE GOVERNOR WITH BAGANDA GROUP.]
-
-I have not sought to conceal the perils in describing the riches and
-the beauties of Uganda. The harsh contrasts of the land, its noble
-potentialities, its hideous diseases, its fecundity alike of life and
-death, are capable of being illustrated by many more facts and
-examples than I can here set down. But what an obligation, what a
-sacred duty is imposed upon Great Britain to enter the lists in person
-and to shield this trustful, docile, intelligent Baganda race from
-dangers which, whatever their cause, have synchronized with our
-arrival in their midst! And, meanwhile, let us be sure that order and
-science will conquer, and that in the end John Bull will be really
-master in his curious garden of sunshine and deadly nightshade.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-KAMPALA
-
-
-Two days after I had arrived at Entebbe the Governor took me over to
-Kampala. The distance between the ancient and the administrative
-capital is about twenty-four miles. The road, although unmetalled,
-runs over such firm, smooth sandstone, almost polished by the rains,
-that, except in a few places, it would carry a motor-car well, and a
-bicycle is an excellent means of progression. The Uganda Government
-motor-cars, which are now running well and regularly, had not then,
-however, arrived, and the usual method was to travel by rickshaw.
-Mounted in this light bicycle-wheeled carriage, drawn by one man
-between the shafts and pushed by three more from behind, we were able
-to make rather more than six miles an hour in very comfortable style.
-
-The rickshaw-boys, who were neatly dressed in white tunics and red
-caps, were relieved every eight miles. They have their own way of
-doing business. From the moment when the travellers are seated in the
-rickshaw and their labour begins, they embark upon an ever-varying but
-absolutely interminable antiphony, which, if it exhausts their breath,
-serves undoubtedly to keep their spirits up. "Burrulum," cry the
-pushers; "Huma," says the puller. "Burrulum," say the pushers again,
-and so on over and over again for a very long time. All these chaunts
-have their meanings, and if the traveller is found to be heavy or
-known to be ignorant of the language, he would not always be
-complimented by a correct translation. The phrase I have quoted means
-"iron upon wood"; and its signification is that the iron of European
-strength and skill, however superior, yet cannot get along without the
-wood of native labour and endurance. With such unexceptionable
-sentiments no one would quarrel. Yet even these lose their flavour by
-repetition, and after half an hour of "Burrulum" and "Huma" I was
-constrained to ask the singers whether they could not possibly manage
-to convey us in silence. They tried their best, but I could see they
-were unhappy, and after a while, out of compassion and to improve the
-pace, I withdrew the ban, and the chorus was joyfully resumed in a new
-and more elaborate form.
-
-The manners of the Baganda are ceremonious to a degree. They well
-deserve Sir Harry Johnston's description of them as "the Japanese of
-Africa." If you say "Good morning" to a stranger on an English road,
-it is as like as not that his surprise will throw him into a posture
-of self-defence; but when two Baganda meet they begin to salute each
-other as soon as they come within earshot. "How are you?" cries the
-one. "Who am I that you should care to know?" replies the other.
-"Humble though I be, yet I have dared," rejoins the first. "But say
-first how are _you_," continues the second. "The better for the honour
-you have done me," is the answer. By this they have already passed
-each other, and there is only time for the Parthian affability, "The
-honour is mine, and I shall treasure it," and a quavering of
-delicately-modulated, long-drawn "A--a--a's" of contentment and
-goodwill which gradually die away in the distance, leaving neither of
-them the worse circumstanced, nor the better informed. I must add,
-for the reader's caution, that the aforesaid dialogue is not an
-invariable ritual. The phrases may be varied _ad infinitum_ to suit
-the occasion; but it will suffice as an illustration of these roadside
-courtesies.
-
-  [Illustration: BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA.]
-
-If you wish to make a Baganda perfectly happy, all you need to do is
-to say, "Way wally," which means a sort of supremely earnest "Well
-done." The moment this talismanic expression has left your lips, the
-native to whom it is addressed will probably fall on his knees, and,
-clasping his two hands together, will sway them from side to side, as
-if he were playing a concertina, while all the time his face beams
-with a most benignant and compulsive smile, and he purrs, "A--o, a--o,
-a--o," as much as to say, "My cup of joy is overflowing." It is not in
-accordance with our ideas that man should kneel to man, and one feels
-uncomfortable to see it done. Yet it should not be thought that the
-action, as performed by the Baganda, involves or implies any
-servility. It is their good manners--and meant to be no more. Nor,
-once you are used to it, do they seem to lose at all in dignity. Only
-they win your heart.
-
-The road from Entebbe to Kampala passes through delicious country.
-Along its whole length a double avenue of rubber trees has just been
-planted, and behind these on each side are broad strips of cotton
-plants, looking beautiful with their yellow flowers or pinky-white
-bolls. American upland cotton grown in Uganda actually commands a
-higher price in the Manchester market than when it is grown in the
-United States. There appears to be practically no natural difficulty
-in its cultivation throughout the larger part of Uganda. A great
-development is only a question of organization and--money.
-
-But I have forgotten that we have been moving swiftly along the
-Kampala road, and now we are almost in sight of the city. Almost, but
-not quite; for, to tell the truth, no one has ever seen Kampala. The
-traveller sees the Government buildings and residences neat and prim
-on one hill; he sees the King's house and his Ministers' houses on
-another. Upon a third, a fourth, or a fifth hill he may discern
-successively the Protestant Cathedral, the Catholic Mission, and the
-White Father's Monastery. But Kampala, the home of sixty thousand
-persons, is permanently invisible. The whole town is buried under the
-leaves of innumerable banana plantations, which afford shade and
-food to its people, and amid which their huts are thickly scattered
-and absolutely concealed.
-
-  [Illustration: KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA.
-    (Major Jenkins, Mr. Churchill, King Daudi, Sir H. Hesketh Bell.)]
-
-We were still three miles out of this "garden city" when the native
-reception began, and we travelled for a quarter of a mile between
-lines of white-robed Baganda, all mustered by their chiefs, and
-clapping their hands in sign of welcome. At last our procession of
-rickshaws reached a hillock by the roadside, at the top of which stood
-a pavilion, beautifully constructed of stout elephant grass like thin
-polished canes woven together with curious art. Down from this
-eminence, over a pathway strewn with rushes, came to meet us the King
-and his notables in a most imposing array. Daudi Chewa, the King or
-Kabaka of Uganda, is a graceful, distinguished-looking little boy,
-eleven years old. He was simply dressed in a flowing black robe edged
-with gold, and a little white gold-rimmed cap. Around him were the
-Council of Regency; and at his right hand stood the Prime Minister,
-Sir Apolo Kagwar, a powerful, determined-looking man, wearing a
-crimson, gold-laced robe, on which shone many decorations, several
-British war medals, and the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
-
-We all shook hands, and were then led up into the pavilion, where we
-took our seats on wicker chairs and ate sweet jellies while we
-conversed. The King, who is being most carefully educated by an
-English tutor, understands and speaks English quite well, but on this
-occasion he seemed too shy to say much more than "Yes" or "No," in a
-low, sweet drawl, and this formal interview soon came to an end.
-
-The afternoon was consumed in ceremony; for the Commissioner of Uganda
-had to be sworn in the rank of Governor, to which he has been lately
-raised; and there was a parade of troops, in which some five or six
-hundred very smart-looking soldiers took part, headed by the Kampala
-company of Sikhs. It was not until the shadows began to lengthen that
-we visited the Kabaka on the Royal Hill. He received us in his
-Parliament House. In this large and beautifully-constructed grass
-building about seventy chiefs and Baganda notables were assembled. The
-little Kabaka sat on his throne, and his subjects grouped themselves
-around and before him. We were given seats at his side, and the
-Prime Minister explained that the Baganda would show us the ceremony
-of swearing a chief. One of the most portly and dignified of the
-councillors thereupon advanced into the centre of the room, threw
-himself face downward on the ground, and poured out a torrent of
-asseverations of loyalty. After a few minutes he rose and began
-brandishing his spears, chaunting his oath all the while, until he had
-created an extraordinary appearance of passion. Finally he rushed from
-the building to go and slay the King's enemies outside. It was not
-until he returned a moment later, calm, sedate, and respectable, that
-I realized, from the merry smile on his face and from the mirth of the
-company, that he was "only pretending," and that the ceremony was
-merely a representation given to interest us.
-
-  [Illustration: ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA.]
-
-The incident is remarkable because it illustrates the rapidity with
-which the Baganda people are leaving their past behind them. Already
-they laugh at their old selves. Ceremonies which twenty years ago had
-a solemn and awful significance, are to-day reproduced by this
-reflective people in much the same spirit as the citizens of Coventry
-revive the progress of Lady Godiva. The same thing happened at the
-war-dance the next day. Two or three thousand men, naked and painted
-for war, rushed frantically to and fro to the beating of drums and
-barbaric music, with every sign of earnestness and even frenzy. Yet a
-few minutes later they were laughing sheepishly at one another, and
-bowing to us like actors before the curtain, and the Prime Minister
-was making a speech to explain that this was meant to be a pageant of
-the bad old times reproduced for our benefit. Indeed, so unaccustomed
-to carry arms had the warriors become that not one in ten could find a
-spear to arm himself with, and they had to come with sticks and other
-stage-properties.
-
-Even a comic element was provided in the shape of a warrior painted
-all over in a ridiculous manner, and held by two others with a rope
-tied round his middle. This, we were told, was "the bravest man in the
-army," who had to be restrained lest he should rush into battle too
-soon. It is not easy to convey the air of honest fun and good humour
-which pervaded these curious performances, or to measure the
-intellectual progress which the attitude of the Baganda towards them
-implied.
-
-  [Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.
-    "The bravest man in the army."]
-
-  [Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.]
-
-The Kabaka gave us tea in his house. It is a comfortable European
-building, quite small and modest, but nicely furnished, and adorned
-with familiar English prints and portraits of Queen Victoria and King
-Edward. Gradually he got the better of his shyness, and told me that
-he liked football more than anything else, and that his mathematical
-studies had advanced as far as "G.C.M.," initials which never fail to
-stir disagreeable school-day memories in my mind. He can write a very
-good letter in English, rides well on a nice pony, and will probably
-become a well-educated and accomplished man. Altogether it is a very
-pleasing spectacle to find in the heart of Africa, and amid so much
-barbarism, squalour, and violence, this island of gentle manners and
-peaceful civilization.
-
-The next day was one unending pilgrimage. I have described how Kampala
-lies under the leaves of the plantain groves about the slopes of many
-hills. Each hill has its special occupants and purpose. Each of the
-different Christian missions has a hill to itself, and in the bad old
-days a Maxim gun was not thought at all an inappropriate aid to
-Christian endeavour. It would, however, be very unfair to charge the
-missionaries with having created the feuds and struggles which
-convulsed Uganda twelve years ago. The accident that the line of
-cleavage between French and British influence was also the line of
-cleavage between Catholic and Protestant converts, imparted a
-religious complexion to what was in reality a fierce political
-dispute. These troubles are now definitely at an end. The arrival upon
-the scene of an English Catholic mission has prevented national
-rivalries and religious differences from mutually embittering one
-another. The erection of a stable Government and the removal of all
-doubts about the future of Uganda have led to an entire abatement of
-strife among devoted men engaged in a noble work. Not only is there
-peace among the different Christian missions themselves, but the
-Government of Uganda, so far from watching missionary enterprise with
-sour disfavour, is thoroughly alive to the inestimable services which
-have been and are daily being rendered by the missions to the native
-population, and excellent relations prevail.
-
-  [Illustration: THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA.]
-
-  [Illustration: CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION, KAMPALA.]
-
-In duty bound I climbed one hill after another and endeavoured to make
-myself acquainted with the details of mission work in Kampala. It
-comprises every form of moral and social activity. Apart from their
-spiritual work, which needs no advocacy here, the missionaries have
-undertaken and are now maintaining the whole educational system of the
-country. They have built many excellent schools, and thousands of
-young Baganda are being taught to read and write in their own
-language. The whole country is dotted with subsidiary mission
-stations, each one a centre of philanthropic and Christian effort.
-There are good hospitals, with skilful doctors and nurses or sisters
-of charity, in connection with all the missions. The largest of these,
-belonging to the Church Missionary Society, is a model of what a
-tropical hospital for natives ought to be. Technical education is now
-being added to these services, and in this, it is to be hoped, the
-Government will be able to cooperate. I do not know of any other part
-of the world where missionary influence and enterprise have been so
-beneficently exerted, or where more valuable results have been
-achieved.
-
-On Namirembe Hill, where the Church Missionary Society have their
-head-quarters, a really fine cathedral, with three tall, quaint,
-thatched spires, has been built out of very primitive materials; and
-this is almost the only building in Uganda which offers the slightest
-attempt at architectural display. Under the shadow of this I found
-myself on the afternoon of the 20th of November engaged in opening a
-high school for scholars who are more advanced than can be instructed
-in the existing establishments. A large and well-dressed audience,
-native and European, filled a good-sized room. The scholars crowded
-together in a solid mass of white-dressed youths upon the floor. The
-Kabaka and Sir Apolo Kagwar, who has himself five sons at the school,
-were upon the platform. The Governor presided. The Bishop made a
-speech. The schoolboys sang English songs and hymns in very good tune
-and rhythm. It was astonishing to look at the map of the British
-Empire hanging on the wall and to realize that all this was taking
-place near the north-western corner of the Victoria Nyanza.
-
-  [Illustration: INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL.]
-
-It is eight miles from Kampala to Munyonyo, its present port on the
-lake, and this distance we covered in rickshaws over a shocking road.
-Munyonyo is itself little more than a jetty and a few sheds, but it
-affords a very good example of the salutary effects of cutting down
-the bush and forest. Mosquitoes and tsetses have been absolutely
-banished from the cleared area, and a place which a year ago was a
-death-trap is now perfectly safe and healthy. Plans are now on foot to
-make a new port a little farther along the coast at a point only five
-miles away from Kampala; and when this has been connected with the
-capital, as it must be, by a line of mono-rail tramway, there is every
-reason to expect a substantial and growing trade.
-
-The _Sir William Mackinnon_, a venerable vessel of the Uganda Marine,
-awaited our party, and we steamed off on the smooth waters of the
-lake, through an archipelago of beautiful islands--each one more
-inviting than the other--and all depopulated by sleeping sickness. All
-day long we voyaged in these sheltered waters, and in the evening the
-lights of Jinja guided us to our destination. One cannot help admiring
-the luck which led Speke to his thrilling discovery of the source of
-the Nile. There are five hundred gulfs and inlets on the northern
-shore of Lake Victoria, and nothing distinguishes this one from the
-rest. No current is perceptible to the ordinary mariner until within a
-few miles of the rapids, and although the presumption that so vast a
-body of fresh water would have an overflow somewhere had behind it a
-backing of strong probability, the explorer might have searched for a
-year without finding the spot. Instead of which he drifted and paddled
-gently along until all of a sudden the murmur of a distant cataract
-and the slight acceleration in the pace of his canoe drew him to the
-long-sought birthplace of the most wonderful river in the world.
-
-It was dark when we landed at Jinja, and I could not properly see the
-preparations made for our reception by the local chiefs and the Indian
-traders, of whom there was a considerable crowd. The darkness,
-otherwise a cause of disappointment, afforded the opportunity for just
-the sort of brave act one so often finds a British officer ready to
-do. As the baggage was being landed from the steamer on to the jetty,
-a poor coolie slipped under his load, and in an instant was engulfed
-in the deep black waters below. Whereupon, as a matter of course, a
-young civilian in the Political Department jumped in after him in the
-darkness and among the crocodiles, and fished him out safe and sound,
-an act of admirable behaviour which has since received the recognition
-of the Royal Humane Society. I am not quite sure that in all parts of
-Africa so high a standard of honour and respect for the life of the
-humble native would prevail.
-
-Jinja is destined to become a very important place in the future
-economy of Central Africa. Situated at the point where the Nile flows
-out of the Great Lake, it is at once on the easiest line of water
-communication with Lake Albert and the Soudan, and also where great
-water-power is available. In years to come the shores of this splendid
-bay may be crowned with long rows of comfortable tropical villas and
-imposing offices, and the gorge of the Nile crowded with factories and
-warehouses. There is power enough to gin all the cotton and saw all
-the wood in Uganda, and it is here that one of the principal emporia
-of tropical produce will certainly be created. In these circumstances
-it is a pity to handicap the town with an outlandish name. It would be
-much better to call it Ripon Falls, after the beautiful cascades which
-lie beneath it, and from whose force its future prosperity will be
-derived.
-
-The Ripon Falls are, for their own sake, well worth a visit. The Nile
-springs out of the Victoria Nyanza, a vast body of water nearly as
-wide as the Thames at Westminster Bridge, and this imposing river
-rushes down a stairway of rock from fifteen to twenty feet deep, in
-smooth, swirling slopes of green water. It would be perfectly easy to
-harness the whole river and let the Nile begin its long and beneficent
-journey to the sea by leaping through a turbine. It is possible that
-nowhere else in the world could so enormous a mass of water be held up
-by so little masonry. Two or three short dams from island to island
-across the falls would enable, at an inconceivably small cost, the
-whole level of the Victoria Nyanza--over an expanse of a hundred and
-fifty thousand square miles--to be gradually raised six or seven feet;
-would greatly increase the available water-power; would deepen the
-water in Kavirondo Bay, so as to admit steamers of much larger
-draught; and, finally, would enable the lake to be maintained at a
-uniform level, so that immense areas of swampy foreshore, now
-submerged, now again exposed, according to the rainfalls, would be
-converted either into clear water or dry land, to the benefit of
-man and the incalculable destruction of mosquitoes.
-
-  [Illustration: THE RIPON FALLS (Source of the Nile).]
-
-As one watches the surging waters of the Ripon Falls and endeavours to
-compute the mighty energies now running to waste, but all within the
-reach of modern science, the problem of Uganda rises in a new form on
-the mind. All this water-power belongs to the State. Ought it ever to
-be surrendered to private persons? How long, on the other hand, is a
-Government, if not prepared to act itself, entitled to bar the way to
-others? This question is raised in a multitude of diverse forms in
-almost all the great dependencies of the Crown. But in Uganda the
-arguments for the State ownership and employment of the natural
-resources of the country seem to present themselves in their strongest
-and most formidable array. Uganda is a native State. It must not be
-compared with any of those colonies where there is a white population
-already established, nor again with those inhabited by tribes of
-nomadic barbarians. It finds its counterparts among the great native
-States of India, where Imperial authority is exercised in the name and
-often through the agency of a native prince and his own officers.
-
-This combination of the external brain and the native hand results in
-a form of government often highly acceptable to the general body of
-the inhabitants, who are confronted with no sudden or arbitrary
-changes in the long-accustomed appearances of things. But it involves
-all the administration of affairs in a degree of complexity and
-delicacy which is absent from simpler and cruder systems. In such
-circumstances there cannot be much opening for the push and drive of
-ordinary commercial enterprise. The hustling business man--admirably
-suited to the rough and tumble of competitive production in Europe or
-America--becomes an incongruous and even a dangerous figure when
-introduced into the smooth and leisurely development of a native
-State. The Baganda will not be benefited either morally or materially
-by contact with modern money-making or modern money-makers. When a man
-is working only for the profits of his company and is judged by the
-financial results alone, he does not often under the sun of Central
-Africa acquire the best method of dealing with natives; and all sorts
-of difficulties and troubles will follow any sudden incursion of
-business enterprise into the forests and gardens of Uganda. And even
-if the country is more rapidly developed by these agencies, the
-profits will not go to the Government and people of Uganda, to be used
-in fostering new industries, but to divers persons across the sea, who
-have no concern, other than purely commercial, in its fortunes. This
-is not to advocate the arbitrary exclusion of private capital and
-enterprise from Uganda. Carefully directed and narrowly controlled
-opportunities for their activities will no doubt occur. But the
-natural resources of the country should, as far as possible, be
-developed by the Government itself, even though that may involve the
-assumption of many new functions.
-
-Indeed, it would be hard to find a country where the conditions were
-more favourable than in Uganda to a practical experiment in State
-Socialism. The land is rich; the people pacific and industrious. There
-are no great differences between class and class. One staple article
-of food meets the needs of the whole population, and produces itself
-almost without the aid of man. There are no European vested interests
-to block the way. Nowhere are the powers of the Government to
-regulate and direct the activities of the people more overwhelming or
-more comprehensive. The superiority of knowledge in the rulers is
-commanding. Their control upon the natives is exerted through almost
-every channel; and besides the secular authorities--native and
-Imperial--there is the spiritual and educative influence of the
-missionaries to infuse human sympathy and moral earnestness into the
-regular machinery of State.
-
-The first, and perhaps the greatest, difficulty which confronts the
-European Socialist is the choosing of Governors to whom the positively
-awful powers indispensable to a communistic society are to be
-entrusted. If a race of beings could be obtained when and as required
-from a neighbouring planet, whose practical superiority in virtue,
-science, wisdom, and strength was so manifest as to be universally
-acclaimed, this difficulty would disappear, and we might with
-composure await the decision of popular elections with all their
-defects and advantages. But in the absence of this dispensation the
-problem of how rulers are to be selected, and how, having been
-selected, they are to be controlled or changed, remains the first
-question of politics, even in days when the functions of government
-are, in general, restricted to the modest limits of _laissez-faire_.
-
-In Uganda, however, this difficulty does not exist. A class of rulers
-is provided by an outside power as remote from and, in all that
-constitutes fitness to direct, as superior to the Baganda as Mr.
-Wells's Martians would have been to us. The British administration is
-in its _personnel_ absolutely disinterested. The officials draw their
-salaries, and that is all. They have no end to serve, except the
-improvement of the country and the contentment of its people. By that
-test and that test alone are they judged. In no other way can they win
-approbation or fame. They are furthermore controlled in the exercise
-of their functions by a superior authority, specially instructed in
-this class of administration, and itself answerable to a Parliament
-elected on a democratic franchise. At no point in the whole chain of
-command is there any room for corruption, usurpation, or gross
-inefficiency.
-
-It is clear that larger powers could be entrusted to the State in
-regard to the labour of its citizens than would ever be accorded to
-private employers. The subjects of every European Power have accepted
-the obligation of military service to defend their respective
-countries from external attack. The Baganda, relieved from this harsh
-obsession, have no higher duty than to cultivate and develop the
-beautiful land they live in. And if it were desired to organize
-scientifically, upon a humane and honourable basis, the industry of an
-entire population, and to apply the whole fruits of their labour to
-their own enrichment and elevation, no better conditions are likely to
-be discovered than those which now exist in Uganda.
-
-It might at any rate be worth while to make such an experiment, if
-only as a prelude to those more general applications of the principles
-of Socialism which are held in some quarters to be so necessary.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-'ON SAFARI'
-
-
-Now the reader must really look at the map. To this point we have
-proceeded by train and steamer with all the power and swiftness of
-modern communication. If we have traversed wild and lonely lands, it
-has been in a railway carriage. We have disturbed the lion with the
-locomotive, and all our excursions have but led back to the iron road.
-But at Ripon Falls we are to let go our hold upon machinery. Steam and
-all it means is to be shut off. We are "to cut the painter," and,
-losing the impulsion of the great ship, are for a while to paddle
-about upon a vast expanse in a little cock-boat of our own. Back
-towards Mombasa, three days' journey will cover nine hundred miles.
-Forward, you will be lucky to make forty in the same time. Return at
-this moment is swift and easy. In a week it will be perhaps
-impossible. Going on means going through.
-
-Everywhere great pathways are being cut into Africa. We have followed
-for nearly a thousand miles one leading from the East towards the
-centre. Far away from the North another line has been thrust forward
-by British efforts in peace and war. From Alexandria to Cairo, from
-Cairo to Wady Halfa, from Halfa to Berber, from Berber to Khartoum,
-from Khartoum to Fashoda, from Fashoda to Gondokoro, over a distance
-of nearly three thousand miles, stretches an uninterrupted service of
-trains and steamers. But between the landing-stage at Jinja and the
-landing-stage at Gondokoro there opens a wide gulf of yet unbridged,
-unconquered wilderness and jungle, across which and through which the
-traveller must crawl painfully and at a foot's pace, always amid
-difficulty and never wholly without danger. It is this gulf which we
-are now to traverse.
-
-  [Illustration: BETWEEN NIMULE AND GONDOKORO.
-    Capt. Read. Mr. Marsh. Dr. Goldie. Mr. Ormsby.
-    Col. Wilson. Mr. Churchill. Capt. Dickinson. Lieut.
-    Fishbourne, R.E.]
-
-The distance from the Victoria to the Albert Nyanza is about two
-hundred miles in the direct line, and it is all downhill. The Great
-Lake is hoisted high above the highest hill-tops of England. From this
-vast elevated inland sea the descending Nile water flows through a
-channel of three thousand five hundred miles into the Mediterranean.
-The first and steepest stage of its journey is to the Albert Lake.
-This second body of water, which, except in comparison with the
-Victoria Nyanza, would be impressive--it is more than a hundred miles
-long--lies at an altitude of two thousand three hundred feet above the
-sea. So that in its first two hundred miles the Nile exhausts in the
-exuberant improvidence of youth about a third of the impulse which is
-to carry it through its venerable career. Yet this considerable
-descent of twelve hundred feet is itself accomplished in two short
-steps. There is one series of rapids, thirty miles long, below the
-Ripon Falls, and another of equal extent above the Murchison Falls.
-Between these two declivities long reaches of open river and the wide,
-level expanse of Lake Chioga afford a fine waterway.
-
-Our journey from one great lake to the other divided itself therefore
-into three stages. Three marches through the forest to Kakindu, the
-first point where the Victoria Nile is navigable after the rapids;
-three days in canoes along the Nile and across Lake Chioga; and,
-lastly, five marches from the western end of Lake Chioga to the Albert
-Nyanza. Beyond this, again, four days in canoes and steel
-sailing-boats, towed by a launch, would carry us to Nimule, where the
-rapids on the White Nile begin, and in seven or eight marches from
-there we should reach the Soudan steamers at Gondokoro. About five
-hundred miles would thus be covered in twenty days. It would take
-about the same time, if trains and steamers fitted exactly, to return
-by Mombasa and Suez to London.
-
-Early in the morning of November 23rd our party set off upon this
-journey. Travelling by marches from camp to camp plays a regular part
-in the life of the average Central African officer. He goes "on
-Safari" as the Boer "on trek." It is a recognized state of being,
-which often lasts for weeks, and sometimes for months. He learns to
-think of ten days' "Safari" as we at home think of going to Scotland,
-and twenty days' "Safari" as if it were less than the journey to
-Paris. "Safari" is itself a Swahili word of Arabic origin, meaning an
-expedition and all that pertains to it. It comprises yourself and
-everybody and everything you take with you--food, tents, rifles,
-clothing, cooks, servants, escort, porters--but especially porters.
-Out of the range of steam the porter is the primary factor. This
-ragged figure, tottering along under his load, is the unit of
-locomotion and the limit of possibility. Without porters you cannot
-move. With them you move ten or twelve miles a day, if all is well.
-How much can he carry? How far can he carry it? These are the
-questions which govern alike your calculations and your fate.
-
-Every morning the porters are divided into batches of about twenty,
-each under its headman. The loads, which are supposed to average about
-sixty-five pounds, are also roughly parcelled out. As each batch
-starts off, the next rushes up to the succeeding heap of loads, and
-there is a quarter of an hour of screaming and pushing--the strongest
-men making a bee-line for the lightest-looking loads, and being beaten
-off by the grim but voluble headman, the weakest weeping feebly beside
-a mountainous pile, till a distribution has been achieved with rough
-justice, and the troop in its turn marches off with indescribable
-ululations testifying and ministering to the spirit in which they mean
-to accomplish the day's journey.
-
-While these problems were being imperfectly solved, I walked down
-with the Governor and one of the Engineer officers to the Ripon Falls,
-which are but half a mile from the Commissioner's house, and the sound
-of whose waters filled the air. Although the cataract is on a moderate
-scale, both in height and volume, its aspect--and still more its
-situation--is impressive. The exit or overflow of the Great Lake is
-closed by a natural rampart or ridge of black rock, broken or worn
-away in two main gaps to release the waters. Through these the Nile
-leaps at once into majestic being, and enters upon its course as a
-perfect river three hundred yards wide. Standing upon the reverse side
-of the wall of rock, one's eye may be almost on a plane with the
-shining levels of the Lake. At your very feet, literally a yard away,
-a vast green slope of water races downward. Below are foaming rapids,
-fringed by splendid trees, and pools from which great fish leap
-continually in the sunlight. We must have spent three hours watching
-the waters and revolving plans to harness and bridle them. So much
-power running to waste, such a coign of vantage unoccupied, such a
-lever to control the natural forces of Africa ungripped, cannot but
-vex and stimulate imagination. And what fun to make the immemorial
-Nile begin its journey by diving through a turbine! But to our tale.
-
-  [Illustration: FOREST SCENE NEAR RIPON FALLS.]
-
-The porters had by now got far on their road, and we must pad after
-them through the full blaze of noon. The Governor of Uganda and his
-officers have to return to Entebbe by the steamer, so it is here I bid
-them good-bye and good luck, and with a final look at Ripon Falls,
-gleaming and resounding below, I climb the slopes of the river bank
-and walk off into the forest. The native path struck north-east from
-the Nile, and led into a hilly and densely wooded region. The
-elephant-grass on each side of the track rose fifteen feet high. In
-the valleys great trees grew and arched above our heads, laced and
-twined together with curtains of flowering creepers. Here and there a
-glade opened to the right or left, and patches of vivid sunlight
-splashed into the gloom. Around the crossings of little streams
-butterflies danced in brilliant ballets. Many kinds of birds flew
-about the trees. The jungle was haunted by game--utterly lost in its
-dense entanglements. And I think it a sensation all by itself to walk
-on your own feet, and staff in hand, along these mysterious paths,
-amid such beautiful, yet sinister, surroundings, and realize that one
-is really in the centre of Africa, and a long way from Piccadilly or
-Pall Mall.
-
-Our first march was about fourteen miles, and as we had not started
-till the hot hours of the day were upon us, it was enough and to spare
-so far as I was concerned. Up-hill and down-hill wandered our path,
-now plunged in the twilight of a forest valley, now winding up the
-side of a scorched hill, and I had for some time been hoping to see
-the camp round every corner, when at last we reached it. It consisted
-of two rows of green tents and a large "banda," or rest-house, as big
-as a large barn in England, standing in a nice, trim clearing. These
-"bandas" are a great feature of African travel; and the dutiful chief
-through whose territory we are passing had taken pains to make them on
-the most elaborate scale. He was not long in making his appearance
-with presents of various kinds. A lanky, black-faced sheep, with a fat
-tail as big as a pumpkin, was dragged forward, bleating, by two
-retainers. Others brought live hens and earthenware jars of milk and
-baskets of little round eggs. The chief was a tall, intelligent-looking
-man, with the winning smile and attractive manners characteristic
-of the country, and made his salutations with a fine air of dignity
-and friendship.
-
-  [Illustration: PALM TREE NEAR THE ASUA.]
-
-  [Illustration: BANDA WITH ESCORT OF KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES.]
-
-The house he had prepared for us was built of bamboo framework,
-supported upon a central row of Y-shaped tree-stems, with a
-high-pitched roof heavily thatched with elephant-grass, and walls of
-wattled reeds. The floors of African "bandas" when newly made are
-beautifully smooth and clean, and strewn with fresh green rushes; the
-interior is often cunningly divided into various apartments, and the
-main building is connected with kitchens and offices of the same
-unsubstantial texture by veranda-shaded passages. In fact, they prove
-a high degree of social knowledge and taste in the natives, who make
-them with almost incredible rapidity from the vegetation of the
-surrounding jungle; and the sensation of entering one of these lofty,
-dim, cool, and spacious interiors, and sinking into the soft rush-bed
-of the floor, with something to drink which is, at any rate, not
-tepid, well repays the glaring severities of a march under an
-Equatorial sun. The "banda," however, is a luxury of which the
-traveller should beware, for if it has stood for more than a week it
-becomes the home of innumerable insects, many of approved malevolence
-and venom, and spirillum fever is almost invariably caught from
-sleeping in old shelters or on disused camping-grounds.
-
-Life "on Safari" is rewarded by a sense of completeness and
-self-satisfied detachment. You have got to "do" so many miles a day,
-and when you have "done" them your day's work is over. 'Tis a simple
-programme, which leaves nothing more to be demanded or desired. Very
-early in the morning, often an hour before daybreak, the bugles of the
-King's African Rifles sounded reveille. Every one dresses hurriedly by
-candle-light, eats a dim breakfast while dawn approaches; tents
-collapse, and porters struggle off with their burdens. Then the march
-begins. The obvious thing is to walk. There is no surer way of keeping
-well in Uganda than to walk twelve or fourteen miles a day. But if the
-traveller will not make the effort, there are alternatives. There is
-the rickshaw, which was described in the last chapter--restful, but
-tedious; and the litter, carried on the heads of six porters of
-different sizes, and shifted every now and then, with a disheartening
-jerk, to their shoulders and back again--this is quite as
-uncomfortable as it sounds. Ponies cannot, or at least do not, live in
-Uganda, though an experiment was just about to be made with them by
-the Chief of the Police, who is convinced that with really careful
-stable management, undertaken in detail by the owner himself, they
-could be made to flourish. Mules have a better chance, though still
-not a good one. We took one with us on the last spell of "Safari" to
-Gondokoro, and were told it was sure to die; but we left it in
-apparently excellent condition and spirits.
-
-  [Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT.]
-
-But the best of all methods of progression in Central Africa--however
-astonishing it may seem--is the bicycle. In the dry season the paths
-through the bush, smoothed by the feet of natives, afford an excellent
-surface. Even when the track is only two feet wide, and when the
-densest jungle rises on either side and almost meets above the head,
-the bicycle skims along, swishing through the grass and brushing the
-encroaching bushes, at a fine pace; and although at every few hundred
-yards sharp rocks, loose stones, a water-course, or a steep hill
-compel dismounting, a good seven miles an hour can usually be
-maintained. And think what this means. From my own experience I should
-suppose that with a bicycle twenty-five to thirty miles a day could
-regularly be covered in Uganda, and, if only the porters could keep
-up, all journeys could be nearly trebled, and every white officer's
-radius of action proportionately increased.
-
-Nearly all the British officers I met already possessed and used
-bicycles, and even the native chiefs are beginning to acquire them.
-But what is needed to make the plan effective is a good system of
-stone, fumigated, insect-proof rest-houses at stages of thirty miles
-on all the main lines of communication. Such a development would mean
-an enormous saving in the health of white officials and a valuable
-accession to their power. Had I known myself before coming to Uganda
-the advantages which this method presents, I should have been able to
-travel far more widely through the country by the simple expedient of
-trebling the stages of my journeys, and sending porters on a week in
-advance to pitch camps and deposit food at wide intervals. And then,
-instead of merely journeying from one Great Lake to the other, I
-could, _within the same limits of time_, have explored the fertile
-and populous plateau of Toro, descended the beautiful valley of the
-Semliki, and traversed the Albert Lake from end to end, and skirted
-the slopes of Ruenzori. "If youth but knew...!"
-
-But the march, however performed, has its termination; and if, as is
-recommended, you stop to breakfast and rest upon the way, the new camp
-will be almost ready upon arrival. During the heat of the day every
-one retires to his tent or to the more effective shelter of the
-"banda," to read and sleep till the evening. Then as the sun gets low
-we emerge to smoke and talk, and there is, perhaps, just time for the
-energetic to pursue an antelope, or shoot a few guinea-fowl or
-pigeons.
-
-With the approach of twilight comes the mosquito, strident-voiced and
-fever-bearing; and the most thorough precautions have to be taken
-against him and other insect dangers. We dine in a large
-mosquito-house made entirely of fine gauze, and about twelve feet
-cubically. The bedding, which should if possible be packed in tin
-boxes, is unrolled during the day, and carefully protected by
-mosquito-nets well tucked in, against all forms of vermin. Every one
-puts on mosquito-boots--long, soft, leather leggings, reaching to the
-hips. You are recommended not to sit on cane-bottomed chairs without
-putting a newspaper or a cushion on them, to wear a cap, a scarf, and
-possibly gloves, and to carry a swishing mosquito-trap. Thus one
-moves, comparatively secure, amid a chorus of ferocious buzzings.
-
-To these precautions are added others. You must never walk barefoot on
-the floor, no matter how clean it is, or an odious worm, called a
-"jigger," will enter your foot to raise a numerous family and a
-painful swelling. On the other hand, be sure when you put on boots or
-shoes that, however hurried, you turn them upside down and look
-inside, lest a scorpion, a small snake, or a perfectly frightful kind
-of centipede may be lying in ambush. Never throw your clothes
-carelessly upon the ground, but put them away at once in a tin box,
-and shut it tight, or a perfect colony of fierce-biting creatures will
-beset them. And, above all, quinine! To the permanent resident in
-these strange countries no drug can be of much avail; for either its
-protection is diminished with habit, or the doses have to be
-increased to impossible limits. But the traveller, who is passing
-through on a journey of only a few months, may recur with safety and
-with high advantage to that admirable prophylactic. Opinions differ as
-to how it should be taken. The Germans, with their love of exactness
-even in regard to the most uncertain things, prescribe thirty grains
-on each seventh day and eighth day alternately. We followed a simpler
-plan of taking a regular ten grains every day, from the moment we left
-Port Said till we arrived at Khartoum. No one in my party suffered
-from fever even for a day during the whole journey.
-
-Our second day's march was about the same in length and character,
-except that we were nearer the river, and as the path led through the
-twilight of the forest we saw every now and then a gleam of broad
-waters on our left. At frequent intervals--five or six times during
-the day--long caravans of native porters were met carrying the produce
-of the fertile districts between Lake Chioga and Mount Elgon into
-Jinja. Nothing could better show the need of improved communications
-than this incipient and potential trade--ready to begin and thrusting
-forward along bush-paths on the heads of tottering men. For the rest,
-the country near the river seemed the densest and most impenetrable
-jungle, hiding in its recesses alike its inhabitants and its game.
-
-The third morning, however, brought us among "shambas," as the patches
-of native cultivation are called; and the road was among plantations
-of bananas, millet, cotton, castor-oil, and chilies. Here in Usoga, as
-throughout Uganda, the one staple crop is the banana; and as this
-fruit, when once planted, grows and propagates of its own accord,
-requiring no thought or exertion, it finds special favour with the
-improvident natives, and sustains them year after year in leisured
-abundance, till a sudden failure and a fearful famine restore the
-harsh balances of the world.
-
-After a tramp of twelve miles, and while it was still comparatively
-early--for we had started before dawn--we reached Kakindu. The track
-led out of the forest of banana-groves downwards into more open spaces
-and blazing sunlight, and there before us was the Nile. Already--forty
-miles from its source, near four thousand from its mouth--it was a
-noble river: nearly a third of a mile in breadth of clear, deep water
-rolling forward majestically between banks of foliage and verdure. The
-"Chioga flotilla," consisting of the small steam launch, _Victoria_, a
-steel boat, and two or three dug-out canoes, scooped out of
-tree-trunks, awaited us; and after the long, hot business of embarking
-the baggage and crowding the native servants in among it, was
-completed, we parted from our first relay of escorts and porters, and
-drifted out on the flood.
-
-The next three days of our life were spent on the water--first
-cruising down the Victoria Nile till it flows into Chioga, and then
-traversing the smooth, limpid expanses of that lake. Every evening we
-landed at camps prepared by the Busoga chiefs, pitched our tents,
-lighted our fires, and erected our mosquito-houses, while dusk drew
-on, and thunderstorms--frequent at this season of the year--wheeled in
-vivid splendour about the dark horizon. All through the hot hours of
-the day one lay at the bottom of massive canoes, sheltered from the
-sun by an improvised roof of rushes and wet grass. From time to time a
-strange bird, or, better still, the rumour of a hippo--nose just
-peeping above the water--enlivened the slow and sultry passage of the
-hours; and one great rock, crowded with enormous crocodiles, all of
-whom--a score at least--leaped together into the water at the first
-shot, afforded at least one really striking spectacle.
-
-As the Victoria Nile approaches Lake Chioga, it broadens out into wide
-lagoons, and the sloping banks of forest and jungle give place to
-unbroken walls of papyrus-reeds, behind which the flat, surrounding
-country is invisible, and above which only an isolated triangular hill
-may here and there be descried, purple in the distance. The lake
-itself is about fifty miles long from east to west, and eleven broad,
-but its area and perimeter are greatly extended by a series of long
-arms, or rather fingers, stretching out in every direction, but
-especially to the north, and affording access by water to very wide
-and various districts. All these arms, and even a great part of the
-centre of the lake, are filled with reeds, grass, and water-lilies,
-for Chioga is the first of the great sponges upon which the Nile
-lavishes its waters. Although a depth of about twelve feet can usually
-be counted on, navigation is impeded by floating weeds and
-water-plants; and when the storms have swept the northern shore,
-numerous papyrus-tangled islands, complete with their populations of
-birds and animals, are detached, and swim erratically about the lake
-to block accustomed channels and puzzle the pilot.
-
-For one long day our little palpitating launch, towing its flotilla of
-canoes, plashed through this curious region, at times winding through
-a glade in the papyrus forest scarcely a dozen yards across, then
-presently emerging into wide flood, stopping often to clear our
-propeller from tangles of accumulating greenery. The middle of the
-lake unrolls large expanses of placid water. The banks and reeds
-recede into the distance, and the whole universe becomes a vast
-encircling blue globe of sky and water, rimmed round its middle by a
-thin band of vivid green. Time vanishes, and nothing is left but space
-and sunlight.
-
-All this while we must carefully avoid the northern, and particularly
-the north-western shore, for the natives are altogether
-unadministered, and nearly all the tribes are hostile. To pursue the
-elephants which, of course (so they say), abound in these forbidden
-precincts is impossible; to land for food or fuel would be dangerous,
-and even to approach might draw a splutter of musketry or a shower of
-spears from His Majesty's yet unpersuaded subjects.
-
-The Nile leaves the north-west corner of the lake at Namasali and
-flows along a broad channel above a mile in width, still enclosed by
-solid papyrus walls and dotted with floating islands. Another forty
-miles of steaming and we reach Mruli. Mruli is a representative
-African village. Its importance is more marked upon the maps than on
-the ground. An imposing name in large black letters calls up the idea
-of a populous and considerable township. All that meets the eye,
-however, are a score of funnel-shaped grass huts, surrounded by dismal
-swamps and labyrinths of reeds, over which clouds of mosquitoes danced
-feverishly. A long wattled pier had been built from terra firma to
-navigable water, but the channel by which it could be approached had
-been wholly blocked by a floating island, and this had to be towed
-painfully out of the way before we could land. Here we were met by a
-fresh escort of King's African Rifles, as spick and span in uniform,
-as precise in their military bearing, as if they were at Aldershot; by
-a mob of fresh porters, and, lastly, by the only friendly tribe
-from the northern bank of the river: and while tents were pitched,
-baggage landed, and cooking-fires began to glow, these four hundred
-wild spearmen, casting aside their leopard skins, danced naked in the
-dusk.
-
-  [Illustration: LANDING AT MRULI.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-MURCHISON FALLS
-
-
-We had intended, on leaving the Nile where it turns northward at
-Mruli, to march directly across to Hoima, on the Albert Lake; and this
-journey, by way of Masindi, would have required four marches. But
-tales of the beauty and wonder of the Murchison Falls had captivated
-my mind, and before embarking at Kakindu a new plan had been resolved.
-Runners were sent back to the telegraph wire at Jinja, and thence a
-message was flashed by Kampala to Hoima, directing the flotilla which
-awaited us there, to steam to the north end of the Albert and meet us
-by the foot of the Murchison Falls at Fajao. Thither we were now to
-proceed by five marches--two to Masindi and three more turning
-northward to the Nile.
-
-The road from Mruli consists of a sort of embanked track through
-low-lying and desolate scrub and jungle. The heavy black cotton soil,
-cracked and granulated by the heat, offered at this time a hardened if
-uneven surface to the bicycle; but in the rains such paths must become
-utterly impassable. As one advances westward the country improves
-rapidly in aspect. The dismal flats of the South Chioga shore are left
-behind, and the traveller discovers more characteristic Uganda scenery
-in a region of small hills and great trees. Before Masindi is reached
-we are again in a rich and beautiful land. Pools of shining water, set
-in verdant green, flash back the sunbeams. Bold bluffs and ridges rise
-on all sides from amid the unceasing undulations of the ground.
-Streams plash merrily downwards through rocky channels. The yellow
-grass roofs of frequent villages peep from underneath their groves of
-bananas among broad streaks of cultivated ground, and chiefs and
-headmen salute the stranger with grave yet curious politeness as the
-long "safari" winds beneath the trees.
-
-The heat grows as the altitude dwindles, and even in the early morning
-the sun sits hard and heavy on the shoulders. At ten o'clock its power
-is tremendous. So long as the roadway consisted of nobbly lumps of
-black cotton soil bicycling, though possible in places, was scarcely
-pleasant. But the change in the landscape arises from the change in
-the soil. The fields are now of bright red earth, the paths of red
-sandstone washed in places almost as smooth and as firm as asphalt by
-the rains and sparkling with crystalline dust; and when the ridges
-which form the watershed between Lake Chioga and Lake Albert had been
-topped, my bicycle glided almost without impulsion down four miles of
-gradual descent into Masindi. This station--which is the residence of
-a collector--lies embosomed in a wide bay of gently-sloping hills
-clothed with noble trees. It is indeed a pleasant spot. There are real
-houses, standing on high stone platforms, with deep verandas and wire
-gauze windows. The roads are laid out in bold geometry of broad red
-lines. There are avenues of planted trees, delicious banks of flowers,
-a prepared breakfast, _cold_, not cool, drinks, a telegraph office,
-and a file of the _Times_. What more could an explorer desire or the
-Fates accord?
-
-We were now to strike northwards to the Nile at Fajao in three long
-marches (for the porters) of about sixteen miles each. Upon the Hoima
-road some preparations had been made to make the journey easier by
-clearing the encroaching jungle from the track and constructing
-rest-houses. But my change of plan had disconcerted these
-arrangements, and on the new route we had to clear our own paths from
-the overgrowth by which even in a season, if unused, they are choked,
-and to trust to tents and improvised shelters. Progress was therefore
-slow and camps unpretentious. But all was redeemed by the wonders of
-the scene.
-
-For a whole day we crept through the skirts of the Hoima forest, amid
-an exuberance of vegetation which is scarcely describable. I had
-travelled through tropical forests in Cuba and India, and had often
-before admired their enchanting, yet sinister, luxuriance. But the
-forests of Uganda, for magnificence, for variety of form and colour,
-for profusion of brilliant life--plant, bird, insect, reptile,
-beast--for the vast scale and awful fecundity of the natural processes
-that are beheld at work, eclipsed, and indeed effaced, all previous
-impressions. One becomes, not without a secret sense of aversion, the
-spectator of an intense convulsion of life and death. Reproduction and
-decay are locked struggling in infinite embraces. In this glittering
-Equatorial slum huge trees jostle one another for room to live;
-slender growths stretch upwards--as it seems in agony--towards
-sunlight and life. The soil bursts with irrepressible vegetations.
-Every victor, trampling on the rotting mould of exterminated
-antagonists, soars aloft only to encounter another host of aerial
-rivals, to be burdened with masses of parasitic foliage, smothered in
-the glorious blossoms of creepers, laced and bound and interwoven with
-interminable tangles of vines and trailers. Birds are as bright as
-butterflies; butterflies are as big as birds. The air hums with flying
-creatures; the earth crawls beneath your foot. The telegraph-wire runs
-northward to Gondokoro through this vegetable labyrinth. Even its
-poles had broken into bud!
-
-As we advanced, continually rising or falling with the waves of the
-land, and moving in rapid alternations from a blazing patch of
-sunshine into a cloistered dimness, every now and then the path became
-smooth, broad, and of firm sandstone. And here one could watch the
-columns of marching soldier-ants. Perhaps in a hundred yards the road
-would be crossed four times by these fierce armies. They move in
-regular array, and upon purposes at once inscrutable and unswerving. A
-brown band, perhaps two inches broad and an inch and a half _deep_, is
-drawn across your track. Its ends are lost in the recesses of the
-jungle. It moves unceasingly and with a multiplied rapidity; for each
-ant runs swiftly forward, whether upon the ground or upon the backs of
-his already moving comrades. About a yard away, on each side of the
-main column, are the screening lines of the flank-guards, and for five
-yards beyond this every inch is searched, every object is examined by
-tireless and fearless reconnoitring patrols. Woe to the enemy who is
-overtaken by these hordes. No matter what his size or nature, he is
-attacked at once by an ever-increasing number of assailants, each one
-of whom, upon remorseless instinct, plunges his strong mandibles in
-the flesh, and will have his head pulled off his shoulders rather than
-let go.
-
-These ant armies fascinated me. I could not resist interfering with
-them. With my walking-stick I gently broke the column and pushed the
-swarming rope off its line of march. Their surprise, their confusion,
-their indignation were extreme. But not for an instant did they pause.
-In a second the scouts were running all over my boots eagerly seeking
-an entry, and when I looked back from this to the walking-stick I held
-it was already alive. With a gesture so nimble that it might have been
-misunderstood, I cast it from me and jumped back out of the danger
-circle until I found refuge on a large rock at a respectful distance.
-The Soudanese sergeant-major of the escort, a splendid negro, drilled
-as smart as a Grenadier Guardsman and with a good long row of medal
-ribbons on his khaki tunic, so far forgot himself as to grin from ear
-to ear. But his gravity was fully restored when I invited him to
-rescue my walking-stick, which lay abandoned on the field in the
-mandibles of the victorious enemy. The devoted man was, however, equal
-to the crisis.
-
-I have a sad tale also to tell of the perversity of butterflies. Never
-were seen such flying fairies. They flaunted their splendid liveries
-in inconceivable varieties of colour and pattern in our faces at every
-step. Swallow-tails, fritillaries, admirals, tortoise-shells,
-peacocks, orange-tips--all executed in at least a dozen novel and
-contrasted styles, with many even more beautiful, but bearing no
-resemblance to our British species--flitted in sunshine from flower to
-flower, glinted in the shadow of great trees, or clustered on the path
-to suck the moisture from any swampy patch. The butterfly is a dirty
-feeder, and if ever some piece of putrescent filth lay odorous on the
-ground, be sure it would be covered with a cloud of these greedy
-insects, come in such gay attire to eat such sorry meat. I found them
-sometimes so intoxicated with feasting that I could pick them up quite
-gently in my fingers without the need of any net at all.
-
-To any one who has ever tried to collect the modest and now all too
-rare and scattered butterflies of Britain, these sights could not but
-be a hard temptation. For a week I had resisted it, not because it was
-not easy enough to make a net, but because of the difficulty of
-setting and preserving the prizes; and it was not until the end of our
-first day's march out from Masindi that I was told that much the best
-way of sending butterflies home from Africa was to enclose them in
-neatly-folded triangles of paper and leave them to be set in London.
-Forthwith, out of telegraph-wire and mosquito-curtain, a net was made,
-and before another dawn I was fully equipped. It is almost incredible
-to state that from that very moment, except near the Murchison Falls,
-I scarcely ever saw a really fine butterfly again all the way to
-Gondokoro. Whether this was due to the intelligent perversity of these
-insects, or to the fact that we had left the deeper recesses of the
-forest region, I do not inquire; but the fact remains, and I carry
-away from the butterflies of Uganda only the haunting memories of
-unrealized opportunity.
-
-This first day's march from Masindi was a long one, and our porters
-panted and toiled under their loads through the heat of the day. It
-was not till the afternoon that the main body came into camp, and
-stragglers trickled through into the dusk. Meanwhile the local natives
-built under our eyes, with extraordinary speed and cleverness, a
-spacious dining-hall and two or three quite excellent bedrooms from
-the surrounding elephant-grass and bamboo groves; and we fared as
-comfortably in these two humble dwellings as if we dwelt in kings'
-palaces. The forest was a little thinner on the second day, although
-the jungle was of the same dense and tangled fertility. We started an
-hour before sunrise, and by eight o'clock had climbed to the saddle of
-the high rocky wall which contains the valley of the Victoria Nile.
-From this elevation of, perhaps, six hundred feet above the general
-level of the plain a comprehensive view of the landscape was for the
-first time possible. In every direction spread a wide sea of foliage,
-thinning here into bush, darkening there into forest, rising and
-falling with the waves of the land, and broken only by occasional
-peaks of rock. Far away to the north-west a long silver gleam, just
-discernible through the haze of the horizon, revealed to our eyes the
-distant prospect of the Albert Nyanza. The camera cannot do justice to
-such a panorama. In photographs these vast expanses look like mere
-scrubby commons, inhospitable and monotonous to the eye, melancholy to
-the soul. One has to remember that here are Kew Gardens and the Zoo
-combined on an unlimited scale; that Nature's central productive
-laboratory is here working night and day at full blast; and that the
-scrubby common of the picture is really a fairyland of glades and
-vistas, through which an army of a hundred thousand men might march
-without the glint of a bayonet, or even the dust of an artillery
-column, betraying their presence to the watcher on the crag.
-
-Our camp this night lay in a tiny patch cleared in the heart of this
-wild world. The cluster of tents under a canopy of palms, illumined by
-the watch-fires, bright with lanterns, and busy with the moving
-figures of men and the hum of human activity, seemed at a hundred
-yards' distance an island of society amid an ocean of Nature. To what
-strange perils--apart altogether from the certainty of losing your
-way--would a walk of a quarter of a mile in any direction expose the
-wanderer? To withdraw from the firelight was to be engulfed in the
-savage conditions of prehistoric time. Advance, and the telegraph-wire
-would tell you the latest quotations of the London markets, the
-figures of the newest by-election. An odd sensation!
-
-  [Illustration: MURCHISON FALLS.]
-
-We had scarce proceeded for an hour on our third march, when just as
-it grew daylight a low vibrant murmur began to be perceptible in the
-air. Now it was lost as we descended into some moist valley, now it
-broke even more strongly on the ear as we reached the summit of some
-ascent--the sound of the Nile plunging down the Murchison Falls. And
-by nine o'clock, when we were still about ten miles off, a loud,
-insistent, and unceasing hum had developed. These Falls are certainly
-the most remarkable in the whole course of the Nile. At Foweira the
-navigable reaches stretching from Lake Chioga are interrupted by
-cataracts, and the river hurries along in foam and rapid down a
-gradual but continuous stairway, enclosed by rocky walls, but still a
-broad flood. Two miles above Fajao these walls contract suddenly till
-they are _not six yards apart_, and through this strangling portal, as
-from the nozzle of a hose, the whole tremendous river is shot in one
-single jet down an abyss of a hundred and sixty feet.
-
-The escarpment over which the Nile falls curves away in a vast bay of
-precipitous, or almost precipitous, cliffs, broken here and there by
-more gradual rifts, and forms the eastern wall of the Albert Lake,
-from whose waters it rises abruptly in many places to a height of six
-or seven hundred feet. Arrived at the verge of this descent, the lower
-reaches of the Victoria Nile could be discerned, stretching away mile
-after mile in a broad, gleaming ribbon almost to its mouth on the
-lake. The Falls themselves were, indeed, invisible, concealed behind a
-forested bluff, but their roaring left no doubt of their presence.
-Below me a zigzag path led down by long descents to the water's edge,
-and on an open meadow a row of tents and grass houses had already been
-set up.
-
-Fajao as a native town was no more. At hardly any point in Uganda has
-the sleeping sickness made such frightful ravages. At least six
-thousand persons had perished in the last two years. Almost the whole
-population had been swept away. Scarcely enough remained to form the
-deputation, who, in their white robes, could be distinguished at the
-entrance to the cleared area of the camping-ground. And this cleared
-area was itself of the utmost importance; for all around it the powers
-of evil were strong. The groves which fringed and overhung the river
-swarmed with tsetse flies of newly-replenished venom and approved
-malignity, and no man could enter them except at a risk. After pausing
-for a few minutes to watch a troop of baboons who were leaping
-about from tree to tree on the opposite hill, and who seemed as big as
-men, I climbed down the zigzag, photographed the deputation, and shook
-hands with the chief. He was a very civilized chief--by name James
-Kago--who wore riding-breeches and leather gaiters, and who spoke a
-few unexpected sentences of excellent English. He seemed in the best
-of spirits, and so did the remnant of the population who gathered
-behind him, though whether this was due to stoical philosophy or good
-manners, I could not tell. All was smiles and bows and gurglings of
-guttural gratification. The district officer who had travelled with me
-explained that the chief had had the path up to the top of the Falls
-improved, and that he proposed, after we had lunched and rested, to
-guide us along it to the very edge of the abyss, but that the forest
-along the river-bank was so dangerous because of the tsetses that we
-should in prudence wear veils and gloves before entering it. With all
-of this I made no quarrel.
-
-  [Illustration: FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US.]
-
-In a little rocky inlet forming a small natural harbour we found the
-Albert flotilla already arrived. It consisted of the _Kenia_, a
-steam-launch about forty feet long, decked, and with a cabin, and
-drawing four feet of water, and three steel sailing-boats of different
-sizes--to wit, the _James Martin_, the _Good Intent_, and the
-_Kisingiri_. These small vessels were to carry us down the Victoria
-Nile into the Albert Nyanza, across the top end of this lake, and then
-down the hundred and seventy miles' reach of the White Nile till
-navigation is barred at Nimule by more cataracts. They were manned by
-a crew of jolly Swahili tars smartly dressed in white breeches and
-blue jerseys, on whose breasts the words "Uganda Marine" were worked
-in yellow worsted. The engineer of the steam-launch commanded the
-whole with plenary powers of discipline and diplomacy; and it was by
-means of this little group of cock-boats that trade and communications
-with the Nile province and around the whole of Lake Albert were alone
-maintained. The flotilla, nestling together in its harbour and
-sheltered by a rocky breakwater from the swift current, made a pretty
-picture; and behind it the Nile, streaked and often covered with the
-creamy foam of the Falls, swept along in majestic flood six hundred
-yards from brim to brim.
-
-  [Illustration: FLOTILLA AT FAJAO.]
-
-We began our climb to the summit of the Falls in the blazing heat
-of the day, and for the first time I was forced to confess the Central
-African sun as formidable as that which beats on the plains of India.
-Yet even at the worst moments it is more endurable, for the breeze
-does not stifle you with the breath of a furnace. First the path led
-through the deadly groves; and here, of course, the most beautiful
-butterflies--some five inches across the wings--floated tantalizingly.
-Sometimes we descended to where the river lapped along the rocks and
-curled in eddies under floating islands of froth. Precautions were
-required against diverse dangers. The Nile below the Murchison Falls
-swarms with crocodiles, some of an enormous size, and herds of
-hippopotamus are found every half mile or so; so that, what with the
-rifles which it was necessary to take for great beasts, and the gloves
-and veils which were our protection against even more villainous small
-ones, we were painfully encumbered. Indeed, the veils were such a
-nuisance and the heat was so great that I resolved to hazard the
-tsetse and took mine off. But after half an hour of menacing buzzings,
-and after a fly--presumably of the worst character--had actually
-settled on my shoulder, brushed off by the promptness of my
-companion, I changed my mind again.
-
-As we were thus scrambling along the brink of the river a crocodile
-was discovered basking in the sunshine on a large rock in mid-stream,
-about a hundred and fifty yards from the shore. I avow, with what
-regrets may be necessary, an active hatred of these brutes and a
-desire to kill them. It was a tempting shot, for the ruffian lay
-sleeping in the sun-blaze, his mouth wide open and his fat and scaly
-flanks exposed. Two or three attendant white birds hopped about him,
-looking for offal, which I have been assured (and does not Herodotus
-vouch for it?) they sometimes pick from his very teeth. I fired. What
-the result of the shot may have been I do not know, for the crocodile
-gave one leap of mortal agony or surprise and disappeared in the
-waters. But then it was my turn to be astonished. The river at this
-distance from the Falls was not broader than three hundred yards, and
-we could see the whole shore of the opposite bank quite plainly. It
-had hitherto appeared to be a long brown line of mud, on which the sun
-shone dully. At the sound of the shot the whole of this bank of the
-river, over the extent of at least a quarter of a mile, sprang into
-hideous life, and my companions and I saw hundreds and hundreds of
-crocodiles, of all sorts and sizes, rushing madly into the Nile, whose
-waters along the line of the shore were lashed into white foam,
-exactly as if a heavy wave had broken. It could be no exaggeration to
-say that at least a thousand of these saurians had been disturbed at a
-single shot. Our British friends explained that Fajao was the
-favourite haunt of the crocodiles, who lay in the water below the
-Falls waiting for dead fish and animals carried over by the river.
-Very often, they told us, hippos from the upper river and from Lake
-Chioga were caught and swept downwards, the force of the water
-"breaking every bone in their body." "Indeed," added the officer,
-somewhat obscurely, "they are _very lucky_ if they are not smashed
-into pulp."
-
-  [Illustration: THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS.]
-
-  [Illustration: UGANDA SCENERY.]
-
-At length we turned a corner and came face to face with the Falls.
-They are wonderful to behold, not so much because of their
-height--though that is impressive--but because of the immense volume
-of water which is precipitated through such a narrow outlet. Indeed,
-seeing the great size of the river below the Falls, it seemed
-impossible to believe that it was wholly supplied from this single
-spout. In clouds of rainbow spray and amid thunderous concussions of
-sound we set to work to climb the southern side of the rock wall, and
-after an hour achieved the summit. It was possible to walk to within
-an inch of the edge and, lying on one's face with a cautious head
-craned over, to look actually down upon the foaming hell beneath. The
-narrowness of the gorge at the top had not been overstated. I doubt
-whether it is fifteen feet across from sheer rock to sheer rock. Ten
-pounds, in fact, would throw an iron bridge across the Nile at this
-point. But it is evident that the falling waters must have arched and
-caved away the rock below their surface in an extraordinary degree,
-for otherwise there could not possibly be room for the whole river to
-descend.
-
-We waited long at this strange place, watching the terrible waters,
-admiring their magnificent fury, trying to compute their force. Who
-can doubt that the bridle is preparing which shall hold and direct
-their strength, or that the day will come when forlorn Fajao--now
-depopulated and almost derelict--will throb with the machinery of
-manufacture and electric production? I cannot believe that modern
-science will be content to leave these mighty forces untamed, unused,
-or that regions of inexhaustible and unequalled fertility, capable of
-supplying all sorts of things that civilized industry needs in greater
-quantity every year, will not be brought--in spite of their insects
-and their climate--into cultivated subjection. Certain it is that the
-economy of the world remains hopelessly incomplete while these
-neglects prevail, and, while it would be wasteful and foolish to
-hustle, it would be more wasteful and more foolish to abate the steady
-progress of development.
-
-From these reflections I was roused abruptly by the Nile, a wave of
-whose turbulent waters--cast up by some unusual commotion as they
-approached the verge--boiled suddenly over a ledge of rock hitherto
-high and dry, carrying an ugly and perhaps indignant swish of water to
-my very feet.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-HIPPO CAMP
-
-
-It took no little time to stow all our baggage, food and tents upon
-the launch and its steel boats, and though our camp was astir at
-half-past three, the dawn was just breaking when we were able to
-embark. And then the _James Martin_ wedged herself upon a rock a few
-yards from the shore of the sheltering inlet, and seemed to have got
-herself hard and fast; for pull as we might with all the force of the
-launch at full steam, and the added weight of the current to help us,
-not an inch would she budge. Everything had, therefore, to be unloaded
-again from the straggler, and when she had thus been lightened and her
-freight transferred to the attendant canoes, James Kago ordered his
-tribesmen to leap into the water, which was not more than five feet
-deep, and push and lift the little vessel whilst the steamer tugged.
-But this task the natives were most reluctant to perform out of
-fear of the crocodiles, who might at any moment make a pounce,
-notwithstanding all the noise and clatter. Thereupon the energetic
-chief seized hold of them one after another round the waist, and threw
-them full-splash into the stream, till at least twenty were
-accumulated round the boat, and then, what with their impatience to
-finish their uncomfortable job and our straining tow rope, the _James
-Martin_ floated free, was reloaded, and we were off.
-
-  [Illustration: THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO.]
-
-As we drifted out into mid-stream the most beautiful view of the falls
-broke upon us. It was already almost daylight, but the sun had not yet
-actually topped the great escarpment over which the Nile descends. The
-banks on both sides of the river, clad with dense and lofty forest and
-rising about twice as high as Cliveden Woods from the water's edge,
-were dark in shadow. The river was a broad sheet of steel grey veined
-with paler streaks of foam. The rock portals of the falls were jetty
-black, and between them, illumined by a single shaft of sunlight,
-gleamed the tremendous cataract--a thing of wonder and glory, well
-worth travelling all the way to see.
-
-We were soon among the hippopotami. Every two or three hundred yards,
-and at every bend of the river, we came upon a herd of from five to
-twenty. To us in a steam launch they threatened no resistance or
-danger. But their inveterate hostility to canoes leads to repeated
-loss of life among the native fishermen, whose frail craft are
-crumpled like eggshells in the snap of enormous jaws. Indeed, all the
-way from here to Nimule they are declared to be the scourge and terror
-of the Nile. Fancy mistaking a hippopotamus--almost the largest
-surviving mammal in the world--for a water lily. Yet nothing is more
-easy. The whole river is dotted with floating lilies detached from any
-root and drifting along contentedly with the current. It is the habit
-of the hippo to loll in the water showing only his eyes and the tips
-of his ears, and perhaps now and again a glimpse of his nose, and thus
-concealed his silhouette is, at three hundred yards, almost
-indistinguishable from the floating vegetation. I thought they also
-looked like giant cats peeping. So soon, however, as they saw us
-coming round a corner and heard the throbbing of the propeller, they
-would raise their whole heads out of the water to have a look, and
-then immediately dive to the bottom in disgust. Our practice was
-then to shut off steam and drift silently down upon them. In this way
-one arrives in the middle of the herd, and when curiosity or want of
-air compels them to come up again there is a chance of a shot. One
-great fellow came up to breathe within five yards of the boat, and the
-look of astonishment, of alarm, of indignation, in his large,
-expressive eyes--as with one vast snort he plunged below--was comical
-to see. These creatures are not easy to kill. They bob up in the most
-unexpected quarters, and are down again in a second. One does not like
-to run the risk of merely wounding them, and the target presented is
-small and vanishing. I shot one who sunk with a harsh sort of scream
-and thud of striking bullet. We waited about a long time for him to
-float up to the surface, but in vain, for he must have been carried
-into or under a bed of reeds and could not be retrieved.
-
-  [Illustration: EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO.]
-
-  [Illustration: FAJAO.]
-
-The Murchison, or Karuma, Falls, as the natives call them, are about
-thirty miles distance from the Albert Lake, and as with the current we
-made six or seven miles an hour, this part of our journey was short.
-Here the Nile offers a splendid waterway. The main channel is at least
-ten feet deep, and navigation, in spite of shifting sandbanks,
-islands, and entanglements of reeds and other vegetation, is not
-difficult. The river itself is of delicious, sweet water, and flows
-along in many places half-a-mile broad. Its banks for the first twenty
-miles were shaded by beautiful trees, and here and there contained by
-bold headlands, deeply scarped by the current. The serrated outline of
-the high mountains on the far side of the Albert Nyanza could soon be
-seen painted in shadow on the western sky. As the lake is approached
-the riparian scenery degenerates; the sandbanks became more intricate;
-the banks are low and flat, and huge marshes encroach upon the river
-on either hand. Yet even here the traveller moves through an imposing
-world.
-
-At length, after five or six hours' steaming, we cleared the mouth of
-the Victoria Nile and swam out on to the broad expanses of the lake.
-Happily on this occasion it was quite calm. How I wished then that I
-had not allowed myself to be deterred by time and croakers from a
-longer voyage, and that we could have turned to the south and,
-circumnavigating the Albert, ascended the Semliki river with all its
-mysterious attractions, have visited the forests on the south-western
-shores, and caught, perhaps, a gleam of the snows of Ruenzori! But we
-were in the fell grip of carefully-considered arrangements, and, like
-children in a Christmas toy shop always looking back, were always
-hurried on.
-
-Yet progress offered its prizes as well as delay. Some of my party had
-won the confidence of the engineer of the launch, who had revealed to
-them a valuable secret. It appeared that "somewhere between Lake
-Albert and Nimule"--not to be too precise--there was a place known
-only to the elect, and not to more than one or two of them, where
-elephants abounded and rhinoceros swarmed. And these rhinoceros, be it
-observed, were none of your common black variety with two stumpy horns
-almost equal in size, and a prehensile tip to their noses. Not at all;
-they were what are called "white" rhino--Burchell's white
-rhinoceros,[1] that is their full style--with one long, thin, enormous
-horn, perhaps a yard long--on their noses, and with broad, square
-upper lips. Naturally we were all very much excited, and in order to
-gain a day on our itinerary to study these very rare and remarkable
-animals more closely, we decided not to land and pitch a camp, but to
-steam on all through the night. Meanwhile our friend the engineer
-undertook to accomplish the difficult feat of finding the channel,
-with all its windings, in the dark.
-
-The scene as we left the Albert Lake and entered the White Nile was of
-surpassing beauty. The sun was just setting behind the high, jagged
-peaks of the Congo Mountains to the westward. One after another, and
-range behind range, these magnificent heights--rising perhaps to eight
-or nine thousand feet--unfolded themselves in waves of dark
-plum-coloured rock, crested with golden fire. The lake stretched away
-apparently without limit like the sea, towards the southward in an
-ever-broadening swell of waters--flushed outside the shadow of the
-mountains into a delicious pink. Across its surface our tiny
-flotilla--four on a string--paddled its way towards the narrowing
-northern shores and the channel of the Nile.
-
-  [Illustration: APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO HILLS IN THE
-    DISTANCE.]
-
-  [Illustration: WADELAI.]
-
-The White Nile leaves the Albert Lake in majesty. All the way to
-Nimule it is often more like a lake than a river. For the first twenty
-miles of its course it seemed to me to be at least two miles across.
-The current is gentle, and sometimes in the broad lagoons and bays
-into which the placid waters spread themselves it is scarcely
-perceptible. I slept under an awning in the _Kisingiri_, the last and
-smallest boat of the string, and, except for the native steersman and
-piles of baggage, had it all to myself. It was, indeed, delightful to
-lie fanned by cool breezes and lulled by the soothing lappings of the
-ripples, and to watch, as it were, from dreamland the dark outlines of
-the banks gliding swiftly past and the long moonlit levels of the
-water.
-
-At daybreak we were at Wadelai. In twenty-four hours from leaving
-Fajao we had made nearly a hundred miles of our voyage. Without the
-sigh of a single porter these small boats and launch had transported
-the whole of our "safari" over a distance which would on land have
-required the labours and sufferings of three hundred men during at
-least a week of unbroken effort. Such are the contrasts which impress
-upon one the importance of utilising the water-ways of Central
-Africa, of establishing a complete circulation along them, and of
-using railways in the first instance merely to link them together.
-
-Wadelai was deserted. Upon a high bank of the river stood a long row
-of tall, peaked, thatched houses, the walls of a fort, and buildings
-of European construction. All was newly abandoned to ruin. The
-Belgians are evacuating all their posts in the Lado enclave except
-Lado itself, and these stations, so laboriously constructed, so long
-maintained, will soon be swallowed by the jungle. The Uganda
-Government also is reducing its garrisons and administration in the
-Nile province, and the traveller sees, not without melancholy, the
-spectacle of civilization definitely in retreat after more than half a
-century of effort and experiment.
-
-We disembarked and climbed the slopes through high rank grass and
-scattered boulders till we stood amidst the rotting bungalows and
-shanties of what had been a bold bid for the existence of a town.
-Wadelai had been occupied by white men perhaps for fifty years. For
-half a century that feeble rush-light of modernity, of cigarettes, of
-newspapers, of whisky and pickles, had burned on the lonely banks of
-the White Nile to encourage and beckon the pioneer and settler. None
-had followed. Now it was extinguished; and yet when I surveyed the
-spacious landscape with its green expanses, its lofty peaks, its
-trees, its verdure, rising from the brink of the mighty and majestic
-river, I could not bring myself for a moment to believe that
-civilization has done with the Nile Province or the Lado Enclave, or
-that there is no future for regions which promise so much.
-
-All through the day we paddled prosperously with the stream. At times
-the Nile lost itself in labyrinths of papyrus, which reproduced the
-approaches to Lake Chioga, and through which we threaded a tortuous
-course, with many bumps and brushings at the bends. But more often the
-banks were good, firm earth, with here and there beautiful cliffs of
-red sandstone, hollowed by the water, and rising abruptly from its
-brim, crowned with luxuriant foliage. In places these cliffs were
-pierced by narrow roadways, almost tunnels, winding up to the high
-ground, and perfectly smooth and regular in their construction. They
-looked as if they were made on purpose to give access to and from the
-river; and so they had been--by the elephants. Legions of water-fowl
-inhabited the reeds, and troops of cranes rose at the approach of the
-flotilla. Sometimes we saw great, big pelican kind of birds, almost as
-big as a man, standing contemplative on a single leg, and often on the
-tree-tops a fish-eagle, glorious in bronze and cream, sat sunning
-himself and watching for a prey.
-
-I stopped once in the hope of catching butterflies, but found none of
-distinction--only a profuse variety of common types, a high level of
-mediocrity without beauties or commanders, and swarms of ferocious
-mosquitoes prepared to dispute the ground against all comers; and it
-was nearly four in the afternoon when the launch suddenly jinked to
-the left out of the main stream into a small semi-circular bay, five
-hundred yards across, and we came to land at "Hippo Camp."
-
-  [Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" NEARING
-    NIMULE.]
-
-  [Illustration: HIPPO CAMP.]
-
-We thought it was much too late to attempt any serious shooting that
-day. There were scarcely three and a half hours of daylight. But after
-thirty-six hours cramped on these little boats a walk through jungle
-was very attractive; and, accordingly, dividing ourselves into
-three parties, we started in three different directions--like the
-spokes of a wheel. Captain Dickinson, who commanded the escort, went
-to the right with the doctor; Colonel Wilson and another officer set
-out at right angles to the river bank; and I went to the left under
-the guidance of our friend the engineer. I shall relate very briefly
-what happened to each of us. The right-hand party got, after an hour's
-walking, into a great herd of elephants, which they numbered at over
-sixty. They saw no very fine bulls; they found themselves surrounded
-on every side by these formidable animals; and, the wind being shifty,
-the hour late, and the morrow free, they judged it wise to return to
-camp without shooting. The centre party, consisting of Colonel Wilson
-and his companion, came suddenly, after about a mile and a half's
-walk, upon a fine solitary bull elephant. They stalked him for some
-time, but he moved off, and, on perceiving himself followed, suddenly,
-without the slightest warning on his part and no great provocation on
-theirs, he threw up his trunk, trumpeted, and charged furiously down
-upon them; whereupon they just had time to fire their rifles in his
-face and spring out of his path. This elephant was followed for some
-miles, but it was not for three months afterwards that we learned that
-he had died of his wounds and that the natives had recovered his
-tusks.
-
-So much for my friends. Our third left party prowled off, slanting
-gradually away inland from the river's bank. It was a regular wild
-scrub country, with high grass and boulders and many moderate-sized
-trees and bushes, interspersed every hundred yards or so by much
-bigger ones. Near the Nile extensive swamps, with reeds fifteen feet
-high, ran inland in long bays and fingers, and these, we were told,
-were the haunts of white rhino. We must have walked along warily and
-laboriously for nearly three-quarters of an hour, when I saw through a
-glade at about two hundred yards distance a great dark animal. Judging
-from what I had seen in East Africa, I was quite sure it was a
-rhinoceros. We paused, and were examining it carefully with our
-glasses, when all of a sudden it seemed to treble in size, and the
-spreading of two gigantic ears--as big, they seemed, as the flaps of
-French windows--proclaimed the presence of the African elephant. The
-next moment another and another and another came into view, swinging
-leisurely along straight towards us--and the wind was almost dead
-wrong.
-
-We changed our position by a flank march of admirable celerity, and
-from the top of a neighbouring ant-bear hill watched, at the distance
-of about one hundred and fifty yards, the stately and awe-inspiring
-procession of eleven elephants. On they came, loafing along from foot
-to foot--two or three tuskers of no great merit, several large
-tuskless females, and two or three calves. On the back of every
-elephant sat at least one beautiful white egret, and sometimes three
-or four, about two feet high, who pecked at the tough hide--I presume
-for very small game--or surveyed the scene with the consciousness of
-pomp. These sights are not unusual to the African hunter. Those who
-dwell in the wilderness are the heirs of its wonders. But to me I
-confess it seemed a truly marvellous and thrilling experience to
-wander through a forest peopled by these noble Titans, to watch their
-mysterious, almost ghostly, march, to see around on every side, in
-large trees snapped off a few feet from the ground, in enormous
-branches torn down for sport, the evidences of their giant strength.
-And then, while we watched them roam down towards the water, I heard a
-soft swishing sound immediately behind us, and turning saw, not forty
-yards away, a splendid full-grown rhinoceros, with the long, thin horn
-of his rare tribe upon him--the famous white rhinoceros--Burchell
-himself--strolling placidly home after his evening drink and utterly
-unconscious of the presence of stranger or foe!
-
-We had very carefully judged our wind in relation to the elephants. It
-was in consequence absolutely wrong in relation to the rhinoceros. I
-saw that in another fifty yards he would walk right across it. For my
-own part, perched upon the apex of a ten-foot ant-bear cone, I need
-have no misgivings. I was perfectly safe. But my companions, and the
-native orderlies and sailors who were with us, enjoyed no such
-security. The consequences of not killing the brute at that range and
-with that wind would have been a mad charge directly through our
-party. A sense of responsibility no doubt restrained me; but I must
-also confess to the most complete astonishment at the unexpected
-apparition. While I was trying to hustle the others by signals and
-whispers into safer places; the rhino moved steadily, crossed the line
-of wind, stopped behind a little bush for a moment, and then, warned
-of his danger, rushed off into the deepest recesses of the jungle. I
-had thrown away the easiest shot I ever had in Africa. Meanwhile the
-elephants had disappeared.
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT HIPPO CAMP.]
-
-  [Illustration: BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE.]
-
-We returned with empty hands and beating hearts to camp, not without
-chagrin at the opportunity which had vanished, but with the keenest
-appetite and the highest hopes for the morrow. Thus in three hours and
-within four miles of our landing-place our three separate parties had
-seen as many of the greatest wild animals as would reward the whole
-exertion of an ordinary big-game hunt. As I dropped off to sleep that
-night in the little _Kisingiri_, moored in the bay, and heard the
-grunting barks of the hippo floating and playing all around, mingling
-with the cries of the birds and the soft sounds of wind and water, the
-African forest for the first time made an appeal to my heart,
-enthralling, irresistible, never to be forgotten.
-
-At the earliest break of day we all started in the same order, and
-with the sternest resolves. During the night the sailors had
-constructed out of long bamboo poles a sort of light tripod, which,
-serving as a tower of observation, enabled us to see over the top of
-the high grass and reeds, and this proved of the greatest convenience
-and advantage, troublesome though it was to drag along. We spent the
-whole morning prowling about, but the jungle, which twelve hours
-before had seemed so crowded with game of all kinds, seemed now
-utterly denuded. At last, through a telescope from a tree-top, we saw,
-or thought we saw, four or five elephants, or big animals of some
-kind, grazing about two miles away. They were the other side of an
-enormous swamp, and to approach them required not only traversing
-this, but circling through it for the sake of the wind.
-
-We plunged accordingly into this vast maze of reeds, following the
-twisting paths made through them by the game, and not knowing what we
-might come upon at every step. The ground under foot was quite firm
-between the channels and pools of mud and water. The air was stifling.
-The tall reeds and grasses seemed to smother one; and above, through
-their interlacement, shone the full blaze of the noonday sun. To wade
-and waddle through such country carrying a double-barrelled .450
-rifle, not on your shoulder, but in your hands for instant service,
-peering round every corner, suspecting every thorn-bush, for at least
-two hours, is not so pleasant as it sounds. We emerged at last on the
-farther side under a glorious tree, whose height had made it our
-beacon in the depths of the swamp, and whose far-spreading branches
-offered a delicious shade.
-
-It was three o'clock. We had been toiling for nine hours and had seen
-nothing--literally nothing. But from this moment our luck was
-brilliant. First we watched two wild boars playing at fighting in a
-little glade--a most delightful spectacle, which I enjoyed for two or
-three minutes before they discovered us and fled. Next a dozen
-splendid water-buck were seen browsing on the crest of a little ridge
-within easy shot, and would have formed the quarry of any day but
-this; but our ambition soared above them, and we would not risk
-disturbing the jungle for all their beautiful horns. Then, thirdly, we
-came slap up against the rhinoceros. How many I am not certain--four,
-at least. We had actually walked past them as they stood sheltering
-under the trees. Now, here they were, sixty yards away to the left
-rear--dark, dim, sinister bodies, just visible through the waving
-grass.
-
-When you fire a heavy rifle in cold blood it makes your teeth clatter
-and your head ache. At such a moment as this one is almost unconscious
-alike of report and recoil. It might be a shot-gun. The nearest rhino
-was broadside on. I hit him hard with both barrels, and down he went,
-to rise again in hideous struggles--head, ears, horn flourished
-agonizingly above the grass, as if he strove to advance, while I
-loaded and fired twice more. That was all I saw myself. Two other
-rhinos escaped over the hill, and a fourth, running the other way,
-charged the native sailors carrying our observation tower, who were
-very glad to drop it and scatter in all directions.
-
-  [Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS.]
-
-To shoot a good specimen of the white rhinoceros is an event
-sufficiently important in the life of a sportsman to make the day on
-which it happens bright and memorable in his calendar. But more
-excitement was in store for us before the night. About a mile from the
-spot where our victim lay we stopped to rest and rejoice, and, not
-least, refresh. The tower of observation--which had been dragged
-so painfully along all day--was set up, and, climbing it, I saw at
-once on the edge of the swamp no fewer than four more full-grown
-rhinoceros, scarcely four hundred yards away. A tall ant-hill, within
-easy range, gave us cover to stalk them, and the wind was exactly
-right. But the reader has dallied long enough in this hunter's
-paradise. It is enough to say that we killed two more of these
-monsters, while one escaped into the swamp, and the fourth charged
-wildly down upon us and galloped through our party without apparently
-being touched himself or injuring any one. Then, marking the places
-where the carcasses lay, we returned homeward through the swamp, too
-triumphant and too tired to worry about the enraged fugitives who
-lurked in its recesses. It was very late when we reached home, and our
-friends had already hewn the tusks out of a good elephant which
-Colonel Wilson had shot, and were roasting a buck which had
-conveniently replenished our larder.
-
-  [Illustration: COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT.]
-
-  [Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" ON THE
-    WHITE NILE.]
-
-Such was our day at Hippo Camp, to which the ardent sportsman is
-recommended to repair, when he can get some one to show him the way.
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[1] "I am informed by the courtesy of Mr. Lydekker of the British
-Natural History Museum, that the true name of the white rhinoceros
-found in Uganda is _Rhinoceros Simus Cottoni_. 'Burchell's white
-rhinoceros' is the designation of the southern race; but I have
-preserved in the text the name commonly used in Uganda."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-DOWN THE WHITE NILE
-
-
-We lingered lovingly around Hippo camp for two more days, moving to
-other lagoons and overflows of the river with the launch, and striking
-out inland in search of the great herd of elephants. But although
-their recent presence was on all sides proclaimed by snapped-off trees
-and trampled ground, and broad lanes cut through the grass, we saw
-none of them; and a tribe of natives who helped to carry home a
-variety of buck one afternoon, informed us upon expert authority that
-the whole herd had been alarmed by the arrival of strangers and the
-sound of firing, and had retired three days' journey from the river's
-bank. These natives--of the Lado Enclave--were gentleman-like folk,
-and I parleyed long with them upon their affairs. They were stark
-naked and very dignified, with graceful athletic bodies, long
-tapering well-bred hands, and bright keen eyes. The local chief
-exhibited all these characteristics in a superior degree, and his
-natural preeminence was recognized with instantaneous obedience by his
-followers. We loaded them with gifts. First, quantities of meat and
-hides; then chocolate all round--they love sweet things--three pieces
-of sugar for each, at least one empty bottle per man, and tin pots and
-card-board boxes almost without limit. The chief showed a fine taste
-in all these things, and annexed at once in the Imperial style
-whatever took his fancy, to whomsoever it belonged. I cast about for
-some means of doing him especial honour, and luckily remembered that I
-had bought a Japanese _kimono_ for a dressing-gown in passing through
-Port Said on the journey out. With this he was forthwith enrobed, and
-I must say he assumed the flowing garment with that easy grace and
-natural self-possession which are the gifts of a wilderness life. Thus
-the fabrics of Cathay were by the enterprise of Europe introduced into
-the heart of Africa.
-
-When, finally, with much reluctance we left this attractive place and
-pushed off determinedly into the stream, we lost no time in making
-Nimule. Steaming throughout the night and all next day along a broad
-flood contained by high and healthy slopes--now clothed with forest,
-now with waving grass--we approached, at about four in the afternoon,
-the mountains beneath which is the administrative station of Nimule.
-Hitherto the course of the Nile since it left the Albert Lake had been
-smooth and open--a broad, steady-flowing river everywhere navigable to
-vessels of not more than four feet draught. But at Nimule, after a
-reach of more than a hundred and seventy miles of unobstructed
-waterway, the river turns a sharp right angle and enters a long
-succession of granite gorges, through which it plunges in ceaseless
-cataract for a hundred and twenty miles. It is here at the head of
-these rapids that one of the great reservoirs of the Upper Nile must
-some day be constructed. "I spent hours," said Sir William Willcocks,
-the "practical mystic" of hydraulic engineering, "looking at the site,
-and seeing in a vision a great regulating work of the future." And
-indeed the exact scientific control of the whole vast system of
-Central African waters, of the levels of every lake, of the flow of
-every channel, from month to month and from day to day throughout the
-year, is a need so obvious and undisputed as to leave argument
-unemployed.
-
-The change in the character of the river separated us finally from our
-flotilla. From Nimule to Gondokoro we must again proceed by land, and
-the swift and easy progress of the last few days must be exchanged for
-the steady grind of marches. It was this stage which had always been
-painted to me as the most dangerous and unhealthy in our whole
-journey, and I had pictured to myself eight days of toil through swamp
-and forest amid miasma and mosquitoes. These anticipations were not
-sustained. Of the disadvantages of the track along the river bank I
-cannot speak; but the upper road over the hills is certainly excellent
-and healthy, and runs throughout over firm dry undulations of a
-bright, breezy, scrub-covered country.
-
-At Nimule we touched the telegraph wire again, and from the Reuter's
-accumulations which I studied, I learned that Parliament would not
-meet till the 19th of January. This gave another ten days' more rope,
-and I began to realize how much the spirit of these wonderful lands
-had taken possession of me, for it was only with the greatest
-reluctance and difficulty, that I forced myself to continue my
-homeward journey without first turning back with the launch and
-circumnavigating Lake Albert. No exertion or inconvenience seemed too
-great to win a few more glimpses of these enchanted seas and gardens,
-on which I may perhaps not look again, but from whose spell I can
-never be free. Porters to be fed from day to day, the Sirdar's steamer
-waiting at the Soudan frontier, public meetings looming heavily in the
-far-off distance, drove me onward; and with feelings of keen and
-genuine regret we addressed ourselves to the march to Gondokoro.
-
-  [Illustration: FORDING THE ASUA.]
-
-This was accomplished uneventfully in six stages, three of which were
-double marches. The country was pleasant and healthy, the scenery
-imposing, and, under a fierce sun, the air was cool. Each morning we
-started before dawn, and by noon had camped by the side of one of the
-tributary rivers or streams which flow into the Nile. Of these the
-Asua was the most important, and the picture of the long _safari_
-fording it and coming into camp among the palm-trees of the southern
-bank is one which lingers pleasantly in my memory. But this I must
-say--somehow after Nimule the charm was broken, and none of the
-regions through which the traveller passes in the long-drawn descent
-of the Nile revive in any degree those delicious sensations of wonder
-and novelty which are associated with the great lakes and the kingdoms
-of Uganda, Usoga, and Unyoro, to say nothing of what I have not been
-fortunate enough to see--Toro, Ankole, the Semliki, and the Mountains
-of the Moon.
-
-At the end of the sixth day we arrived at Gondokoro. The last march
-had been long and scorching. The moisture seemed to have gone from the
-air, and the vegetation, abundant though it was, seemed parched and
-stunted. The approaches to Gondokoro are beset by a herd of three
-hundred elephants of peculiar ill-fame. Nearly all the eligible
-tuskers have been killed. The females and young bulls are fierce and
-wary, and, taught by frequent contact with the white man, and
-protected by the sacred game laws, exercise a lawless and tyrannical
-power over the whole region. On every side their depredations are to
-be seen. Great trees pushed over in careless sport, native plantations
-trampled into ruin, the roads rendered precarious for the traveller,
-the mails often interrupted for days at a time, and occasional loss of
-life, are the features of this domination. And it seems likely to last
-a long time, for I was informed that the young bulls would not be
-sufficiently grown for about forty years, and even then, as the two
-white officers in the station are not allowed to shoot more than one
-elephant apiece each year, the nuisance will only gradually be abated.
-
-Rogue elephants are of course fair game at any time, and the day
-before we arrived at Gondokoro, the young civil officer of the station
-had encountered one in a manner which he was scarcely likely to
-forget. For, having pursued this evil-doer for some time, he at last
-got into an excellent position, and was about to fire at a distance of
-thirty yards when suddenly the elephant, without even trumpeting
-rushed furiously upon him, and, paying no attention to the two heavy
-bullets which struck him in the head, chased the officer twice round
-an uncommonly small bush; and then, distracted by the spectacle of the
-native gun-bearer in flight, turned off after this new prey, and,
-overtaking the poor wretch, smashed him to pieces with one blow of
-his terrible trunk. "Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque,
-il se defend." We reached the bungalow, which serves as the seat of
-government, in time to see the tusks of this man-slayer, who had died
-of his wounds, brought in by the tribe whose plantations he had so
-often ravaged.
-
-Gondokoro, like most of the names which figure so imposingly upon the
-African map, is not a numerously populated town. There are about six
-houses and a number of native huts. There is, however, a telegraph
-station, a prison, a court-house, and the lines of a company of native
-police and King's African Rifles. Here the Nile again becomes
-navigable, and offers an unbroken waterway open to large vessels until
-the Shabluka cataract is reached, a hundred miles below Khartoum and
-fifteen hundred miles from Gondokoro. And here at the river's bank,
-seen through a tracery of palms, were the white funnel and
-superstructure of the Sirdar's steamer with all the letters and
-newspapers; and which, instead of pursuing us across Uganda, had "come
-through the other way."
-
-"Had come through the other way"--it is an easy phrase to write: but
-how much it signifies in the modern history of Africa! Ten or eleven
-years ago this journey which I was now able to make so easily, so
-prosperously, so comfortably, would have been utterly impossible. The
-Dervish empire, stretching from Wady Halfa or Abu Hamed to Wadelai,
-interposed a harsh barrier which nothing but a stricken field could
-sweep away; and these long reaches of the Nile which now bore a fleet
-of fifty steamers were silent in the embrace of a devastating
-barbarism. A grim slaughter which had strewn the sands of Kerreri,
-twelve hundred miles to the North, with _jibba_-clad corpses "like
-snow-drifts" had blasted a passage, and the Nile was free.
-
-Embarked at Gondokoro we passed out of the sphere of the Colonial
-Office into the domain of that undefined joint authority which
-regulates the Soudan, which flies two flags side by side on every
-public building, and which you can only correspond with through the
-British Foreign Office.
-
-  [Illustration: THE BELGIAN OFFICIALS AT LADO.]
-
-  [Illustration: GONDOKORO.]
-
-Henceforward our journey was comfortable, and regular. Yet though I
-had no official work to do and was merely coming home the shortest
-way, I could not traverse the Soudan without the keenest interest.
-When one has started from Cairo and padded up the Nile to Wady Halfa,
-crossed the desert railway to the Atbara, marched thence two hundred
-miles to the battle of Omdurman, one feels one has seen something of
-the Nile. Yet now we had followed it the other way from its source for
-nearly five hundred miles, and yet twelve hundred more intervened
-before even Omdurman was reached; and as the mighty and peerless river
-unrolled its length and immemorial history, the feelings of reverence,
-without which no traveller can drink its sweet waters, grew in
-intensity.
-
-I yield to no one in recognition of the constructive and
-reconstructive work which Sir Reginald Wingate and his able officers
-have, with scanty means and in spite of grave military dangers,
-wrought in the Soudan. Yet it is not possible to descend the Nile
-continuously from its source at Ripon Falls without realizing that the
-best lies behind one. Uganda is the pearl. The Nile province and the
-Lado Enclave present splendid and alluring panoramas. Even the march
-from Nimule to Gondokoro is through a fertile and inspiring region.
-But thereafter the beauty dies out of the landscape and the richness
-from the land. We leave the regions of abundant rainfall, of
-Equatorial luxuriance, of docile peoples, of gorgeous birds and
-butterflies and flowers. We enter stern realms of sinister and
-forbidding aspect, where nature is cruel and sterile, where man is
-fanatical and often rifle-armed. Cultivation--nay, vegetation, is but
-a strip along the river bank: and even there thorn-bushes and prickly
-aloes are its chief constituents. We enter two successive deserts as
-contrasted in their character, as redoubtable in their inhospitality,
-as Dante's Circles of the Inferno: the Desert of Sudd and the Desert
-of Sand.
-
-  [Illustration: REVIEW AT KHARTOUM.]
-
-  [Illustration: SOUDAN GOVERNMENT STEAMER "DAL."]
-
-About a hundred miles from Gondokoro the White Nile enters and spills
-itself in a vast and appalling swamp. Of the action of this tremendous
-sponge, whether beneficial in regulating the flow, or harmful in
-wasting the water through evaporation, nothing need here be said. But
-its aspect is at once so dismal and so terrifying that to travel
-through it is a weird experience. Our steamer, with the favouring
-current, made at least seven miles an hour, and, as the moon was full,
-we travelled night and day. For three days and three nights we were
-continuously in this horrible swamp into which the whole of the United
-Kingdom could be easily packed. By day from the roof of the high
-pilot-house a commanding view revealed hour after hour, in every
-direction, one uninterrupted ocean of floating vegetation spreading to
-far horizons. The papyrus-plant is in itself a beautiful, graceful,
-and venerable thing. To travel through the _sudd_, is to hate it for
-evermore. Rising fifteen feet above the level of the water, stretching
-its roots twenty or even thirty feet below, and so matted and tangled
-together that elephants can walk safely upon its springy surface,
-papyrus is the beginning and end of this melancholy world. For
-hundreds of miles nothing else is to be perceived--not a
-mountain-ridge blue on the horizon, scarcely a tree, no habitation of
-man, no sign of beast. The silence is broken only by the croaking of
-innumerable frog armies, and the cry of dreary birds.
-
-The vigorous operations of the _sudd_-cutters have opened, and the
-constant traffic of steamers has preserved and improved, a channel
-about a hundred yards wide, winding by loops and corkscrews through
-the swamp. The river presents a depth of thirty feet along this
-course, and greater vessels could thread its length for nearly a
-thousand miles. The navigation is intricate and peculiar. Indeed, it
-would seem to be an art by itself. No effort is made by the Arab
-pilots, who alone are employed, to avoid collisions with the banks. On
-the contrary, they rely upon them as an essential feature of their
-management of the steamer. The vessel bumps regularly at almost every
-corner from one cushion of _sudd_ to the other, or plunges its nose
-into the reeds and waits for the currents to carry its stern round,
-bumps again and recovers its direction. Sometimes where the twists
-were very sharp we would turn completely round, not once but two or
-three times, and our movements round an S-curve were even more
-complicated. The bumps occasionally swept us out of our chairs and
-sent us sprawling on the deck. In this strange fashion we waltzed
-along at full speed for about seventy or eighty hours.
-
-Meanwhile the Nile was accomplishing its destiny. Its vast tributary
-rivers, the Sobat and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, came to reinforce its flow.
-The miles spread out behind us in a long succession of hundreds. At
-length the _sudd_ expanses begin to contract. Distant mountains rise
-against the steel-blue sky in serrated silhouette, and gradually draw
-in upon the river. Islands of earth and trees, peaks of sharp rock
-break here and there the awful monotony of waving reeds. At last the
-banks become firm and clear-cut walls of yellow sand, fringed in
-places with palms and shady trees, and everywhere bristling with
-undergrowth of thorns. We leave the wilderness of moisture, we
-approach the wilderness of drought. But first, in a middle region,
-vast areas of dusty scrub-covered plains, not wholly incapable of
-cultivation in the rainy season, supporting always flocks and herds,
-now flank both sides of the river. The camel caravans pad slowly
-across them under the blaze and glitter of the heat. The mirage begins
-to twist and blur the landscape with deceptive waters. At intervals of
-forty or fifty miles are the stations of the Soudan Government, each
-trim and regular with its public buildings, its storehouses, the lines
-of beehive huts of its garrison, a tangle of native sailing-craft, and
-always, or nearly always, one or two white gunboats of war-time days
-now turned policemen of the river.
-
-Thus we reach in time Fashoda--now called Kodok for old sake's sake;
-and here are clusters of Shillooks who (by request) stand pensively on
-one leg in their natural attitude, and smart companies of Soudanese
-troops and British officers, civil and military--the whole clear-cut
-under sun-blaze dry light, veiled only in dancing dust-devils
-piteously whipped by strong hot winds. All this was like a piece of
-the Omdurman campaign to me--the old familiar Soudan, so often made
-known to British minds by pen, pencil, and photograph during nearly
-twenty years of war, unfolded itself feature by feature. Yet we were
-still five hundred miles south of Khartoum!
-
-  [Illustration: A SHELUK AT KODOK (FASHODA).]
-
-At Meshra-er-Zeraf we stopped for two days to shoot, by the Sirdar's
-invitation, in the extensive game reserve, and were fortunate in
-securing a buffalo and various antelope. We wandered through a harsh
-country, of white sand and tussocks of coarse grass, more grey than
-green, with leafless black thorn-trees densely tangled; yet it seemed
-full of game. In three hours' walk on the second morning I shot a fine
-waterbuck, two reed-bucks, and two of a beautiful herd of roan
-antelope, who walked slowly down to water past our ambuscade. And,
-be it remembered, that the pleasure and excitement of such sport are
-in these lands always heightened by the possibility that at any moment
-the hunters may come upon game of much more serious quality--lion or
-buffalo; so that no one cares to be more than a few yards from his
-heavy rifle or give his mind wholly to the buck he stalks. Surely they
-are perverse, unenterprising folk who spend fortunes each year in
-preserving with so much artificial care, and to the inconvenience of
-other dwellers in a small island, well-counted herds of more or less
-tame deer, when in a month, and for less expense than the year's rent
-of their forests, they could pursue wild animals of every kind in
-their natural haunts and gain experiences that would last them all
-their lives.
-
-I was so much elated by this jolly morning's sport and the near
-approach of civilized conditions--for after all, contrast is an
-element in pleasure--that I permitted myself to rejoice at the safe
-and happy outcome of this long journey, and to exult in our complete
-immunity from serious accident or illness or even fever. How
-extravagant were the accounts of the dangers of African travel! How
-easy to avoid the evil chances of the road! Reasonable precautions,
-steady exercise, regular quinine--were these not in themselves the
-guarantees of safety? Thus I reckoned, and with specious reasons, but
-in a bad hour. We were not yet at our journey's end.
-
-Twenty-four hours' steaming from Meshra-er-Zeraf brought us near
-Khartoum. The character of the country was unchanged. Yellow
-sand-slopes drank at the Nile brim; thorn-scrub fringed the river on
-either side; but date-palms mingled even more frequently and
-numerously with the vegetation, and brown mud-built villages with
-brown mud-coloured populations multiplied as the miles slipped swiftly
-by. At length a solitary majestic tree, beneath whose spacious
-branches and luxuriant foliage a hundred persons might have found
-shelter from the relentless sun--Gordon's tree--advertised us of the
-proximity of Khartoum. Soon on the one bank came into view the vast
-mud labyrinth of Omdurman, with forests of masts rising along the
-shore, and on the other, among palm-groves ever clustering thicker,
-sprang the blue and pink and crimson minarets of new Khartoum.
-Khartoum--the new Khartoum, risen from its ruins in wealth and
-beauty--a smiling city sitting like a queen throned at the
-confluence of the Niles, the heart and centre of a far-reaching and
-formidable authority, disclosed herself to the traveller's eye. Sharp
-to the right turns the steamer, leaving the dull placid waters of the
-sovereign river we have so long followed, and shouldering a more
-turbulent current of clearer water, swings up-stream along its noble
-feudatory, the Blue Nile. And passing by the side of high stone
-embankments crowned by palms, the steamer enters into a modern
-Oriental port and city, and is soon surrounded by its palaces, its
-mosques, its warehouses and its quays.
-
-  [Illustration: THE PALACE, KHARTOUM.]
-
-Nearly ten years have passed since the Dervish domination was
-irretrievably shattered on the field of Omdurman, and every year has
-been attended by steady and remarkable progress in every sphere of
-governmental activity in every province of the Soudan. Order has been
-established, and is successfully, though precariously, maintained even
-in the remotest parts of Kordofan. The railway has reached the
-Southern bank of the Blue Nile, connects Khartoum with Cairo and with
-the Red Sea, waits only for the construction of a bridge to cross the
-river and enter the fertile regions of the Ghezireh. A numerous fleet
-of steamers maintains swift and regular communication along the great
-waterways. The revenue has risen from a few thousands a year in 1899
-to considerably over a million pounds in 1907. Improved methods of
-agriculture have increased the wealth of the country; the prevention
-of massacre and famine has begun to restore its population. Slavery
-has been abolished, and without affronting the religion or seriously
-disturbing the customs of the people, a measure of education and
-craftsmanship has been introduced.
-
-These great changes which are apparent throughout the whole Soudan are
-nowhere presented in so striking and impressive form as in the
-capital. A spacious palace, standing in a beautiful garden, has risen
-from the ruins where Gordon perished. Broad thoroughfares lighted by
-electricity, and lined with excellent European shops, lead with
-geometrical precision through the city. A system of steam tramways in
-connection with ferry boats, patronized chiefly by the natives,
-renders communication easy throughout Khartoum, and between Khartoum,
-Omdurman, and Halfyah. A semi-circle of substantial barracks, arranged
-upon a defensive scheme, protects the landward approaches. The
-Gordon College hums with scholarly activity--Moslem and Christian,
-letters or crafts; and seven thousand soldiers of all dress march past
-the British and Egyptian flags on occasions of ceremony.
-
-  [Illustration: GEORGE SCRIVINGS.]
-
-Yet neither these inspiring facts--the more impressive by contrast
-with my memories of ten years before--nor the gracious hospitality of
-the Sirdar--more responsible than any other man for the whole of this
-tremendous task of reconstruction and revival--were to prevent me from
-taking away a sombre impression of Khartoum. As our steamer approached
-the landing-stage I learned that my English servant, George Scrivings,
-had been taken suddenly ill, and found him in a condition of
-prostration with a strange blue colour under his skin. Good doctors
-were summoned. The hospital of Khartoum, with all its resources, was
-at hand. There appeared no reason to apprehend a fatal termination.
-But he had been seized by a violent internal inflammation, the result
-of eating some poisonous thing which we apparently had escaped, and
-died early next morning after fifteen hours' illness, with almost
-every symptom of Asiatic cholera.
-
-Too soon, indeed, had I ventured to rejoice. Africa always claims its
-forfeits; and so the four white men who had started together from
-Mombasa returned but three to Cairo. A military interment involves the
-union of the two most impressive rituals in the world. The day after
-the Battle of Omdurman it fell to my lot to bury those soldiers of the
-21st Lancers, who had died of their wounds during the night. Now after
-nine years, in very different circumstances, from the other end of
-Africa, I had come back to this grim place where so much blood has
-been shed, and again I found myself standing at an open grave, while
-the yellow glare of the departed sun still lingered over the desert,
-and the sound of funeral volleys broke its silence.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The remainder of our journey lay in tourist lands, and the comfortable
-sleeping-cars of the Desert Railway, and the pleasant passenger
-steamers of the Wady Haifa and Assouan reach soon carried us
-prosperously and uneventfully to Upper Egypt; and so to Cairo, London,
-and the rest.
-
-  [Illustration: PHILAE.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT RAILWAY
-
-
-My journey is at an end, the tale is told, and the reader who has
-followed so faithfully and so far has a right to ask what message I
-bring back. It can be stated in three words. Concentrate upon Uganda!
-
-Over the greater part of the north-east quarter of Africa, British
-influence or authority in one form or another is supreme. But when I
-turn my mind over all those vast expanses, excluding only Egypt, there
-is no region which offers prospects to compare in hopefulness with
-those of the Protectorate of Uganda. The Soudan is far greater in
-extent and importance, and Great Britain is at no charge in respect to
-it. But the Soudan is clearly inferior in fertility. The East African
-Protectorate possesses not only enormous coast-lands of great value,
-but noble plateaux where the air is as cool as an English spring. But
-we already spend on East Africa--and upon the needs of its expensive
-white settlers--more than the whole revenue of Uganda; and yet the
-promise is not so bright. Northern Somaliland is a desert of rocks and
-thorn bushes peopled by rifle-armed fanatics, on which we spend nearly
-half as much as the whole annual grant-in-aid of Uganda. And between
-Somaliland and Uganda there is this contrast presented in its crudest
-form--a barren land with dangerous inhabitants; and a fruitful land
-with a docile people. What is least worth having, is most difficult to
-hold: what is most worth having, is easiest.
-
-The union under scientific direction in Uganda (and I include in this
-popular name Usoga, Unyoro, Toro and Ankole, etc.) of unequalled
-fertility with a population of high intelligence and social quality,
-in a region of extraordinary waterways, must, unless some grievous
-error or neglect should intervene, result in remarkable economic
-developments. Already more than half the traffic which passes down the
-railway to Mombasa comes from beyond the lake. Yet scarcely any money
-has ever been spent on Uganda. No European roads exist, no railways
-have been built, no waterfalls are harnessed, no public works of any
-serious description have been undertaken. A poor little grant-in-aid
-has barely supported the day-to-day cost of European administration,
-and practically nothing in cash or credit has been available for the
-development of the country. But it is alive by itself. It is vital;
-and in my view, in spite of its insects and its diseases, it ought in
-the course of time to become the most prosperous of all our East and
-Central African possessions, and perhaps the financial driving wheel
-of all this part of the world. It is far from my desire to disparage
-the East African Protectorate, or to suggest diminution of activity or
-support. Both Protectorates are necessary to each other and should
-advance together; but in view of their relative positions, and looking
-at the situation as it is to-day, my counsel plainly is--"Concentrate
-upon Uganda!" Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far.
-Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or
-more rapidly realized.
-
-Cotton alone should make the fortune of Uganda. All the best qualities
-of cotton can be grown in the highest perfection, a hundred thousand
-intelligent landowners occupying twenty thousand square miles of
-suitable soil are eager to engage in the cultivation. An industrious
-and organized population offers the necessary labour. Merely at the
-request of the Government cotton has been planted experimentally on a
-considerable scale throughout Uganda. The figures of production--though
-of course they are only the first beginnings--show a surprising
-expansion. Great care is required, and steps have already been taken
-to secure that the quality of cotton exported from Uganda is not
-deteriorated or its reputation prejudiced by hasty or untutored
-action, that only the seeds which yield the best results should be
-distributed, and that no indiscriminate mixture should be permitted.
-The Government must control the culture. Experts must watch the
-ginneries and educate the native cultivator. Roads must be made to
-enable the crop to be marketed. The scientific organization of the
-cotton-growing resources of Uganda has now been definitely undertaken.
-A special grant of L10,000 a year will in future be devoted to this
-purpose, and the whole process will be supervised by European officers
-in close touch through the Colonial Office with the highest
-Manchester authorities and the British Cotton-Growing Association. In
-the opinion of the ablest observers the next five years will see a
-very remarkable development in cotton production, even though the
-means available to foster it continue to be slender.
-
-But cotton is only one of those tropical products for which the demand
-of civilized industry is almost insatiable, and which can nowhere in
-the world be grown more cheaply, more easily, more perfectly than
-between the waters of the two great lakes. Rubber, fibre, cinnamon,
-cocoa, coffee, sugar may all be cultivated upon the greatest scale;
-virgin forests of rare and valuable timber await the axe; and even
-though mineral wealth may perhaps never lend its hectic glory to
-Uganda, the economic foundations of its prosperity will stand securely
-upon a rich and varied agriculture. A settler's country it can never
-be. Whatever may be the destinies of the East African Highlands, the
-shores of the great lakes will never be the permanent residence of a
-white race. It is a planter's land, where the labours of the native
-population may be organized and directed by superior intelligence and
-external capital. For my own part I rejoice that the physical
-conditions of the country are such as to prevent the growth in the
-heart of happy Uganda of a petty white community, with the harsh and
-selfish ideas which mark the jealous contact of races and the
-exploitation of the weaker. Let it remain a "planter's land." Let the
-planters, instead of being the agents of excited syndicates with minds
-absorbed in the profits of shareholders thousands of miles away, be
-either Europeans of substance and character who have given proofs of
-their knowledge of natives and their ability to deal skilfully and
-justly with them, or better still--say I--let them be the
-disinterested officers of the Government, directing the development of
-the country neither in their own, nor any other pecuniary interest,
-but for the general good of its people and of the Empire of which it
-forms a part.
-
-But if the immediate inflexion of British policy in Eastern Africa
-should be, without prejudice, but with precedence of other provinces,
-to accelerate the economic and social development of Uganda, what are
-the first steps to take? I might have much to say of Forestry and
-Agriculture; of an extended system of technical education similar to
-that given at the Gordon College at Khartoum, here perhaps in part to
-be achieved through grants in aid of the existing missionary schools;
-of road-making, indispensable to progress, of motor-transport, and of
-water-power. But let me make my message brief and unclouded, and as
-before expressed in three words, "Build a Railway."
-
-The clusters of colonial possessions which have been acquired on the
-east and west coasts of Africa, so rapidly and with so little cost or
-bloodshed, will unquestionably prove an invaluable, if not indeed a
-necessary feature of the British Empire. From these vast plantations
-will be drawn the raw materials of many of our most important
-industries; to them will flow a continuous and broadening train of
-British products; and in them the peculiar gifts for administration
-and high civic virtues of our race may find a healthy and an
-honourable scope. Some of these great estates, like Southern Nigeria
-on the west coast, are already so prosperous as not only to be
-self-supporting, but able to assist with credit and subvention the
-progress of neighbours less far advanced. Others are still a charge
-upon our estimates. We are annually put to the expense of
-grants-in-aid more or less considerable for Northern Somaliland, the
-East African Protectorate, Nyassaland and Uganda. Heavy upon the
-finance of all the East Coast hangs the capital charge of the Uganda
-Railway. In no way will these charges be eased or removed except by
-the rise of one or more of the territories concerned to economic
-buoyancy, or by the growth of railway traffic down the Uganda trunk
-consequent upon development. Under present conditions the progress
-made from year to year is steady and encouraging. The charges upon the
-Colonial Estimates diminish regularly every year. Every year the
-administration of the different Governments increases in elaboration,
-in efficiency and consequently in cost. The extra charge is met ever
-more fully by the returning yield of a grateful soil. Except for the
-chances of war, rebellion, pestilence, and famine which brood over the
-infancy of tropical protectorates, but which may be averted or
-controlled, it would be easy to calculate a date--not too remote--by
-which all contribution from the British tax-payer would be
-unnecessary. The movement of events is encouraging; but there is one
-method by which it can be made far more sure and far more swift, by
-which all adverse chances are minimized, and all existing resources
-stimulated and multiplied--railways.
-
-I would go so far as to say that it is only wasting time and money to
-try to govern, or still more develop, a great African possession
-without a railway. There can be no security, progress, or prosperity
-without at least one central line of rapid communication driven
-through the heart of the country. Where, as in Northern Somaliland,
-the land itself is utterly valueless, a mere desert of rocks and
-scrub, or where the military dangers are excessive and utterly
-disproportioned to any results that can ever be reaped--withdrawal and
-concentration are the true policy. But if for any reason it be decided
-to remain and to administer, a railway becomes the prime of absolute
-necessities. Till then all civilized government is extravagant and
-precarious, and all profitable commerce practically impossible. These
-considerations have lately led a British Government to sanction the
-extensive railways, nearly 600 miles long, now being rapidly
-constructed in Northern and Southern Nigeria; and the same arguments
-apply, though in my view with increased force, to the Uganda
-Protectorate.
-
-It is not usually realized that the Uganda railway does not pass
-through Uganda. It is the railway _to_ Uganda and not _of_ Uganda. It
-stops short of the land from which it takes its name, and falls
-exhausted by its exertions and vicissitudes, content feverishly to lap
-the waters of the Victoria Nyanza. Uganda is reached, but not
-traversed by steam communication in any form. Yet the extension of the
-railway from the western shores of the Victoria to the Albert Nyanza
-would not only carry it through much of the most valuable and fertile
-country within its radius, but as I shall show could far more than
-double its effective scope.
-
-It may be accepted as an axiom that in the present state of
-development in these African protectorates, it is scarcely ever, and
-indeed I think never, worth while to build railways in competition
-with waterways. Railways should in new countries be in supplement of,
-and not in substitution for, lakes and navigable rivers. No doubt
-direct through-routes of railway, where bulk is not broken and all
-delays and changings are avoided, show an imposing advantage in
-comparison with a mere alternation of water stages and railway links.
-There could be no doubt which was the better if only you leave out
-the question of cost. But it is just this question of cost which
-cannot be left out, which clamorously dominates the proposition from
-the beginning. For first-class countries may afford first-class
-railways and _trains de luxe_, but second-class countries must be less
-ambitious, and young new jungle-born countries are satisfied, or ought
-to be, if they get any railway at all. The differences between the
-best railway in the world and the worst, are no doubt impressive; but
-they become utterly insignificant when contrasted with the difference
-between the worst railway in the world and no railway at all. For
-observe, the comparison is not with perfect lines of European
-communication, nor with anything like them, nor even with a waggon on
-a turnpike road. It is with a jogging, grunting, panting, failing line
-of tottering coolies, men reduced to beasts of burden, that the new
-pioneer line must be compared--that is to say, with the most painful,
-most degrading, slowest and feeblest method of transportation which
-has ever disgraced the world. And compared with that, any line of
-steam-communication, however primitive, however light, however
-interrupted, is heaven.
-
-I am endeavouring to guide the reader to a positive proposal of a
-modest and practical character, I mean the construction of a new
-railway which might be called "The Victoria and Albert Railway,"
-although it would virtually be an extension of the existing Uganda
-line. This railway should traverse the country between the great
-lakes, and join together these two noble reservoirs with all their
-respective river connections. The distance is not great. Two hundred
-and fifty miles would exceed the largest computation; and perhaps a
-line of one hundred and fifty miles would suffice. If the cost of this
-railway were estimated, as I am informed is reasonable, at a maximum
-figure of L5,000 a mile, the total sum involved would be between
-L1,250,000 and L750,000.
-
-The supreme advantage of making a railway debouch upon a great lake,
-is that every point on the lake shore is instantly put in almost equal
-communication with railhead. Steamers coast round on circular tours,
-and whatsoever trade or traffic may offer along the whole
-circumference, is carried swiftly to the railway. Lakes are in fact
-the catchment areas of trade, and it is by tapping and uniting them
-that the economic life of Central Africa can be most easily and
-swiftly stimulated.
-
-Two routes present themselves with various competing advantages by
-which the Victoria and Albert Railway may proceed. The first, the most
-obvious, most desirable and most expensive, is straight across the
-Highlands of Toro, through the best of the cotton country, from a
-point on the Victoria Lake in the neighbourhood of Entebbe, to where
-the Semliki river runs into the southern end of Lake Albert. The
-second would practically follow the footsteps recorded in these pages.
-It does not offer a direct line. It does not pass during the whole of
-its length through cultivated and inhabited country. It does not reach
-the Albert Lake at the most convenient end. But it is far cheaper than
-the other. It is only 135 miles long instead of nearly 250. It
-connects not only the two great lakes, but also Lake Chioga with all
-its channels and tributaries, in one system of unbroken steam
-communication.
-
-Briefly this latter project would consist of two links of railway: the
-first about sixty miles long from Jinja (or Ripon Falls) to Kakindu,
-the first point where the Victoria Nile becomes navigable: the second
-about seventy-five miles long from the neighbourhood of Mruli to the
-Nile below the Murchison Falls and near its mouth on the Albert. By
-these two sections of railway, together only 135 miles in length, a
-wonderful extent of waterways would be commanded; to wit: 1. Thirty
-miles of the Victoria Nile navigable from Kakindu to Lake Chioga. 2.
-Lake Chioga itself, with its long arms and gulfs stretching deeply
-into the whole of the fertile regions to the south-west of Mount
-Elgon, and affording a perimeter of navigable coastline accessible by
-steamers, of certainly not less than 250 miles. 3. All that reach of
-the Victoria Nile navigable from Lake Chioga to Foweira when the
-rapids ending in the Murchison Falls begin again--70 miles. 4. Thirty
-miles from below the falls to the Albert Lake. 5. The whole of the
-Albert Lake shores--250 miles. 6. The Semliki river navigable (once a
-sandbar has been passed) for sixty miles. 7. The glorious open reach
-of the White Nile from the Albert Lake to Nimule--120 miles. Thus by
-the construction of only 135 miles of railroad, swift modern
-communication would be established over a total range of 800 miles: or
-for an addition of one-fifth to its length and one-eighth to its cost
-the effective radius of the Uganda railway would be more than doubled.
-Such railway propositions are few and far between.
-
-I do not prejudge the choice of these two routes. Both are now being
-carefully surveyed. The advantages of the longer and more ambitious
-line across Toro are perhaps superior. But the cost is also nearly
-twice as great; and cost is a vital factor--not merely to the
-government called upon to find money, but still more to the commercial
-soundness of an enterprise which is permanently crippled, if its
-original capital charges are allowed notably to exceed what the
-estimated earnings would sustain. The question is one which will
-require severe and patient examination, the nicest balancings between
-competitive advantages, the smoothest compromises between the
-practical and the ideal.
-
-But let us now look forward to a time--not, I trust, remote--when by
-one route or the other the distance between the Victoria and Albert
-Lakes has been spanned by a railway, and when the Mountains of the
-Moon are scarcely four days' journey from Mombasa. The British
-Government will then be possessed of the shortest route to the
-Eastern Congo. The Uganda railway will be able to offer rates for
-merchandise and railway material with which no other line that can
-ever be constructed will ever be able to compete. The whole of that
-already considerable, though as yet stifled trade, which feebly
-trickles back half across Africa by Boma to the Atlantic, which is
-looking desperately for an outlet to the northward, which percolates
-in driblets through Uganda to-day, will flow swiftly and abundantly to
-the benefit of all parties concerned down the Uganda trunk, raising
-that line with steady impulse from the _status_ of a political railway
-towards the level of a sound commercial enterprise. In no other way
-will the British tax-payer recover his capital. The advantages are
-great and the expense moderate. Larger considerations may postpone,
-and the imperative need of the fullest surveys will in any case delay
-construction; but I cannot doubt that the Victoria and Albert railway
-is now the most important project awaiting action in the whole of that
-group of Protectorates which Sir Frederick Lugard used proudly to call
-"our East African Empire."
-
-But let us proceed one step further in the development of the
-communications of north-east Africa. When an extension of the Uganda
-railway has reached the Albert Nyanza, only one link will be missing
-to connect the whole of the rail and waterway system of East Africa
-and Uganda with the enormous system of railways and riverways of Egypt
-and the Soudan, to connect the Uganda with the Desert railway, to join
-the navigation of the great lakes to the navigation of the Blue and
-White Niles. Only one link will be missing, and that a very short one;
-the distance of 110 miles from Nimule to Gondokoro, where the Nile is
-interrupted by cataracts. Of the commercial utility of such a link _in
-itself_ I have nothing to say; but as a means of marrying two gigantic
-systems of steam communication, it will some day possess a high
-importance; and thereafter over the whole of the north-east quarter of
-the African continent under the influence or authority of the British
-Crown, comprising a total mileage by rail and river of perhaps 20,000
-miles, uninterrupted steam communication will prevail.
-
-The adventurous and the imaginative may peer out beyond these compact
-and practicable steps into a more remote and speculative region.
-Perhaps by the time that the junction between the Uganda and Soudan
-rail and water systems has been effected, the Rhodes Cape to Cairo
-railway will have reached the southern end of Lake Tanganyika: and
-then only one comparatively short hiatus will bar a complete
-transcontinental line, if not wholly of railroad, at least of steam
-traffic and of comfortable and speedy travel.
-
-Then, perhaps it will be time to make another journey; but as the
-reader, who will no doubt take care to secure a first-class tourist
-ticket, will no longer require my services as guide, I shall take this
-opportunity of making him my bow.
-
-
-
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's note:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
-  been preserved.
-
-  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-
-
-***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY AFRICAN JOURNEY***
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