My African Journey

mb 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

ized 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

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lag, 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 exercis

ative 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,

gnity 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 gro

e 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, tur

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d 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 ruthl

lly, 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 th

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, 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 de

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 tempe

cts 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 grea

eory 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 imag

es 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

ese 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 centre

he 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 i

mission 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

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

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 entir

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,

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

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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, wh