My African Journey

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,

ive marches-two to Masindi and thre

pect. 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 fr

dstone 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

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 overgrowt

d, 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 anta

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-guard

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

east 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 ev

sindi 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 Mu

ertility. 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 prospec

tivity, 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?

ison

ls. 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 do

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 we

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

tives assemble

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

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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 th

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 th

the Murch

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ingle 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

hinery 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 bro

t up by some unusual commotion as they approached the verge-boiled suddenly over a ledge of ro