who visit this region before the advent of civilization, will see before them coal-black, handsomely formed negroes and negresses without a shred of clothing, though with many adornments in the way of hippopotamus teeth, bead necklaces, earrings, and leglets of brass. They are very picturesque as they strut about the streets in their innocent nudity, decked with barbaric ornaments.

"The men wear not one earring, but fifteen! Holes are pierced all round the outer edge of the ear, and in these are inserted brass fillets, like melon seeds in shape, to which are attached coarse blue beads of large size and dull appearance. These beads the knowing tourist should collect while they can be purchased, as they are of mysterious origin and great interest. They have apparently reached this part of the world from Nubia in some very ancient trading intercourse between Egypt and these countries of the upper Nile. As the figures thus exhibited are usually models for a sculptor, this nudity is blameless and not to be discouraged; moreover, it characterizes the most moral people in the Uganda protectorate.

"This ebon statuary lives in pretty little villages, which are clusters of straw huts (glistening gold in the sun's rays), encircled with fences of aloes, which have red, green, and white mottled leaves, and beautiful columns and clusters of coral-red stalks and flowers. There are a few shady trees that from their appearance might very well be elms but are not, and some extraordinary euphorbias, which grow upright with the trunk of a respectable tree and burst into uncounted sickly green spidery branches. Herds of parti-colored goats and sheep, and cattle that are black and white and fawn color, diversify these surroundings with their abrupt patches of light and color.

"They belong to the better class of Bantu negroes, of that immense group of African peoples which has dominated the whole southern third of Africa from the regions of the White Nile and Victoria Nyanza to the upper Congo, Kamarun, Zanzibar and Zululand."

Speaking of the herds of the natives, it may be said that the scientists of the Department of Agriculture have done much to improve them. There is a government stock farm at Naivasha in the work of which Mr. Roosevelt took great interest. Official experi

menters are there engaged in crossing herds to obtain domestic animals adapted to the climate and country and at the same time superior in profit-yielding quality. The hump of the African ox, for instance, disappears in the first generation, and in the next he more nearly resembles the European animal. By supplying settlers and natives with stock improved in this way, it is expected that the herds will be multiplied many times in value.

The same may be said of the sheep, which has been similarly improved. In the various flocks visible may be seen the native breed, the half-bred, three-quarter bred and full bred English, the improvement visible being surprisingly great. That Mr. Roosevelt was thoroughly interested in this transformation goes without saying. He saw specimens of the native sheep, rough and hairy, to the untrained eye looking more like a goat than a sheep. Yet this undeveloped animal, when crossed with the Sussex or the improved Australian type, becomes a woolly beast that is very evidently a sheep. A second cross makes another great improvement, and soon the breeder has a flock that it is hard to distinguish from those of English fields, yet one that is better adapted to the sun and clime of Africa.

In this way a remarkable change is produced alike in the ox and the sheep. The purpose of the experimental farm is not only to produce an improved type adapted to the conditions of the locality, but also to supply the farmers with blooded animals which will add greatly to the value of their flocks. This work is prosecuted with the greatest zeal and enthusiasm, though the experimenters are hampered by want of funds and seriously troubled by the ravages of the East Coast fever.

This malady, to which their animals are very subject, came into the province from German East Africa several years ago, and is gradually spreading despite all efforts to check it. A cow attacked by it will live thirty days or more, during which the ticks which attack it are infected with the poison of the disease and transmit it to other cattle which may pass over the same ground. Experiment has shown that the ticks hold the virulent disease germs for a year, and in that time they may infect many animals.

Thus the efforts of the stock-breeders are largely negatived. Left to themselves the natives would be helpless and the disease spread until all their cattle were exterminated. But that is not the method of the trained workers of the Department of Agriculture. One way to clear the ground of its peril is to put sheep upon it, which are not harmed by the poison from the tick. Others are to divide the country up into fields by wire fencing, and thus keep the cattle within uninfected areas; to destroy suspected animals; to search for remedies to the disease, and to bring to play upon the evil all the resources of modern science.

W

CHAPTER XXVII

Beautiful Uganda and the Nile

HEN the traveler in the "dark continent" crosses the great East African lake, Victoria Nyanza, and lands at the port of Entebbe, he finds himself on the threshold of one of the most fertile and beautiful kingdoms in the dark continent, lovely Uganda. This was formerly the seat of the most remarkable of the African native governments, and is now of as remarkable a colonial realm, for the old governmental system has been left unchanged under the shadow of the British protectorate. What the British have brought are the blessings of peace, of civilized habits, of education and Christian teaching; while no burden of foreign rule rests upon the neck of the natives, whose old system persists unchanged.

What is to be found there can best be indicated by a brief description of this singular civilization in the heart of East Africa. Extending westward and northward from the Victoria Nyanza, reaching to and embracing the Albert Nyanza, and traversed by the upper channel of the Nile, Uganda is an extensive equatorial realm, its administrative capital of Entebbe lying nearly on the Equator, yet its elevation of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet gives it a partly temperate climate, while its vegetation has all the regal luxuriance of the tropics.

Nowhere else in Africa is there a region to be compared in charm and attractiveness with Uganda. Different from all others in scenery, in vegetation, and in the character and condition of its people, it stands alone. In reaching it by sail, we leave the breezy uplands lying east of the great lake and enter a garden spot of the tropics. Entebbe glows with floral beauty-violet, yellow, purple and crimson blooms. Plants and trees of beautiful form and color grow in profusion, before the Government House is a stretch of level green lawn, and in the distance the great blue lake and purple hills attract the

eyes, while the soft, cool air seems to belong to climes far removed from the tropics.

Such is Uganda, from end to end a charming garden spot, where food grows in abundance with the least quota of labor, and anything which can be grown anywhere seems to grow more luxuriantly here. The soil is phenomenally rich. Cotton yields an abundant product, and its other useful plants include coffee, tea, coca, vanilla, cocoa, cinnamon, oranges, lemons, pineapples, rubber, and other native or introduced fruits and products. Among these, of course, must be named the banana, that most productive food plant of the tropics, yielding more nutriment with less care and labor than any other vegetable production of the earth. From an agricultural point of view the banana groves form the distinguishing feature of Uganda, the plant being indispensable to the inhabitants. It supplies him not only with a nourishing vegetable pulp and a dessert fruit, but also with sweet beer and heady spirits, with soap, plates, dishes, napkins, and even materials for foot bridges.

Passing along the road from Entebbe to Kampala, the native capital, one gets an idea of the delightful aspect of the country and also of its wealth of useful products. On both sides of the road, along its whole length, extends a double avenue of young rubber trees, and back of these are broad fields of cotton, beautiful alike when in flower or when snowy white with expanded bolls. It is said that the cotton grown here, from American upland seed, commands a higher price in the Manchester market than the same variety of cotton from the United States.

We cannot do better here than quote a description of some interesting features of Uganda scenery and life from Sir Harry Johnston's "Where Roosevelt Will Hunt," in the "National Geographic Magazine":

"There is a remarkable similarity about all the landscapes in Uganda. There are rolling, green downs rising in places almost into the mountains and every valley in between is a marsh. This marsh is often concealed by a splendid tropical forest. Sometimes, however, it is open to the sky, and the water is hidden from sight by densegrowing papyrus.