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CHAPTER XXVIII

The Successful End of the African Hunt

AMPALA, the capital of Daudi Gehewa, the boy king of Uganda, lies about twenty-four miles from Entebbe, the port

of the lake traffic and the seat of British authority in that part of midland Africa. A protectorate Uganda is called. This is to cater to the susceptibility of the partly civilized natives. It is wise to let such a people fancy that they are an independent nation, but the gloved hand of British authority has iron in its grasp and the African ruler is only a useful puppet to be cajoled and played with by the actual rulers.

In this city of Kampala Colonel Roosevelt found himself after his long hunting career; resting let us say, but it was a Rooseveltian rest. Here is a record of one day, December 22, of our hunter's life in the Uganda capital. The morning began with an antelope hunt on the surrounding plain. This was only an appetizer for the day's work. On his return to the verdant, leaf-shrouded town he made a call on Mother Paul, the American superior of the convent, and had a long interview with her. On leaving he visited the Catholic mission; following this up by taking part in the ceremony of dedicating a wing recently added to the Church Mission Society hospital. This done, he finished the morning's work by taking lunch with Bishop Hanlon. This series of performances was followed in the afternoon by a reception of the King of Uganda, who paid a visit of ceremony to the distinguished visitor then honoring his capital by his presence. Subsequently, in company with King Daudi, he became the guest of honor at a dinner given by Mr. F. A. Knowles, the British sub-commissioner, to the African monarch and the American ex-President.

Evidently Mr. Roosevelt was losing no time. He had now reached the climax of his African career, and was soon to turn his back on the hunter's paradise in which he had lived for months and begin his

never comes, and he especially admired the charming outlook from the

Government House, with its smooth, green lawn, the beautiful trees which shaded it, the gleaming face of the sun-kissed lake in the near distance and the stately setting of the purple hills afar. And this in a clime which, with its soft, cool air, seemed to belong to summer lands far removed from the region of the equator.

After a brief stay in Entebbe as the guest of the Governor of Uganda, he set out on a motor trip to the Uganda capital. No one could follow the high road from Entebbe to Kampala without feeling himself in a bath of beauty, in which the pervading green was enlivened by blooms of all the colors of the rainbow and in the rich soil of which grew every variety of tropical fruits, with others introduced from the temperate zone and familiar to their new visitor.

The American visitors viewed Kampala with the same enthusiastic approval with which they had greeted all the Uganda scenes. As for the city itself, one scarcely discovers it even when in its center, the huts of the natives being so environed with clustering banana trees as to be scarcely visible. But beyond this sea of leaves rise the several hills on the slopes of which much of the city lies, one showing on its summit the king's palace, a second the buildings of the English resident officials, a third crowned with the Christian churches, etc. We do not know if Roosevelt ejaculated "Bully for you!" on observing the scene spread before him, but if he did it would have been characteristic.

Colonel Roosevelt had not sought King Daudi's capital as a haven of rest. He has the faculty of never resting while there is anything that seems to him worth doing or worth learning, and the account above given of one day's activity of his stay in that city will show that he did not come there with the hope of basking in inglorious ease. To up and be doing is his native motto and one which he rarely foregoes."

In the six or seven weeks of his projected stay in Uganda he did not propose that time should hang heavy on his hands. His months of hunting in British East Africa had not surfeited him. Uganda had its animals also, its broad domains over which wild beasts wander in multitudes, and there was always the possibility of bringing down some species new to his career, possibly of finding some animal new to science, a mate for the okapi found a few years before in the section of Africa in which he now was.

At any rate Roosevelt and his followers were soon up and doing, throwing off the soft blandishments of the Kampala type of civilization and going on safari into the wilderness in search of something new and strange. He was especially desirous of getting some specimens of the white rhinoceros which he had sought for, as stated, in Sotik, and in this effort it will suffice to say that he was here abundantly successful.

In this American invasion of Uganda there was one thing to be avoided, the subtle assaults of the fevers and other enervating afflictions to which the visitor to the tropics is exposed. Especially was it

needful to be on guard against one of these epidemics, that fatal sleeping sickness which within a few years had laid twenty thousand of the Uganda natives in the grave and was afoot for new victims who should come within reach of the death-dealing tsetse fly.

When Mr. Roosevelt set out for Africa at the close of his presidential career many predictions were made that he would never return alive. Some affirmed that the sleeping sickness would surely claim him as a victim, others that he would fall before those nerve-racking tropical fevers which few explorers had escaped and by which many had been laid low. Still others of this weeping willow band of mourners were confident that some of the ravening beasts of Africa's clime, the maned lion, the horned rhino, the trunked elephant, the mailed crocodile, would with weight of paw, thrust of horn or snap of jaw close the career of America's favorite son.

These dismal forebodings were not without warrant. They were based on the experience of many earlier travelers. But they little disturbed the Roosevelt serenity and fortunately none of them were realized. One rumor, indeed, came from Africa that he had been killed, but like most such rumors it proved unbased. He passed unscathed through the terrors of field and fever, and finally reached the banks of the Nile in a condition of rugged health, such as few of his predecessors had enjoyed. But this was largely due to the fact that before his advent civilization had tamed that region of the tropics and he was saved from the enervating and disheartening experiences of earlier travelers, while every precaution to insure his safety was taken. Only for the presence of such trained hunters as Selous and Cunninghame there might have been a different story to tell.

It is not our purpose to describe the hunting adventures of the Roosevelt party in Uganda, that country which has been described as "the wildest and most beautiful, perhaps the most dangerous, and certainly the most interesting of those explored." These adventures were of the type of those already described. They consisted in wandering through the wilds, the constant crack of the rifle, the fall of fresh victims of the hunter's skill. To detail them would be but a repetition of the story of the past chapters, and of these hunting exploits "by flood and fell" our readers have already had a sufficiency. We shall therefore pass over these experiences and pass at once from Kampala to where the waters of the great lake rush down the slope of Ripon Falls to give birth to the noble Nile. Down that historic stream. our journey now leads.

To go "on safari" down the Nile was an experience very different from that which the expedition had yet passed through. It had hitherto enjoyed the cool air of a high plateau, high even at the Victoria Nyanza, which is nearly four thousand feet above sea level. Before reaching the Albert Nyanza, about two hundred miles distant, more than one-third of its height had disappeared and our travelers found themselves approaching the steaming and enervating temperature of the true tropics.

On went the long caravan, the colored porters gay and lively in the early hours of the day, but with sober mien and dragging steps as hot noontide burned above them. Native paths led through the dense woodland, now along a level stretch, now up or down hill, and whites and blacks alike were glad enough to reach the "bandas," or rest houses, which awaited them at intervals along the trail, built by the authorities for the convenience of the growing tide of travel.

Day after day this was repeated; an early start, a long tramp, a rest during the hot hours of the day, with food provided by the chiefs of the country traversed and duly paid for by the travelers. Of course the Rooseveltians did not fail to turn aside to view the remarkable Murchison Falls, in which the whole flood of the Nile forces itself through an aperture less than twenty feet wide, plunging one hundred and sixty feet downward with a roar loud enough to awake the echoes miles away.

The Albert Nyanza, a lake much smaller than the Victoria, lies in the course of the Nile, but cannot be said to be traversed by it. On the contrary the river enters and leaves it at its northern corner, passing through only a few miles of its area, yet doubtless gaining from it important additions to its flood. Other additions come from the Albert Edward Nyanza, which receives the drainage of the Ruwenzori Mountains and is connected with the Albert Nyanza by the Semliki River. It is to these three central African lakes that the Nile owes the great volume of its flood, gaining the abundant waters which for thousands of years have brought to the land of Egypt perennial fertility.

After leaving the Albert Nyanza, the next point of interest is the former Arab slave-station of Gondokoro, more than two hundred miles to the north. Though this distance may be traversed by boat, the Roosevelt party made its way by land, journeying through a very difficult stretch of country, a wilderness so forbidding to the white men that even the enterprising telegraph companies have not yet ventured to carry their wires through it, all communication being made by native runners. But it presented excellent opportunities for hunting, and on reaching Gondokoro on February 17th the adventurers declared that the past ten days had been one of the most enjoyable parts of their entire African trip. Certainly they looked it, to judge from the healthy aspect of the whole party.

Gondokoro lies in the territory of the Bari tribe of the Soudanese negroes, on the east bank of the Nile, the west bank at this point being in the most northerly stretch of the territory of the Congo Free State. Long ago the Arabs made it a center of the slave and ivory trade, and though the former has been suppressed, the ivory trade is still active, a number of ivory merchants making Gondokoro their headquarters. Here the steamboats of the Soudan government call once a month, carrying passengers and the mail between this place and Khartum, nine hundred miles to the north.

The entrance of the Roosevelt expedition to this far inland Nile station was rudely picturesque, the British and natives alike doing their utmost to give a fitting welcome to the travel-hardened wanderers. A party of the Bari tribe, Chief Keriba and his band of native musicians at their head, met the Americans sixteen miles south and

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