8o ON THE UGANDA ROAD part ii 



camp properly, and we could not light a fire, so we put up 

 the fly of the tent and huddled together beneath it. To cheer 

 the men I told them stories, my boy helping out my limited 

 stock of the native language ; the ever merry Mwini Mharo 

 sang us hunting songs, while Omari described the miseries of 

 the march through the forests of " Darkest Africa." 



At daybreak I paraded the men, and scolded them for their 

 misconduct. Then through a raw cold mist we left our dismal 

 resting-place, and struck out again into the't)arra. When near 

 the next camping-ground, beside the Mto Kiboko or Hippo- 

 potamus river, I let the men go on and stopped to collect. 

 I found some chameleons, and was bottling them, when my 

 attendant pointed out a snake who was eyeing us viciously. 

 Its head was just thrust out of a hole in the side of one of the 

 mounds made by white ants. I fired at it with my shot-gun, 

 and the snake glided swiftly on to the ground, and I thought 

 it was coming for me.^ But it stopped, writhed its body into 

 knots in agony, and then darted again for its hole. Anxious 

 to secure it, I sprang forward and seized its tail. I held on till 

 I could place the butt end of my gun on it. I got my hand 

 free none too soon, for it came up again as soon as it found 

 that it could not escape. I broke its back by a blow with 

 the cleaning-rod of the gun, and its powers of mischief were 

 destroyed. The two men with me refused to touch the snake. 

 They said it was " Uchungu, uchimgu sana " (Poisonous, very, 

 very poisonous). As it was still wriggling, I had to empty 

 the collecting gear out of my satchel, put the snake into 

 it, and carry it on to camp myself Dr. Gunther tells me 

 that the snake {Dendraspis polylepis, Gthr.) is one of the most 

 poisonous of known reptiles, and is worse than the Indian 

 cobra. It usually lives on trees, and has not been met with 

 before in this region of Africa, or known' to live in holes. It 

 has probably acquired this habit, owing to the absence of trees 

 from the plains in which it lives in this district. 



The camp that night was an especially dangerous one. 

 Readers of Sir Gerald Portal's Mission to Uganda may remember 

 that he describes the massacre of a Suahili caravan at this place 



^ Mr. C. W. Hobley tells me that a snake, which, from his description, is probably 

 the same species, charged him in the Mumoni district some loo miles to the north : he 

 only stopped it by blowing off its head with his riiie. 



