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PREFACE 



AND 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



rriHE territories which were comprised within the hmits of the 

 -*- Uganda Protectorate during the time of my administration 

 of that portion of the British sphere in East Africa certainly 

 contain, within an area of some 150,000 square miles, nearly all 

 the wonders, most of the extremes, the most signal beauties, and 

 some of the horrors, of the Dark Continent. Portions of their 

 surface are endowed with the healthiest climate to be found 

 anywhere in tropical Africa, yet there are also some districts 

 of extreme insalubrity. The Uganda Protectorate offers to the 

 naturalist the most remarkable known forms amongst the African 

 mammals, birds, fish, butterflies, and earth-worms, one of which is as 

 large as a snake, and is coloured a brilliant verditer-blue. In this 

 Protectorate there are forests of a tropical luxuriance only to be 

 matched in parts of the Congo Free State and in the Cameroons. 

 Probably in no part of Africa are there such vast woods of conifers. 

 There are other districts as hideously desert and void of any form 

 of vegetation as the worst part of the Sahara. There is the largest 

 continuous area of marsh to be met with in any part of Africa, 

 and perhaps also the most considerable area of tableland and 

 mountain rising continuously above 6,(X)0 feet. Here is probably 

 reached the highest point on the whole of the African continent : 

 namely, the loftiest snow-peak of the Euwenzori range. Here is 

 the largest lake in Africa, which gives birth to the main branch 

 of the longest river in that continent. There may be seen here 

 perhaps the biggest extinct volcano in the world — Elgon, The 

 Protectorate, lying on either side of the eipiator, contains over a 

 hundred square miles of perpetual snow and ice : it also contains 



