76 



THE CENTRAL PROVINCE 



black, and white ; while his lemon-coloured beak looks like a ripe fruit- 

 But like all his tribe, he is noisy and impudent, and seems to be impelled 

 to call observation to himself by his shouts and antics. 



The wild-flowers on Buvuma are often very striking. The scarlet 

 Erythrina of the mainland is replaced by a climbing species which 



bears clusters of velvety 

 bean-flowers of the palest 

 pink — extremely beauti- 

 ful. The whole of this 

 remarkable island is well 

 worth a separate study 

 at the hands of a Euro- 

 pean naturalist, as I am 

 sometimes disposed to 

 think that its vegetation, 

 l)ir(ls, and insects offer 

 indications of the island 

 having been isolated 

 some time from the 

 mainland and having 

 ac(|uired or retained 

 peculiar forms. 



]Many of the islands 

 of the Victoria Nyanza 

 are covered with the 

 densest forest, and will be of great value in supplying fuel for steamers. 

 A great deal of this forest also produces valuable indiarubber, while the 

 landscapes it forms in combination with green downs of short grass^ 

 sandy coves, blue inlets of the lake, and pretty villages will certainly 

 delight the future tourists that the railway will bring to the shores of 

 the lake and comfortable steamers convey to these exquisite archipelagoes, 

 these 



Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea. 



NATIVES or THE SESE ISLANDS 



Of such is the Sese Archipelago, which, though belonging politically 

 to the Uganda Province, may more fitly be described here whilst I treat 

 of the lake and its islands in general, the more so as there is a certain 

 kinship between the people of Busoga and of all these islands of the 

 northern half of the lake, a kinship of race and dialect. The Sese 

 Archipelago consists of one very large island that is nearly divided in 

 the middle by a narrow isthmus, about eight or nine smaller islands which 

 are inhabited, and almost uncounted islets and rocks too small or too barren 



