94 THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA 



always a most beautiful object in the forests. The stem is long, slender, 

 and pliant — that is to say, the palm does not hold itself rigidly straight, 

 but droops forward somewhat. The slender, swaying grey stem is crowned 

 with a noble gerhe of regularly curved fronds of the deepest, richest 

 green, turned to green-gold when the sun shines through them. The 

 stalks of the palm near the centre, from which they spring, are often 

 orange coloured, and the three or four flowering branches are a vivid 

 orange-vellow in all their ramifications, the fruit succeeding the whitish 

 vellow flowerets being a bright orange when ripe, so that from a little 

 distance the general impression one derives from these palms is a grey 

 stem, an orange oriflamme at the head of the stem, from which radiates 

 a horseshoe of graceful pinnated fronds of the greenest green. 



Whatever mav be the case in the Congo basin, where the forests often 

 appear sadly lifeless, these woodlands of Uganda are full of colour and 

 noise from the Inrds, beasts, and insects frequenting them. jMonkeys are 

 singularly bold, and frequently show themselves. There is the black and 

 white colobus with the long plume-tail which has been already described; 

 there is a large greenish black L'ercopithecas, and anotlier species of the 

 same genus which is known as the White-nosed monkey. This is a 

 charming creature of bright colours — chestnut, lilue-black, yellow-green, 

 and grey, with a snow-wliite tip to its nose. I believe its specific name is 

 rufoviridis. The l^riglit-coloured turacos which have been mentioned in 

 connection with Busoga are even more abundant in these I'ganda forests, 

 and there are green and red love-birds, grey parrots with scarlet tails, 

 and the usual barbets, hornbills, shrikes, fly-catchers, bee-eaters, rollers^ — all 

 of them birds of bright plumage or strange form. 



There are other forest creatures that are not harmless sources of 

 gratification to the eye. Lying amongst the dead leaves on the path 

 may be the dreaded puff-adder,* with its beautiful carpet-pattern of 

 pinkish grey, black, lemon-yellow, and slaty blue, and with its awful head 

 containing poison glands more rapidly fatal than those perhaps of any 

 other viper. Numerous pythons, from fifteen to twenty feet in length 

 (generally disinclined to attack human beings, however), are coiled on 

 the branches of the trees, or hang by their tails like a pendent branch 

 swaying to and fro in the wind. Their chequered patterns of brown and 

 white are rendered very beautiful sometimes by the bloom of iridescence 

 which imports rainbow colours into the scales when the skin is new. 

 The pythons may be disregarded as a dangerous element to human beings, 

 and the pufif-adder, though his bite may kill you in an hour or less, is 

 too sluggish to attack, unless by some blunder you tread on him and 

 wait to see the consequences. Therefore the snakes are far less an 



* Bitis gabonica. 



