106 THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA 



bananas grow, and at the end of each series of yards is the closely 

 thatched residence of some family or household. Each house, as will be 

 shown later on, has various subsidiary buildings attached to it. Everything 

 bears a neat, swept-up appearance, and the handsome trees and general 

 richness of vegetation round the dwellings make it a city of gardens. 

 Along some of the roads there must be straight perspectives of one or 

 more miles in length, and the breadth of the avenues has about it 

 something royal and suggestive of a capital. Mission buildings, with 

 cathedrals in brick and stone, or in humbler materials of cane, thatch, and 

 palm poles, rise from three of the great hills which surround the little 

 basin in which the smaller mound of Kampala is situated — Kampala, the 

 hillock which was contemptuously given to Captain Lugard by Mwanga, 

 and where the first seed was planted from which the British Administra- 

 tion over all these vast territories grew and prospered. To the east of 

 Kampala rise the heights on which the military garrison of Indian and 

 Sudanese troops is establislied. Here a strong and well-constructed fort 

 has been erected, from which the whole of Mengo can be dominated. 

 There is fast springing up about Kampala a town of Indian traders and 

 a large Sudanese settlement. There are German stores, at which most 

 articles needful to the European settler can be purchased, besides the 

 well-provided Indian bazaar. The steep red roads radiate from Kampala 

 in every direction, and up and over every one of the encircling hills. 

 Yet Mengo is in some respects disappointing, for it is self-centred ; it is 

 difficult from any of the fatiguing heights around it to obtain any 

 -decisive glimpse of regions beyond. 



Let us take an imaginary journey together in this Kingdom of Uganda 

 in order that the untravelled reader may bettei' realise the aspect of the 

 country and the nature of its chiefs and people. We will suppose that 

 we have left behind us the suburbs of Mengo, which extend almost as far 

 from the centre of that capital as do the suburbs of London. The road 

 is as broad as an English country road, quite different from the ordinary 

 African path (which is barely the breadth of the space occupied by men 

 walking in single file). The road is much rutted, and is seamed by 

 gullies, owing to the way in which the heavy tropical rains cut up its 

 soft clay surface. On either side of the road the grass grows high, 

 perhaps to heights of seven or eight feet, but it is interspersed with gay 

 flowering plants and shrubs. The road ascends a steep hill through this 

 country of luxuriant grass. The hilltop reached and the descent begun, 

 the traveller sees before him a broad marsh in tlie valley below. The 

 descent to this marsh is possibly so abrupt that it is deemed wiser to 

 get off the horse or mule and leave that beast to slither down side- 

 ways. At the edge of the marsh the road becomes a long narrow 



