674 BANTU NEGROES 



bananas, which produce all the year round), and these are coincident with 

 the two short dry seasons which follow the heavy rains of the winter and 

 summer. 



There is a considerable growth of mushrooms throughout the whole 

 country, and Jive species are wholesome. They are much liked by the 

 Baganda, and are equally appreciated by Europeans. The flavour of one 

 kind is quite sufficient to provoke the raptures of a gourmet. The 

 Baganda grow sesamum, which produces a seed full of oil. No less than 

 tw T enty kinds of peas and beans, certain herbs the leaves of which greatly 

 resemble spinach, and various seeds, fruits, roots, and leaves of the forest 

 are in use as articles of food. The sugar-cane grows most luxuriantly in 

 the regions near the lake shore or near rivers, and produces an excellent 

 cane sugar. Before the arrival of Indians and Europeans, however, the 

 Baganda never made sugar. They only chewed the stalk of the cane for 

 its delicious sweet juice. Tomatoes grow abundantly in Uganda now, and 

 are no doubt eaten by the natives, who also sell them to Europeans. 

 The coffee-tree is possibly indigenous to the forests of Uganda and the 

 neighbouring islands. The Baganda chew the sweet pulp round the beans, 

 bnt make no use of coffee as a beverage. A plant which has spread 

 rapidly throughout Uganda in a few years is the Cape gooseberry, the 

 fruits of which have an agreeable sub-acid flavour, and a taste very much 

 like cherries. 



Excellent tobacco is grown by them with very little care. It grows 

 sometimes luxuriantly on their middens or on places where they 

 have allowed cow-dung or refuse of human habitations to accumulate. 

 Tobacco is smoked in clay pipes, which are often most artistic in design, 

 ornament, and colouring. It is not, I believe, taken nowadays as snuff. 

 Both sexes smoke. Hemp is grown, but when smoked by the people 

 in water pipes it so infuriates them that hemp-smoking is virtually 

 prohibited by native law. The word for "hemp-smoker" is practically 

 synonymous with "brigand," " fanatic," or "debauchee." 



As regards their agriculture, it is not in any way remarkable. They 

 devote themselves so largely to their banana groves, which they are careful 

 to keep clear of undergrowth, that they have not developed any special 

 skill in dealing with other food crops. Needless to say, they have no 

 idea of ploughing, the plough being an implement of the Caucasian, and 

 utterly foreign to the Negro* and in early days to the Mongolian. The 

 soil is tilled almost entirely by the hoe. Neither have the Baganda 

 much idea of irrigation or draining. 



The improvement shown in the growth of tobacco on dung-hills does 



* It is remarkable that even the wild pagan Gala of inner North-East Africa use 

 a plough, showing that they are mainly a Caucasian race in this as in other respects. 



