BEAUTIFUL UGANDA 125 



eyes, while the soft, cool air seems to belong to climes far removed 

 from the tropics. 



Such is Uganda, from end to end a charming garden spot, where 

 food grows in abundance with the least quota of labor, and anything 

 which can be grown anywhere seems to grow more luxuriantly here. 

 The soil is phenomenally rich. Cotton yields an abundant product, 

 and its other useful plants include coffee, tea, coca, vanilla, cocoa, 

 cinnamon, oranges, lemons, pineapples, rubber, and other native or 

 introduced fruits and products. Among these, of course, must be 

 named the banana, that most productive food plant of the tropics, 

 yielding more nutriment with less care and labor than any other 

 vegetable production of the earth. From an agricultural point of 

 view the banana groves form the distinguishing feature of Uganda, 

 the plant being indispensable to the inhabitants. It supplies him not 

 only with a nourishing vegetable pulp and a dessert fruit, but also 

 with sweet beer and heady spirits, with soap, plates, dishes, napkins, 

 and even materials for foot bridges. 



Passing along the road from Entebbe to Kampala, the native 

 capital, one gets an idea of the delightful aspect of the country and 

 also of its wealth of useful products. On both sides of the road, 

 along its whole length, extends a double avenue of young rubber 

 trees, and back of these are broad fields of cotton, beautiful alilvc when 

 in flower or when snowy white with expanded bolls. It is said that 

 the cotton grown here, from American upland seed, commands a 

 higher price in the Manchester market than the same variety of cotton 

 from the United States. 



We cannot do better here than quote a description of some inter- 

 esting features of Uganda scenery and life from Sir Harry John- 

 ston's ''Where Roosevelt Will Hunt," in the "National Geographic 

 Magazine" : 



"There is a remarkable similarity about all the landscapes in 

 Uganda. There are rolling, green downs rising in places almost into 

 the mountains and every valley in between is a marsh. This marsh is 

 often concealed by a splendid tropical forest. Sometimes, however, it 

 is open to the sky, and the water is hidden from sight by dense- 

 growing papyrus. 



