138 DOWN THE VICTORIA NILE 



the track rose fifteen feet high. In the valleys great trees grew and 

 arched above our heads, laced and twined together with curtains of 

 flowering creepers. Here and there a glade opened to the right or 

 left, and patches of vivid sunlight splashed into the gloom. Around 

 the crossings of little streams butterflies danced in brilliant ballets. 

 Many kinds of birds flew about the trees. The jungle was haunted 

 by game — utterly lost in its dense entanglements. 



''Our first march was about fourteen miles, and as we had not 

 started till the hot hours of the day were upon us, it was enough and 

 to spare so far as I was concerned. Up hill and down hill wandered 

 our path, now plunged in the twilight of a forest valley, now winding 

 up the side of a scorched hill, and I had for some time been hoping 

 to see the camp round every corner, when at last we reached it. It 

 consisted of two rows of green tents and a large 'banda,' or rest-house, 

 as big as a large barn in England, standing in a nice, trim clearing. 

 These 'bandas' are a great feature of African travel ; and the dutiful 

 chief through whose territory we are passing had taken pains to make 

 them on the most elaborate scale. He was not long in making his ap- 

 pearance with presents of various kinds. A lanky, black-faced sheep, 

 with a fat tail as big as a pumpkin, was dragged forward, bleating, 

 by two retainers. Others brought live hens and earthenware jars of 

 milk and baskets of little round eggs. The chief was a tall, intelli- 

 gent-looking man, with the winning smile and attractive manners 

 characteristic of the country, and made his salutations with a fine air 

 of dignity and friendship. 



"The house he had prepared for us was built of bamboo frame- 

 work, supported upon a central row of Y-shaped tree stems, with a 

 high-pitched roof heavily thatched with elephant-grass, and walls of 

 wattled reeds. The floors of African 'bandas' when newly made are 

 beautifully smooth and clean, and strewn with fresh green rushes; the 

 interior is often cunningly divided into various apartments, and the 

 main building is connected with kitchens and offices of the same unsub- 

 stantial texture by veranda-shaded passages. In fact, they prove a 

 high degree of social knowledge and taste in the natives, who make 

 them with almost incredible rapidity from the vegetation of the sur- 

 rounding jungle; and the sensation of entering one of these lofty, dim, 



