Lake Victoria to Khartoum 



the ridge. At first the road winds its way through 

 a populous and fruitful country, the local savage 

 being a shade more off-hand than the Baganda, 

 till after some fourteen miles it plunges into a 

 virgin forest. 



One passes of a sudden from the burning glare 

 of an African sun, from the black and yellow 

 burnt-up grass and the stunted trees outside, 

 trembling in the noonday heat, to a dim mysterious 

 vista of black tree-trunks, accentuated at fre- 

 quent intervals by the patches made by sun- 

 beams shining " from above on to the place be- 

 neath." 



The road througrh this orrand forest is for the 

 most part flat, but with two or three very deep 

 clefts where the rivers (in the rains) run through 

 it. One side of the road is in the Game Reserve, 

 so that if you find elephant on that side you have 

 to wait till they have crossed the path before 

 shooting them. In this forest there lives a 

 mysterious species of antelope, called Intallaganya, 

 peculiar in that the males carry no horns. M'sam- 

 bia and M'vuli trees rear their bare white trunks 

 some hundred feet into the air, spreading their 

 enormous branches for the remaining forty or 

 fifty feet over the rubber vines and thick under- 

 growth that chokes the way. Beautiful butter- 

 flies in thousands flitter hither and thither ; 

 great hornbllls raise their harsh screams, and, 

 together with the pretty picturesque black-and- 



26 



