68 THE CENTRAL PROVINCE 



swarms in these woodlands, fills the air with its shriekings and whistlings, 

 and is a very jn-etty bit of colour — grey, white, and scarlet — as it plays 

 about the tree-trunks. The magnificent blue plantain-eater (Corythreola), 

 the violaceous plantain-eater— violet and crimson with a primrose-yellow 

 beak — and large hornbills with enormous white casques people these lofty 

 trees, from which indiarubber lianas sway like the ropes to be used in 

 moving stage scenerv. Except close to their sources, there are few running 

 rivers, the brooks soon becoming choked with water vegetation, and 

 degenerating into swamps, at the bottom of glades of black forest, or open 

 marshes. Perhaps the most charming characteristic of Busoga is its lanes. 

 The inhabited and settled country is traversed by these in all directions- 

 neat paths, broader than the average African path, running for miles in 

 the most delightful shade between high hedges of cultivated dracffinas 

 or other large-foliaged plants, or a succulent Salvia with thick broad 

 green leaves and bright blue flowers, under canopies of richly foliaged 

 trees, many of them celebrated for their brilliant flowers, like the lovely 

 ekirikiti (Erythrina) — with beau-blossoms, as it were cut out of scarlet 

 velvet — or the magnificent Spathodea, whose flowers are the shape and 

 almost the size of Koman lamps and a vivid scarlet, so that the tree 

 looks as though it had l)een hung with crimson liglits for some illumination. 

 Busoga mav well boast of being one of the most beautiful districts of 

 the Protectorate. I would that it were equally healthy. Here and there 

 there is high ground where Europeans can live without much fever, but 

 in the immediate proximity of the waters of the Victoria Xyanza it is 

 often unhealthy. But what a country of noble landscapes I 



Perhaps next to the snow-range of Euwenzori, highest of African 

 mountains, the most interesting landscape in the I'ganda Protectorate is 

 that which I have entitled "The Birth of the Nile." The picture given 

 here is taken on the west side of the Ripon Falls, at Bugungu, at the 

 spot where Speke was led by the Baganda in 1860, to see with his own 

 eyes how the greatest lake in Africa gave birth to the mainspring of the 

 greatest river. The Victoria Xyanza (the area of which is about 27,000 

 square miles) was first sighted by Speke in 1858, and although he saw- 

 but one of its restricted southern gulfs, he believed the stories the Arabs 

 told him of its vastness, and jumped to the conclusion that it was the 

 main source of the Nile. Nearly three years were to elapse before he was 

 able to prove his startling prognostication by the siglit of the Victoria 

 Nyanza at the head of Napoleon Gulf suddenly developing a marked 

 current and falling away in foam over the rocky baiTier named by Speke 

 the Ripon Falls. Speke, in his researches, was lucky in that he was led 

 straight to his object In' the intelligent Baganda. Had the northern 

 shores of the Victoria Nyanza been inhabited by savages unwilling or 



