114 THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA 



Uganda goes about without an attendant carrying a chair (and when chiefs 

 come to visit you, you need not be in any way worried about providing 

 seats for them to sit on, as each will bring his own). The interior of 

 this house may be divided into compartments by screens or bark-cloth 

 curtains. It is possible, however, that the dwelling in which you are 

 received is a relatively simple one and is not inhabited at night. Other 

 houses of a more elaborate character will be found in adjoining court- 

 yards — the big man's own private dwelling and the house of his wife, and 

 other huts for female members of the household or children, kitchens 

 and latrines. On this last point the Muganda displays a sense of decency 

 and cleanliness almost on the English leveh 



The forests and marslies of Uganda abound in remarkalile monkeys 

 and brilliantly coloured birds to a degree not common elsewhere in tropical 

 Africa ; but the Kingdom of Uganda, as may be imagined from its 

 relatively dense population — a population once much thicker than to-day 

 — has been to a great extent denuded of its big game. In the large 

 District of Euddu, and in Koki, which form the southern districts of the 

 kingdom, rhinoceroses, elands, and buffalo are still found in the bush 

 country. In parts of Kiagwe also, on the east of the kingdom, there 

 are buffalo, belonging to the Abyssinian, and not to the South African type. 

 The bastard hartebeest (Dcmicdiscus), known to Euroj)eans as the " topi,"* 

 and Thomas's kob (Cobus thomasi) are still found, though in decreasing 

 numbers, in the more grass-covered country of the north-west and north, 

 in which lands also Grant's zebra is met with in some numbers. 

 Speke's tragelaph is still found in most of the big marshes and along 

 the lake shores. Elephants are fairly abundant some distance from the 

 more thickly populated centres, and it must be remembered that most 

 of the population converges to the shores and islands of the Victoria 

 Nyanza. The lion is a rapidly decreasing danger to the inhabitants, but 

 the leopard is most abundant, even haunting the precincts of such a 

 centre of European activity as Entebbe. There are two large wild-cats 

 most common and characteristic of Uganda — the serval and the servaline. 

 The servaline cat grows sometimes almost to the size of a leopard. Its 

 skin, besides a few bold black markings, is covered with an infinitude of 

 tiny black spots, so crowded together as to give it a dun colour at a 

 distance. These skins are much in favour witli the natives, as are also 

 the blue-mouse-coloured pelts of the tiny Cephalophus antelope, the 

 " entalaganya " of the Baganda, who sew these little blue-grey silky skins 

 together and make beautiful mats of them. It is strange that the Baganda, 

 who have a decided a]jpreciatiou of beauty of form and outline, should 

 apparently have no sense of colour to appeal to, though thev live in a 

 * For native names of antelopes, etc., see Vocabularies (Chapter XX.). 



