38 CIVILIZED UGANDA 



coveted post. Early rising was, I think, his one 

 virtue — indeed, it became with him almost a vice, 

 and I often called down maledictions upon his head 

 in the small hours of the morning, but I owe him 

 much for long miles covered in the cool of many 

 days. With the aspiring cooks I had more difficulty. 

 I could not sit down and eat a dinner made by 

 every several cook ; it would have been expensive, 

 and might even have delayed my departure. But 

 there was a way out of it. I have a weakness for 

 well-baked bread with good crusts, so I gave to 

 each prospective cook a portion of flour and some 

 yeast, with instructions to bring back a loaf of bread 

 on the following day. Some never came back ; 

 no doubt they ate their loaves. Others brought 

 back their loaves, because neither they nor anyone 

 else could eat them. But one, a harassed-looking 

 youth, who rejoiced in the name of Bidimungubu, 

 brought back a loaf of such excellence that, I am 

 ashamed to say, I devoured a great part of it then 

 and there. Biddy was appointed cook, but I regret 

 to say he was a fraud. Two days after leaving 

 Entebbe, when I had finished the supply he (said 

 he) had made before starting, he perpetrated the 

 most miserable attempt at bread-making that I have 

 ever had the ill-luck to meet ; it was something 

 between Australian damper and the fladbrod of the 

 Lapps, without the good qualities of either. 



Engaging porters is a trying and interminable 

 business. If you want, say, fifty porters, there is 



