CHAPTER IV 



TRAVELLING IN UGANDA 



' For weary is work, and weary day by day 

 To have your comfort miles on miles away.' 



Clough. 



It was in the pocket of an old coat that I found 

 them — a hundred grimy cowries from the Indian 

 Ocean strung on a piece of banana fibre and polished 

 and worn smooth by innumerable fingers. Cyprcea 

 annulus is their scientific name ; ' simbi ' is what they 

 are called in Ua"anda, The sound and the smell 

 and the ' feel ' of them, as I took them up, carried 

 me far away from the chill and gloom of the English 

 ' summer ' to a ' cleaner, greener land,' and reminded 

 me of a thousand scenes and incidents under a 

 blazing African sky. These shells are the popular 

 currency in Uganda, and except in a few places, 

 where the people are wealthy enough to have rupees, 

 are universally used. Their value is not great — a 

 thousand, or in some places eleven hundred, go to 

 one rupee — and their bulk is considerable ; so it often 

 happens that on a long journey one has to take 

 several porters laden only with money. I do not 

 know if one shell, the thousandth part of a rupee, 



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