A WONDERFUL VIEW 115 



are never molested, and they have little fear of man- 

 kind, though they see plenty of them in the native 

 porters, who come along this way bringing loads of 

 salt from Katwe to Toro. Near Katwe, the last 

 village on the Uganda side of the boundary, are 

 some small salt lakes, separated by a short distance 

 only from Lake Albert Edward. One of these lakes 

 is very rich in a good kind of salt, and is a large 

 source of revenue to Kasagama, the King of Toro. 

 We met several porters dawdling along with 

 their long packages of salt, stopping to rest under 

 every tree by the wayside, and whenever we asked 

 them how far it was to Katwe, it was always four 

 hours farther on. 



The sun was well overhead, beating fiercely down 

 upon us when we crossed the Equator, and the road 

 was monotonously long and straight, only swerving 

 here and there to avoid one of the many craters, 

 some filled with bushes and some with salt water, 

 that lie scattered over the land. There was a bit of 

 rising ground away ahead of us, from which we 

 hoped to see the end of our journey ; but it was 

 always a mile away, and it seemed as if we should 

 never overtake it : however, we reached it at last, 

 and all the weariness of the walk and the heat were 

 forgotten. 



Through a V-shaped gap in front of us there 

 gleamed a stretch of bluest water — our first view 

 of the Albert Edward Nyanza : it was like one's 

 first glimpse of the Atlantic down a coombe in 



8—2 



