I30 THE SEMLIKI VALLEY 



direction took us over a low ridg-e to Karimi, in the 

 Semliki Valley, where there was formerly a Congo 

 post, but now the only relics of their occupation are 

 the long lines of papye-trees which the Belgians 

 always plant about their houses. The papye (called 

 elsewhere papaw, pawpaw, and papoia), which grows 

 in most tropical countries, bears a fruit that has 

 many of the good qualities of the melon and the 

 apricot combined, the only fruit (to my mind) that 

 is worth eating in Central Africa, They are good 

 in Uganda, better in the Congo, and best of all in 

 the Semliki Valley. 



In this upper part of its course the Semliki is a 

 clear stream, seventy or eighty yards wide, running 

 between low banks fringed with tall reeds, at a rate 

 of about three miles an hour. It reminded me at 

 once of the Ouse between Huntingdon and St. Ives. 

 We stopped for a day at Karimi, waiting for our 

 escort and a supply of food for our porters ; and 

 while some of the party occupied themselves with 

 fishing in the river, others took advantage of the 

 permission, which the Congo authorities had most 

 generously given us, to shoot big game in a reserved 

 district. Records of African big-game shooting may 

 be, and, if the truth must be told, often have been, 

 records of indiscriminate slaughter. Fortunately for 

 our sportsmanlike instincts, the beasts in the Semliki 

 Valley were wary and not too numerous, so that 

 Carruthers and I had a hard day's work in making 

 our bag of two cobus and one water-buck. I do not 



