ENTEBBE AGAIN 159 



the way, it is possible to cross the continent from 

 Mombasa to the mouth of the Congo in less than 

 eighty days. 



Legge, Carruthers, and I made a hasty dash 

 across Uganda to Entebbe, where we arrived early 

 in September, in time to enable Legge to catch a 

 quick boat back from the coast to England. The 

 clean deck and the smell of the engines of the Lake 

 steamer, with the certainty of being in England in 

 three weeks' time, caused us a momentary longing 

 to be speedily quit of Africa and ' safaris ' ; but the 

 distant prospect of the ocean steamer from the 

 West Coast, even though it was at least seven 

 months ahead of us, was more alluring still, and we 

 set ourselves to the business of preparing for our 

 long journey. 



It was a very remarkable fact that nobody in 

 Uganda seemed to have the least knowledge of the 

 Congo State, or of the conditions of travel in that 

 country. It is not to be expected that people living 

 in England should know where Lake Tchad or 

 Tanganyika are, but it was rather startling to find 

 people in Uganda, whose idea of the Congo was 

 that it started in Lake Albert Edward and flowed 

 through Tanganyika on its way to the sea ! The 

 meagre scraps of information that we gleaned were 

 mostly contradictory and almost invariably wrong, 

 so we were forced to rely on our own judgment, 

 and luckily we did not make any very serious 

 mistakes. The greatest difficulty that we found was 



