UGANDA, AND THE NYANZA LAKES 



441 



for two or three days we passed over low hills and through 

 swampy valleys, the whole landscape covered by a sea of 

 elephant grass, the close-growing, coarse blades more than 

 twice the height of a man on horseback. Here and there 

 it was dotted with groves of strange trees; in these groves 

 monkeys of various kinds some black, some red-tailed, 

 some auburn chattered as they raced away among the 

 branches; there were brilliant rollers and bee-eaters; little 



Road through banana shambas, Uganda 

 From a photograph by J. Alden Loring 



green and yellow parrots, and gray parrots with red tails; 

 and many colored butterflies. Once or twice we saw the 

 handsome, fierce, short-tailed eagle, the bateleur eagle, and 

 scared one from a reedbuck fawn it had killed. Among 

 the common birds there were black drongos and musical 

 bush shrikes; small black magpies with brown tails; white- 

 headed kites and slate-colored sparrow-hawks; palm swifts, 

 big hornbills; blue and mottled kingfishers, which never 

 went near the water, and had their upper mandibles red 

 and their under ones black; barbets, with swollen, saw- 

 toothed bills, their plumage iridescent purple above and red 

 below; bulbuls, also dark purple above and red below, which 

 whistled and bubbled incessantly as they hopped among the 



