6o The Humming Bird. 



literally set eyes upon Lake Tanganyika and Mr. Brown gives 

 a vivid picture of the watery wilderness upon which the intrepid 

 traveller gazed, after a journey of terrible hardships. Croco- 

 diles swarmed everywhere in that district, and among the 

 endless superstitions of the natives were charms to prevent 

 these reptiles from snatching an unwary bather ; while hippo- 

 potami were numerous, especially at the mouths of the rivers 

 that feed the lake. Two snakes, the great siluris, and many 

 other fishes and molluscs inhabited the waters. Long-horned 

 buffaloes peeped in wonder at the intruders in their leafy 

 haunts ; antelopes were often sighted, and the fresh tracks of 

 elephants were more numerous than they are now, for the 

 eagerness of the ivory-hunters has gone far to exterminate 

 them. 



UGANDA. 



A sheik, whom Burton and Speke encountered on the 

 shores of Lake Tanganyika, gave them a graphic description 

 of the empire of Uganda, of which we hear so much nowa- 

 days. Burton was too ill to accompany an expedition formed 

 to penetrate further into the interior, so Speke, set off by him- 

 self. On July 30th, 1858, Speke sighted Victoria Nyanza. 

 " It was early morning," he tells us, in a passage that will be 

 often quoted in the centuries that are to come, " the distant 

 sea-line of the north horizon was defined in the north and 

 north-west points of the compass ; but even this did not afford 

 me any idea of the breadth of the lake, as an archipelago of 

 islands, each consisting of a single hill, rising to a height of 

 200ft. or 300ft. above the water, intersected the line of vision 

 to the left, while on the right the western horn of the Ukerewe 

 Island cut off any further view of its distant waters to the 

 eastward or north. A sheet of water — an elbow of the sea — 

 however, at the base of the low range on which I stood, 

 extended far to the eastward, to where in the dim distance 

 a hummock-like elevation of the main-land marked what I 

 understood to be the south and east angle of the lake." 



BAKSHISH. 



The travellers encountered strange races. Men and 

 women seem to live there in a continual condition of drunken- 

 ness. Native beer, a muddy beverage at best, was drunk all 

 day long, and it was only in the intervals between potations 

 that a chief could be seen or any business undertaken. But 

 they were always sober enough to beg, and on no occasion 

 did anybody pay a visit without being asked for something 



