ROADS AND BRIDGES IN UGANDA. 209 
and four miles from hill to hill — a dense mass of 
sombre foliage concealing their swamps, musquitoes, 
and low grounds. Kavines, dells, and gullies, formed 
by the waters from the hill-sides, were veiled with 
impenetrable thickets ; above these the inhabitants 
dwelt, surrounded by groves of the plantain at con- 
siderable distances from each other. Occasional red 
clay ant-heaps, boulders, and a few trees dotted the 
middle height of the hills, and the sky-line was a 
vegetation of waving grass, from three to six feet 
high. The general elevation of these hills above their 
valleys is four hundred feet. On their flat tops the 
air was fresh and delightful. Whichever way you 
looked, from your feet to the horizon was a sea of 
these flat-topped ridges and conical hills. 
The Waganda make first-rate pioneers ; one is struck 
with the direct cuts they make across the hills : perhaps 
their duty of conveying messages, or bringing in cattle 
and slaves to their king, conduces to this quickness of 
movement. When carrying me, if a hill, however 
steep, was to be crossed, they went directly over it, or 
if a bog was to be forded, it was all one to them — 
they would dash right into it. We had never seen a 
road in Africa till coming into Uganda ; here they 
were so broad that a carriage might have driven along 
them, but they were too steep for any wheeled convey- 
ance. No metal was used on them, but the grasses 
had been trodden down by the constant driving to 
and fro of cattle and slave-hunting parties. Attempts 
at bridges had been made, but we found them in a 
state of dreadful disrepair. Originally, in the late 
king Soona's time, piles with a forked end had been 
driven into the bog, and logs of wild date-palm, &c, 
o 
