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CHAPTER XI. 
Life and Mannees in Uganda. 
To behold the full perfection of African manhood and 
beauty, one must visit the regions of Equatorial Africa, 
where one can view the people under the cool shade of 
plantains, and amid the luxuriant plenty which those 
lands produce. The European traveller, after noting 
the great length and wondrous greenness of the banana 
fronds, the vastness of their stalks and the bulk and 
number of the fruit, the fatness of the soil and its 
inexhaustible fertility, the perpetual spring-like verdure 
of the vegetation, and the dazzling sunshine, comes to 
notice that the inhabitants are in fit accord with these 
scenes, and as perfect of their kind as the bursting-ripe 
mellow bananas hanging above their heads. 
Their very features seem to proclaim, “We live in a 
land of butter and wine and fulness, milk and honey, 
fat meads and valleys.” The vigour of the soil, which 
knows no Sabbath, appears to be infused into their 
veins. Their beaming lustrous eyes — restless and quick 
glancing — seem to have caught rays of the sun. Their 
bronze-coloured bodies, velvety smooth and unctuous 
with butter, their swelling sinews, the tuberous muscles 
of the flanks and arms, reveal the hot lusty life which 
animates them. 
Let me try to sketch one of these robust people, a 
Kopi or peasant of Uganda, at home. 
THE KOPI OE PEASANT. 
Were it not for one thing, it might be said that the 
peasant of Uganda realizes the ideal happiness all men 
aspire after and would be glad to enjoy. To see him in 
