UGANDA, AND THE NYANZA LAKES 389 
on two banana stems, the bars being struck with a hammer, 
as if they were keys; its tones were deep and good. Along 
the road we did not see habitations or people; but con¬ 
tinually there led away from it, twisting through the tall 
grass and the bush jungles, native paths, the earth beaten 
brown and hard by countless bare feet; and these, cross¬ 
ing and recrossing in a network, led to plantation after 
plantation of bananas and sweet potatoes, and clusters of 
thatched huts. 
In the afternoon, as the sun began to get well beyond 
the meridian, we usually sallied forth to hunt, under the 
guidance of some native who had come in to tell us where 
he had seen game that morning. The jungle was so thick 
in places and the grass was everywhere so long, that with¬ 
out such guidance there was little successful hunting to be 
done in only two or three hours. We might come back 
with a buck, or with two or three guinea-fowl, or with 
nothing. 
There were a good many poisonous snakes; I killed a 
big puff-adder with thirteen eggs inside it; and we also 
killed a squat, short-tailed viper, beautifully mottled, not 
eighteen inches long, but with a wide, flat head and a girth 
of body out of all proportion to its length; and another 
very poisonous and vicious snake, apparently of colubrine 
type, long and slender. The birds were an unceasing 
pleasure. White wagtails and yellow wagtails walked 
familiarly about us within a few feet, wherever we halted 
and when we were in camp. Long-tailed, crested colys, 
with all four of their red toes pointed forward, clung to the 
sides of the big fruits at which they picked. White-headed 
swallows caught flies and gnats by our heads. There were 
