ROOSEVELTS JOURNEY FROM UGANDA DOWN THE NILE 429 
It is not our purpose to describe the hunting adventures of the 
Roosevelt party in Uganda, that country which has been described as 
“the wildest and most beautiful, perhaps the most dangerous, and 
certainly the most interesting of those explored.” These adventures 
were of the type of those already described. They consisted in wan¬ 
dering through the wilds, the constant crack of the rifle, the fall of 
fresh victims of the hunter’s skill. To detail them would be but a 
repetition of the story of the past chapters, and of these hunting 
exploits “by flood and fell” our readers have already had a sufficiency. 
We shall therefore pass over these experiences and pass at once from 
Kampala to where the waters of the great lake rush down the slope of 
Ripon Falls to give birth to the noble Nile. Down that historic stream 
our journey now leads. 
To go “on safari” down the Nile was an experience very different 
from that which the expedition had yet passed through. It had hith¬ 
erto enjoyed the cool air of a high plateau, high even at the Victoria 
Nyanza, which is nearly four thousand feet above sea level. Before 
reaching the Albert Nyanza, about two hundred miles distant, more 
than one-third of its height had disappeared and our travelers found 
themselves approaching the steaming and enervating temperature of 
the true tropics. 
On went the long caravan, the colored porters gay and lively in 
the early hours of the day, but with sober mien and dragging steps 
as hot noontide burned above them. Native paths led through the 
dense woodland, now along a level stretch, now up or down hill, and 
whites and blacks alike were glad enough to reach the “bandas,” or 
rest houses, which awaited them at intervals along the trail, built by 
the authorities for the convenience of the growing tide of travel. 
Day after day this was repeated; an early start, a long tramp, a 
rest during the hot hours of the day, with food provided by the chiefs 
of the country traversed and duly paid for by the travelers. Of course 
the Rooseveltians did not fail to turn aside to view the remarkable 
Murchison Falls, in which the whole flood of the Nile forces itself 
through an aperture less than twenty feet wide, plunging one hundred 
and sixty feet downward with a roar loud enough to awake the echoes 
miles away. 
