Uganda
a British protectorate of East Africa. The protectorate includes the native kingdom of Uganda and additional territory, in all about 80,000 square miles. Uganda is situated on the head waters of the Nile. It extends from Lake Victoria Nyanza to Albert Nyanza. It lies just north of the equator in a diversified country. The rainfall varies in different localities from 10 to 100 inches a year. There are tropical jungles and desert plains. There are swamps and savannas. Extensive districts along the watercourses are covered with luxuriant growths of cane, rushes, reeds, and tropical grasses. There is a bewildering array of plant life, affording corresponding variety of open and cover for different kinds of game. The population of Uganda proper is about 4,000,000. The principal tribe of natives has been converted to Christianity. The men make faithful guides and burden bearers. The soil is fertile. The mountains are rich in mineral wealth.
Uganda is reached from the east. The tourist, traveling via the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, enters a harbor full of shipping, and lands at Mombasa, a well built city on the site of an old Portuguese slave station. From Mombasa the Uganda Railway conveys the traveler across plains and through forests past the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, but ever mounting up to a height of over 8,000 feet; then down again to Port Florence on Victoria Nyanza, 3,650 feet above the level of the sea. From Port Florence steamships worthy of Lake Superior carry passengers to the various islands and landings and new ports of this great inland water. The Uganda Railway was completed in 1902. What with hostile natives and man-eating lions springing into camp at night, the line cost many a life,--one British statesman said a man to the mile. The line is 584 miles long. The local fare is six cents a mile for luxurious firstclass passengers. The natives ride for a cent a mile in mere pens.
The traveler is seldom out of sight of game of some sort. Hunting is forbidden in a strip ten miles wide along a portion of the route. The authorities of British East Africa, of which Uganda is a part, exact an annual hunter's license fee of $250. The holder is authorized to kill: elephants, 2; buffalo, 1; rhinoceros, 2; hippopotamus, 2; zebra, 2; and from one to ten each of twenty-five different antelopes, bucks, gazelles, hartebeestes, etc., of the antelope kind, also two each of the antbear, egret, and marabout. Waterfowls are included without mention. There are wild ostriches, but they are not to be killed at all. Lions and leopards may be killed without license. One island in the Victoria Nyanza is a preserve for elephants. No hunting is allowed. The huge beasts are as tame as barnyard cattle.
From Uganda there is a regular route of travel westward and down the Congo to the Atlantic, and another route northward and down the Nile to Egypt. Entebbe is the capital of Uganda.
See Africa; Livingstone; Speke
Next morning we were in the game country, and as we sat on the seat over the cow-catcher it literally was like passing through a vast zoo-logical garden. Indeed, no such a railway journey can be taken on any other line in any other land. At one time we passed a herd of a dozen or so of great giraffes, cows and calves, cantering along through the open woods a couple hundred yards to the right of the train. Hartebeeste were everywhere. One herd was on the track, and when the engine whistled they bucked and sprang with ungainly agility and galloped clear of the danger. A long tailed, straw colored monkey ran from one tree to another. Once a troop of impalla, close by the track, took fright, and as the beautiful creatures fled we saw now one, and now another, bound clear over the high bushes. A herd of zebra clattered across the line at a hundred yards ahead of the train; the whistle hurried their progress but only for a moment and as we passed they already were turning around to gaze at us. The wild creatures were in their sanctuary and they knew it.--Ex-Pres. Roosevelt in Scribner's Magazine.
In the meanwhile, lions remain as the most exciting part of the railroad zoo. From the train, a lioness with her cubs may often be seen, loping away from the advance of the engine and diving into the thicket, followed by her plump, yellow offspring, who look back curiously, not yet afraid. Then hundreds of zebras are passed, grazing near the tracks. There is no end of the gazelles, of every kind and variety, that bound away ahead of the train--the Grant and the Thompson gazelles are the oddest and prettiest--and the hartebeeste and the gnu are very numerous. Big, awkward ostriches career off from the tracks, balancing themselves by their raised wings, and looking as grotesque and foolish as only an ostrich can. Giraffes are even more awkward than ostriches, when they run; and even when they stand among the acacias, poking out their heads with scared curiosity, they are queer, shambling creatures. Their gait is remarkable--a combination of running, trotting and galloping, in which the long unwieldy neck seems to overbalance them, and threatens to throw them forward in a heap.
The complete list of fauna on this African road comprises a dozen kinds of antelopes, leopards, lions, wild cats, wart-hogs, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, zebras, gnus, ostriches, vultures, parrots, eagles, pythons, and white ants, besides many other minor creatures. At the end of the line, on the lake shore, there are any quantity of hippopotamuses and crocodiles, which can be shot from the railroad pier; and a mammoth water python, seventeen feet long, was once found waiting for the passengers on the small steamboat that connects with the train. But the very best place and time to see the whole assortment, it is said, is in the early morning, in a section where the line runs through twenty odd miles of scrub thicket, on a down grade. It has been thus explained by one of the engineers: "You see, the grass is wet in the thicket, and they come out of it and out of the bushes on to the line to dry themselves in the sun." Imagine sitting on a cowcatcher, in the early morning radiance, and running through twenty odd miles of assorted wild animals laid out on the line to dry! It sounds too good to be true, but there is no special reason to doubt it in that zoological section.--Priscilla Leonard in the Well Spring.