CHAPTER VIIIMURCHISON FALLS

Landing at Mruli.

We had intended, on leaving the Nile where it turns northward at Mruli, to march directly across to Hoima, on the Albert Lake; and this journey, by way of Masindi, would have required four marches. But tales of the beauty and wonder of the Murchison Falls had captivated my mind, and before embarking at Kakindu a new plan had been resolved. Runners were sent back to the telegraph wire at Jinja, and thence a message was flashed by Kampala to Hoima, directing the flotilla which awaited us there, to steam to the north end of the Albert and meet us by the foot of the Murchison Falls at Fajao. Thither we were now to proceed by five marches—two to Masindi and three more turning northward to the Nile.

The road from Mruli consists of a sort of embanked track through low-lying and desolatescrub and jungle. The heavy black cotton soil, cracked and granulated by the heat, offered at this time a hardened if uneven surface to the bicycle; but in the rains such paths must become utterly impassable. As one advances westward the country improves rapidly in aspect. The dismal flats of the South Chioga shore are left behind, and the traveller discovers more characteristic Uganda scenery in a region of small hills and great trees. Before Masindi is reached we are again in a rich and beautiful land. Pools of shining water, set in verdant green, flash back the sunbeams. Bold bluffs and ridges rise on all sides from amid the unceasing undulations of the ground. Streams plash merrily downwards through rocky channels. The yellow grass roofs of frequent villages peep from underneath their groves of bananas among broad streaks of cultivated ground, and chiefs and headmen salute the stranger with grave yet curious politeness as the long "safari" winds beneath the trees.

The heat grows as the altitude dwindles, and even in the early morning the sun sits hard and heavy on the shoulders. At ten o'clock its power is tremendous. So long as theroadway consisted of nobbly lumps of black cotton soil bicycling, though possible in places, was scarcely pleasant. But the change in the landscape arises from the change in the soil. The fields are now of bright red earth, the paths of red sandstone washed in places almost as smooth and as firm as asphalt by the rains and sparkling with crystalline dust; and when the ridges which form the watershed between Lake Chioga and Lake Albert had been topped, my bicycle glided almost without impulsion down four miles of gradual descent into Masindi. This station—which is the residence of a collector—lies embosomed in a wide bay of gently-sloping hills clothed with noble trees. It is indeed a pleasant spot. There are real houses, standing on high stone platforms, with deep verandas and wire gauze windows. The roads are laid out in bold geometry of broad red lines. There are avenues of planted trees, delicious banks of flowers, a prepared breakfast,cold, not cool, drinks, a telegraph office, and a file of theTimes. What more could an explorer desire or the Fates accord?

We were now to strike northwards to the Nile at Fajao in three long marches (for theporters) of about sixteen miles each. Upon the Hoima road some preparations had been made to make the journey easier by clearing the encroaching jungle from the track and constructing rest-houses. But my change of plan had disconcerted these arrangements, and on the new route we had to clear our own paths from the overgrowth by which even in a season, if unused, they are choked, and to trust to tents and improvised shelters. Progress was therefore slow and camps unpretentious. But all was redeemed by the wonders of the scene.

For a whole day we crept through the skirts of the Hoima forest, amid an exuberance of vegetation which is scarcely describable. I had travelled through tropical forests in Cuba and India, and had often before admired their enchanting, yet sinister, luxuriance. But the forests of Uganda, for magnificence, for variety of form and colour, for profusion of brilliant life—plant, bird, insect, reptile, beast—for the vast scale and awful fecundity of the natural processes that are beheld at work, eclipsed, and indeed effaced, all previous impressions. One becomes, not without a secret sense of aversion, thespectator of an intense convulsion of life and death. Reproduction and decay are locked struggling in infinite embraces. In this glittering Equatorial slum huge trees jostle one another for room to live; slender growths stretch upwards—as it seems in agony—towards sunlight and life. The soil bursts with irrepressible vegetations. Every victor, trampling on the rotting mould of exterminated antagonists, soars aloft only to encounter another host of aerial rivals, to be burdened with masses of parasitic foliage, smothered in the glorious blossoms of creepers, laced and bound and interwoven with interminable tangles of vines and trailers. Birds are as bright as butterflies; butterflies are as big as birds. The air hums with flying creatures; the earth crawls beneath your foot. The telegraph-wire runs northward to Gondokoro through this vegetable labyrinth. Even its poles had broken into bud!

As we advanced, continually rising or falling with the waves of the land, and moving in rapid alternations from a blazing patch of sunshine into a cloistered dimness, every now and then the path became smooth, broad, and of firm sandstone. And here one could watchthe columns of marching soldier-ants. Perhaps in a hundred yards the road would be crossed four times by these fierce armies. They move in regular array, and upon purposes at once inscrutable and unswerving. A brown band, perhaps two inches broad and an inch and a halfdeep, is drawn across your track. Its ends are lost in the recesses of the jungle. It moves unceasingly and with a multiplied rapidity; for each ant runs swiftly forward, whether upon the ground or upon the backs of his already moving comrades. About a yard away, on each side of the main column, are the screening lines of the flank-guards, and for five yards beyond this every inch is searched, every object is examined by tireless and fearless reconnoitring patrols. Woe to the enemy who is overtaken by these hordes. No matter what his size or nature, he is attacked at once by an ever-increasing number of assailants, each one of whom, upon remorseless instinct, plunges his strong mandibles in the flesh, and will have his head pulled off his shoulders rather than let go.

These ant armies fascinated me. I could not resist interfering with them. With my walking-stick I gently broke the column andpushed the swarming rope off its line of march. Their surprise, their confusion, their indignation were extreme. But not for an instant did they pause. In a second the scouts were running all over my boots eagerly seeking an entry, and when I looked back from this to the walking-stick I held it was already alive. With a gesture so nimble that it might have been misunderstood, I cast it from me and jumped back out of the danger circle until I found refuge on a large rock at a respectful distance. The Soudanese sergeant-major of the escort, a splendid negro, drilled as smart as a Grenadier Guardsman and with a good long row of medal ribbons on his khaki tunic, so far forgot himself as to grin from ear to ear. But his gravity was fully restored when I invited him to rescue my walking-stick, which lay abandoned on the field in the mandibles of the victorious enemy. The devoted man was, however, equal to the crisis.

I have a sad tale also to tell of the perversity of butterflies. Never were seen such flying fairies. They flaunted their splendid liveries in inconceivable varieties of colour and pattern in our faces at every step. Swallow-tails,fritillaries, admirals, tortoise-shells, peacocks, orange-tips—all executed in at least a dozen novel and contrasted styles, with many even more beautiful, but bearing no resemblance to our British species—flitted in sunshine from flower to flower, glinted in the shadow of great trees, or clustered on the path to suck the moisture from any swampy patch. The butterfly is a dirty feeder, and if ever some piece of putrescent filth lay odorous on the ground, be sure it would be covered with a cloud of these greedy insects, come in such gay attire to eat such sorry meat. I found them sometimes so intoxicated with feasting that I could pick them up quite gently in my fingers without the need of any net at all.

To any one who has ever tried to collect the modest and now all too rare and scattered butterflies of Britain, these sights could not but be a hard temptation. For a week I had resisted it, not because it was not easy enough to make a net, but because of the difficulty of setting and preserving the prizes; and it was not until the end of our first day's march out from Masindi that I was told that much the best way of sending butterflies home from Africa was to enclosethem in neatly-folded triangles of paper and leave them to be set in London. Forthwith, out of telegraph-wire and mosquito-curtain, a net was made, and before another dawn I was fully equipped. It is almost incredible to state that from that very moment, except near the Murchison Falls, I scarcely ever saw a really fine butterfly again all the way to Gondokoro. Whether this was due to the intelligent perversity of these insects, or to the fact that we had left the deeper recesses of the forest region, I do not inquire; but the fact remains, and I carry away from the butterflies of Uganda only the haunting memories of unrealized opportunity.

This first day's march from Masindi was a long one, and our porters panted and toiled under their loads through the heat of the day. It was not till the afternoon that the main body came into camp, and stragglers trickled through into the dusk. Meanwhile the local natives built under our eyes, with extraordinary speed and cleverness, a spacious dining-hall and two or three quite excellent bedrooms from the surrounding elephant-grass and bamboo groves; and we fared as comfortably in these two humble dwellings as if we dwelt in kings'palaces. The forest was a little thinner on the second day, although the jungle was of the same dense and tangled fertility. We started an hour before sunrise, and by eight o'clock had climbed to the saddle of the high rocky wall which contains the valley of the Victoria Nile. From this elevation of, perhaps, six hundred feet above the general level of the plain a comprehensive view of the landscape was for the first time possible. In every direction spread a wide sea of foliage, thinning here into bush, darkening there into forest, rising and falling with the waves of the land, and broken only by occasional peaks of rock. Far away to the north-west a long silver gleam, just discernible through the haze of the horizon, revealed to our eyes the distant prospect of the Albert Nyanza. The camera cannot do justice to such a panorama. In photographs these vast expanses look like mere scrubby commons, inhospitable and monotonous to the eye, melancholy to the soul. One has to remember that here are Kew Gardens and the Zoo combined on an unlimited scale; that Nature's central productive laboratory is here working night and day at full blast; and that the scrubby commonof the picture is really a fairyland of glades and vistas, through which an army of a hundred thousand men might march without the glint of a bayonet, or even the dust of an artillery column, betraying their presence to the watcher on the crag.

Our camp this night lay in a tiny patch cleared in the heart of this wild world. The cluster of tents under a canopy of palms, illumined by the watch-fires, bright with lanterns, and busy with the moving figures of men and the hum of human activity, seemed at a hundred yards' distance an island of society amid an ocean of Nature. To what strange perils—apart altogether from the certainty of losing your way—would a walk of a quarter of a mile in any direction expose the wanderer? To withdraw from the firelight was to be engulfed in the savage conditions of prehistoric time. Advance, and the telegraph-wire would tell you the latest quotations of the London markets, the figures of the newest by-election. An odd sensation!

Murchison Falls.

We had scarce proceeded for an hour on our third march, when just as it grew daylight a low vibrant murmur began to be perceptible in the air. Now it was lost as we descendedinto some moist valley, now it broke even more strongly on the ear as we reached the summit of some ascent—the sound of the Nile plunging down the Murchison Falls. And by nine o'clock, when we were still about ten miles off, a loud, insistent, and unceasing hum had developed. These Falls are certainly the most remarkable in the whole course of the Nile. At Foweira the navigable reaches stretching from Lake Chioga are interrupted by cataracts, and the river hurries along in foam and rapid down a gradual but continuous stairway, enclosed by rocky walls, but still a broad flood. Two miles above Fajao these walls contract suddenly till they arenot six yards apart, and through this strangling portal, as from the nozzle of a hose, the whole tremendous river is shot in one single jet down an abyss of a hundred and sixty feet.

The escarpment over which the Nile falls curves away in a vast bay of precipitous, or almost precipitous, cliffs, broken here and there by more gradual rifts, and forms the eastern wall of the Albert Lake, from whose waters it rises abruptly in many places to a height of six or seven hundred feet. Arrived at the verge of this descent, the lower reaches of theVictoria Nile could be discerned, stretching away mile after mile in a broad, gleaming ribbon almost to its mouth on the lake. The Falls themselves were, indeed, invisible, concealed behind a forested bluff, but their roaring left no doubt of their presence. Below me a zigzag path led down by long descents to the water's edge, and on an open meadow a row of tents and grass houses had already been set up.

Fajao as a native town was no more. At hardly any point in Uganda has the sleeping sickness made such frightful ravages. At least six thousand persons had perished in the last two years. Almost the whole population had been swept away. Scarcely enough remained to form the deputation, who, in their white robes, could be distinguished at the entrance to the cleared area of the camping-ground. And this cleared area was itself of the utmost importance; for all around it the powers of evil were strong. The groves which fringed and overhung the river swarmed with tsetse flies of newly-replenished venom and approved malignity, and no man could enter them except at a risk. After pausing for a few minutes to watch a troop of baboons whowere leaping about from tree to tree on the opposite hill, and who seemed as big as men, I climbed down the zigzag, photographed the deputation, and shook hands with the chief. He was a very civilized chief—by name James Kago—who wore riding-breeches and leather gaiters, and who spoke a few unexpected sentences of excellent English. He seemed in the best of spirits, and so did the remnant of the population who gathered behind him, though whether this was due to stoical philosophy or good manners, I could not tell. All was smiles and bows and gurglings of guttural gratification. The district officer who had travelled with me explained that the chief had had the path up to the top of the Falls improved, and that he proposed, after we had lunched and rested, to guide us along it to the very edge of the abyss, but that the forest along the river-bank was so dangerous because of the tsetses that we should in prudence wear veils and gloves before entering it. With all of this I made no quarrel.

Fajao, with natives assembled to welcome us.

In a little rocky inlet forming a small natural harbour we found the Albert flotilla already arrived. It consisted of theKenia, a steam-launch about forty feet long, decked,and with a cabin, and drawing four feet of water, and three steel sailing-boats of different sizes—to wit, theJames Martin, theGood Intent, and theKisingiri. These small vessels were to carry us down the Victoria Nile into the Albert Nyanza, across the top end of this lake, and then down the hundred and seventy miles' reach of the White Nile till navigation is barred at Nimule by more cataracts. They were manned by a crew of jolly Swahili tars smartly dressed in white breeches and blue jerseys, on whose breasts the words "Uganda Marine" were worked in yellow worsted. The engineer of the steam-launch commanded the whole with plenary powers of discipline and diplomacy; and it was by means of this little group of cock-boats that trade and communications with the Nile province and around the whole of Lake Albert were alone maintained. The flotilla, nestling together in its harbour and sheltered by a rocky breakwater from the swift current, made a pretty picture; and behind it the Nile, streaked and often covered with the creamy foam of the Falls, swept along in majestic flood six hundred yards from brim to brim.

Flotilla at Fajao.

We began our climb to the summit of theFalls in the blazing heat of the day, and for the first time I was forced to confess the Central African sun as formidable as that which beats on the plains of India. Yet even at the worst moments it is more endurable, for the breeze does not stifle you with the breath of a furnace. First the path led through the deadly groves; and here, of course, the most beautiful butterflies—some five inches across the wings—floated tantalizingly. Sometimes we descended to where the river lapped along the rocks and curled in eddies under floating islands of froth. Precautions were required against diverse dangers. The Nile below the Murchison Falls swarms with crocodiles, some of an enormous size, and herds of hippopotamus are found every half mile or so; so that, what with the rifles which it was necessary to take for great beasts, and the gloves and veils which were our protection against even more villainous small ones, we were painfully encumbered. Indeed, the veils were such a nuisance and the heat was so great that I resolved to hazard the tsetse and took mine off. But after half an hour of menacing buzzings, and after a fly—presumably of the worst character—had actually settledon my shoulder, brushed off by the promptness of my companion, I changed my mind again.

As we were thus scrambling along the brink of the river a crocodile was discovered basking in the sunshine on a large rock in mid-stream, about a hundred and fifty yards from the shore. I avow, with what regrets may be necessary, an active hatred of these brutes and a desire to kill them. It was a tempting shot, for the ruffian lay sleeping in the sun-blaze, his mouth wide open and his fat and scaly flanks exposed. Two or three attendant white birds hopped about him, looking for offal, which I have been assured (and does not Herodotus vouch for it?) they sometimes pick from his very teeth. I fired. What the result of the shot may have been I do not know, for the crocodile gave one leap of mortal agony or surprise and disappeared in the waters. But then it was my turn to be astonished. The river at this distance from the Falls was not broader than three hundred yards, and we could see the whole shore of the opposite bank quite plainly. It had hitherto appeared to be a long brown line of mud, on which the sun shone dully. At the sound of theshot the whole of this bank of the river, over the extent of at least a quarter of a mile, sprang into hideous life, and my companions and I saw hundreds and hundreds of crocodiles, of all sorts and sizes, rushing madly into the Nile, whose waters along the line of the shore were lashed into white foam, exactly as if a heavy wave had broken. It could be no exaggeration to say that at least a thousand of these saurians had been disturbed at a single shot. Our British friends explained that Fajao was the favourite haunt of the crocodiles, who lay in the water below the Falls waiting for dead fish and animals carried over by the river. Very often, they told us, hippos from the upper river and from Lake Chioga were caught and swept downwards, the force of the water "breaking every bone in their body." "Indeed," added the officer, somewhat obscurely, "they arevery luckyif they are not smashed into pulp."

The Top of the Murchison Falls.

Uganda Scenery.

At length we turned a corner and came face to face with the Falls. They are wonderful to behold, not so much because of their height—though that is impressive—but because of the immense volume of water which is precipitated through such a narrowoutlet. Indeed, seeing the great size of the river below the Falls, it seemed impossible to believe that it was wholly supplied from this single spout. In clouds of rainbow spray and amid thunderous concussions of sound we set to work to climb the southern side of the rock wall, and after an hour achieved the summit. It was possible to walk to within an inch of the edge and, lying on one's face with a cautious head craned over, to look actually down upon the foaming hell beneath. The narrowness of the gorge at the top had not been overstated. I doubt whether it is fifteen feet across from sheer rock to sheer rock. Ten pounds, in fact, would throw an iron bridge across the Nile at this point. But it is evident that the falling waters must have arched and caved away the rock below their surface in an extraordinary degree, for otherwise there could not possibly be room for the whole river to descend.

We waited long at this strange place, watching the terrible waters, admiring their magnificent fury, trying to compute their force. Who can doubt that the bridle is preparing which shall hold and direct their strength, or that the day will come when forlornFajao—now depopulated and almost derelict—will throb with the machinery of manufacture and electric production? I cannot believe that modern science will be content to leave these mighty forces untamed, unused, or that regions of inexhaustible and unequalled fertility, capable of supplying all sorts of things that civilized industry needs in greater quantity every year, will not be brought—in spite of their insects and their climate—into cultivated subjection. Certain it is that the economy of the world remains hopelessly incomplete while these neglects prevail, and, while it would be wasteful and foolish to hustle, it would be more wasteful and more foolish to abate the steady progress of development.

From these reflections I was roused abruptly by the Nile, a wave of whose turbulent waters—cast up by some unusual commotion as they approached the verge—boiled suddenly over a ledge of rock hitherto high and dry, carrying an ugly and perhaps indignant swish of water to my very feet.

It took no little time to stow all our baggage, food and tents upon the launch and its steel boats, and though our camp was astir at half-past three, the dawn was just breaking when we were able to embark. And then theJames Martinwedged herself upon a rock a few yards from the shore of the sheltering inlet, and seemed to have got herself hard and fast; for pull as we might with all the force of the launch at full steam, and the added weight of the current to help us, not an inch would she budge. Everything had, therefore, to be unloaded again from the straggler, and when she had thus been lightened and her freight transferred to the attendant canoes, James Kago ordered his tribesmen to leap into the water, which was not more than five feet deep, and push and lift the little vessel whilst the steamer tugged. But this task the nativeswere most reluctant to perform out of fear of the crocodiles, who might at any moment make a pounce, notwithstanding all the noise and clatter. Thereupon the energetic chief seized hold of them one after another round the waist, and threw them full-splash into the stream, till at least twenty were accumulated round the boat, and then, what with their impatience to finish their uncomfortable job and our straining tow rope, theJames Martinfloated free, was reloaded, and we were off.

The Landing-place at Fajao.

As we drifted out into mid-stream the most beautiful view of the falls broke upon us. It was already almost daylight, but the sun had not yet actually topped the great escarpment over which the Nile descends. The banks on both sides of the river, clad with dense and lofty forest and rising about twice as high as Cliveden Woods from the water's edge, were dark in shadow. The river was a broad sheet of steel grey veined with paler streaks of foam. The rock portals of the falls were jetty black, and between them, illumined by a single shaft of sunlight, gleamed the tremendous cataract—a thing of wonder and glory, well worth travelling all the way to see.

We were soon among the hippopotami.Every two or three hundred yards, and at every bend of the river, we came upon a herd of from five to twenty. To us in a steam launch they threatened no resistance or danger. But their inveterate hostility to canoes leads to repeated loss of life among the native fishermen, whose frail craft are crumpled like eggshells in the snap of enormous jaws. Indeed, all the way from here to Nimule they are declared to be the scourge and terror of the Nile. Fancy mistaking a hippopotamus—almost the largest surviving mammal in the world—for a water lily. Yet nothing is more easy. The whole river is dotted with floating lilies detached from any root and drifting along contentedly with the current. It is the habit of the hippo to loll in the water showing only his eyes and the tips of his ears, and perhaps now and again a glimpse of his nose, and thus concealed his silhouette is, at three hundred yards, almost indistinguishable from the floating vegetation. I thought they also looked like giant cats peeping. So soon, however, as they saw us coming round a corner and heard the throbbing of the propeller, they would raise their whole heads out of the water to have a look, and then immediately dive to the bottom in disgust.Our practice was then to shut off steam and drift silently down upon them. In this way one arrives in the middle of the herd, and when curiosity or want of air compels them to come up again there is a chance of a shot. One great fellow came up to breathe within five yards of the boat, and the look of astonishment, of alarm, of indignation, in his large, expressive eyes—as with one vast snort he plunged below—was comical to see. These creatures are not easy to kill. They bob up in the most unexpected quarters, and are down again in a second. One does not like to run the risk of merely wounding them, and the target presented is small and vanishing. I shot one who sunk with a harsh sort of scream and thud of striking bullet. We waited about a long time for him to float up to the surface, but in vain, for he must have been carried into or under a bed of reeds and could not be retrieved.

Early Morning on the Nile at Fajao.

Fajao.

The Murchison, or Karuma, Falls, as the natives call them, are about thirty miles distance from the Albert Lake, and as with the current we made six or seven miles an hour, this part of our journey was short. Here the Nile offers a splendid waterway. The main channel is at least ten feet deep, and navigation,in spite of shifting sandbanks, islands, and entanglements of reeds and other vegetation, is not difficult. The river itself is of delicious, sweet water, and flows along in many places half-a-mile broad. Its banks for the first twenty miles were shaded by beautiful trees, and here and there contained by bold headlands, deeply scarped by the current. The serrated outline of the high mountains on the far side of the Albert Nyanza could soon be seen painted in shadow on the western sky. As the lake is approached the riparian scenery degenerates; the sandbanks became more intricate; the banks are low and flat, and huge marshes encroach upon the river on either hand. Yet even here the traveller moves through an imposing world.

At length, after five or six hours' steaming, we cleared the mouth of the Victoria Nile and swam out on to the broad expanses of the lake. Happily on this occasion it was quite calm. How I wished then that I had not allowed myself to be deterred by time and croakers from a longer voyage, and that we could have turned to the south and, circumnavigating the Albert, ascended the Semliki river with all its mysterious attractions,have visited the forests on the south-western shores, and caught, perhaps, a gleam of the snows of Ruenzori! But we were in the fell grip of carefully-considered arrangements, and, like children in a Christmas toy shop always looking back, were always hurried on.

Yet progress offered its prizes as well as delay. Some of my party had won the confidence of the engineer of the launch, who had revealed to them a valuable secret. It appeared that "somewhere between Lake Albert and Nimule"—not to be too precise—there was a place known only to the elect, and not to more than one or two of them, where elephants abounded and rhinoceros swarmed. And these rhinoceros, be it observed, were none of your common black variety with two stumpy horns almost equal in size, and a prehensile tip to their noses. Not at all; they were what are called "white" rhino—Burchell's white rhinoceros,[1]that is their full style—with one long, thin, enormous horn, perhaps a yardlong—on their noses, and with broad, square upper lips. Naturally we were all very much excited, and in order to gain a day on our itinerary to study these very rare and remarkable animals more closely, we decided not to land and pitch a camp, but to steam on all through the night. Meanwhile our friend the engineer undertook to accomplish the difficult feat of finding the channel, with all its windings, in the dark.

The scene as we left the Albert Lake and entered the White Nile was of surpassing beauty. The sun was just setting behind the high, jagged peaks of the Congo Mountains to the westward. One after another, and range behind range, these magnificent heights—rising perhaps to eight or nine thousand feet—unfolded themselves in waves of dark plum-coloured rock, crested with golden fire. The lake stretched away apparently without limit like the sea, towards the southward in an ever-broadening swell of waters—flushed outside the shadow of the mountains into a delicious pink. Across its surface our tiny flotilla—four on a string—paddled its way towards the narrowing northern shores and the channel of the Nile.

Approach to Lake Albert, with the Congo Hills in the Distance.

Wadelai.

The White Nile leaves the Albert Lake in majesty. All the way to Nimule it is often more like a lake than a river. For the first twenty miles of its course it seemed to me to be at least two miles across. The current is gentle, and sometimes in the broad lagoons and bays into which the placid waters spread themselves it is scarcely perceptible. I slept under an awning in theKisingiri, the last and smallest boat of the string, and, except for the native steersman and piles of baggage, had it all to myself. It was, indeed, delightful to lie fanned by cool breezes and lulled by the soothing lappings of the ripples, and to watch, as it were, from dreamland the dark outlines of the banks gliding swiftly past and the long moonlit levels of the water.

At daybreak we were at Wadelai. In twenty-four hours from leaving Fajao we had made nearly a hundred miles of our voyage. Without the sigh of a single porter these small boats and launch had transported the whole of our "safari" over a distance which would on land have required the labours and sufferings of three hundred men during at least a week of unbroken effort. Such are the contrasts which impress upon one the importance ofutilising the water-ways of Central Africa, of establishing a complete circulation along them, and of using railways in the first instance merely to link them together.

Wadelai was deserted. Upon a high bank of the river stood a long row of tall, peaked, thatched houses, the walls of a fort, and buildings of European construction. All was newly abandoned to ruin. The Belgians are evacuating all their posts in the Lado enclave except Lado itself, and these stations, so laboriously constructed, so long maintained, will soon be swallowed by the jungle. The Uganda Government also is reducing its garrisons and administration in the Nile province, and the traveller sees, not without melancholy, the spectacle of civilization definitely in retreat after more than half a century of effort and experiment.

We disembarked and climbed the slopes through high rank grass and scattered boulders till we stood amidst the rotting bungalows and shanties of what had been a bold bid for the existence of a town. Wadelai had been occupied by white men perhaps for fifty years. For half a century that feeble rush-light of modernity, of cigarettes, of newspapers, ofwhisky and pickles, had burned on the lonely banks of the White Nile to encourage and beckon the pioneer and settler. None had followed. Now it was extinguished; and yet when I surveyed the spacious landscape with its green expanses, its lofty peaks, its trees, its verdure, rising from the brink of the mighty and majestic river, I could not bring myself for a moment to believe that civilization has done with the Nile Province or the Lado Enclave, or that there is no future for regions which promise so much.

All through the day we paddled prosperously with the stream. At times the Nile lost itself in labyrinths of papyrus, which reproduced the approaches to Lake Chioga, and through which we threaded a tortuous course, with many bumps and brushings at the bends. But more often the banks were good, firm earth, with here and there beautiful cliffs of red sandstone, hollowed by the water, and rising abruptly from its brim, crowned with luxuriant foliage. In places these cliffs were pierced by narrow roadways, almost tunnels, winding up to the high ground, and perfectly smooth and regular in their construction. They looked as if theywere made on purpose to give access to and from the river; and so they had been—by the elephants. Legions of water-fowl inhabited the reeds, and troops of cranes rose at the approach of the flotilla. Sometimes we saw great, big pelican kind of birds, almost as big as a man, standing contemplative on a single leg, and often on the tree-tops a fish-eagle, glorious in bronze and cream, sat sunning himself and watching for a prey.

I stopped once in the hope of catching butterflies, but found none of distinction—only a profuse variety of common types, a high level of mediocrity without beauties or commanders, and swarms of ferocious mosquitoes prepared to dispute the ground against all comers; and it was nearly four in the afternoon when the launch suddenly jinked to the left out of the main stream into a small semi-circular bay, five hundred yards across, and we came to land at "Hippo Camp."

The "Kenia," "James Martin," and "Good Hope" Nearing Nimule.

Hippo Camp.

We thought it was much too late to attempt any serious shooting that day. There were scarcely three and a half hours of daylight. But after thirty-six hours cramped on these little boats a walk through jungle was very attractive; and, accordingly, dividing ourselvesinto three parties, we started in three different directions—like the spokes of a wheel. Captain Dickinson, who commanded the escort, went to the right with the doctor; Colonel Wilson and another officer set out at right angles to the river bank; and I went to the left under the guidance of our friend the engineer. I shall relate very briefly what happened to each of us. The right-hand party got, after an hour's walking, into a great herd of elephants, which they numbered at over sixty. They saw no very fine bulls; they found themselves surrounded on every side by these formidable animals; and, the wind being shifty, the hour late, and the morrow free, they judged it wise to return to camp without shooting. The centre party, consisting of Colonel Wilson and his companion, came suddenly, after about a mile and a half's walk, upon a fine solitary bull elephant. They stalked him for some time, but he moved off, and, on perceiving himself followed, suddenly, without the slightest warning on his part and no great provocation on theirs, he threw up his trunk, trumpeted, and charged furiously down upon them; whereupon they just had time to fire their rifles in his faceand spring out of his path. This elephant was followed for some miles, but it was not for three months afterwards that we learned that he had died of his wounds and that the natives had recovered his tusks.

So much for my friends. Our third left party prowled off, slanting gradually away inland from the river's bank. It was a regular wild scrub country, with high grass and boulders and many moderate-sized trees and bushes, interspersed every hundred yards or so by much bigger ones. Near the Nile extensive swamps, with reeds fifteen feet high, ran inland in long bays and fingers, and these, we were told, were the haunts of white rhino. We must have walked along warily and laboriously for nearly three-quarters of an hour, when I saw through a glade at about two hundred yards distance a great dark animal. Judging from what I had seen in East Africa, I was quite sure it was a rhinoceros. We paused, and were examining it carefully with our glasses, when all of a sudden it seemed to treble in size, and the spreading of two gigantic ears—as big, they seemed, as the flaps of French windows—proclaimed the presence of the African elephant. The nextmoment another and another and another came into view, swinging leisurely along straight towards us—and the wind was almost dead wrong.

We changed our position by a flank march of admirable celerity, and from the top of a neighbouring ant-bear hill watched, at the distance of about one hundred and fifty yards, the stately and awe-inspiring procession of eleven elephants. On they came, loafing along from foot to foot—two or three tuskers of no great merit, several large tuskless females, and two or three calves. On the back of every elephant sat at least one beautiful white egret, and sometimes three or four, about two feet high, who pecked at the tough hide—I presume for very small game—or surveyed the scene with the consciousness of pomp. These sights are not unusual to the African hunter. Those who dwell in the wilderness are the heirs of its wonders. But to me I confess it seemed a truly marvellous and thrilling experience to wander through a forest peopled by these noble Titans, to watch their mysterious, almost ghostly, march, to see around on every side, in large trees snapped off a few feet from the ground, inenormous branches torn down for sport, the evidences of their giant strength. And then, while we watched them roam down towards the water, I heard a soft swishing sound immediately behind us, and turning saw, not forty yards away, a splendid full-grown rhinoceros, with the long, thin horn of his rare tribe upon him—the famous white rhinoceros—Burchell himself—strolling placidly home after his evening drink and utterly unconscious of the presence of stranger or foe!

We had very carefully judged our wind in relation to the elephants. It was in consequence absolutely wrong in relation to the rhinoceros. I saw that in another fifty yards he would walk right across it. For my own part, perched upon the apex of a ten-foot ant-bear cone, I need have no misgivings. I was perfectly safe. But my companions, and the native orderlies and sailors who were with us, enjoyed no such security. The consequences of not killing the brute at that range and with that wind would have been a mad charge directly through our party. A sense of responsibility no doubt restrained me; but I must also confess to the most complete astonishment at the unexpected apparition. WhileI was trying to hustle the others by signals and whispers into safer places; the rhino moved steadily, crossed the line of wind, stopped behind a little bush for a moment, and then, warned of his danger, rushed off into the deepest recesses of the jungle. I had thrown away the easiest shot I ever had in Africa. Meanwhile the elephants had disappeared.

Mr. Churchill on the Observation Ladder at Hippo Camp.

Bank of the Victoria Nile.

We returned with empty hands and beating hearts to camp, not without chagrin at the opportunity which had vanished, but with the keenest appetite and the highest hopes for the morrow. Thus in three hours and within four miles of our landing-place our three separate parties had seen as many of the greatest wild animals as would reward the whole exertion of an ordinary big-game hunt. As I dropped off to sleep that night in the littleKisingiri, moored in the bay, and heard the grunting barks of the hippo floating and playing all around, mingling with the cries of the birds and the soft sounds of wind and water, the African forest for the first time made an appeal to my heart, enthralling, irresistible, never to be forgotten.

At the earliest break of day we all started in the same order, and with the sternest resolves.During the night the sailors had constructed out of long bamboo poles a sort of light tripod, which, serving as a tower of observation, enabled us to see over the top of the high grass and reeds, and this proved of the greatest convenience and advantage, troublesome though it was to drag along. We spent the whole morning prowling about, but the jungle, which twelve hours before had seemed so crowded with game of all kinds, seemed now utterly denuded. At last, through a telescope from a tree-top, we saw, or thought we saw, four or five elephants, or big animals of some kind, grazing about two miles away. They were the other side of an enormous swamp, and to approach them required not only traversing this, but circling through it for the sake of the wind.

We plunged accordingly into this vast maze of reeds, following the twisting paths made through them by the game, and not knowing what we might come upon at every step. The ground under foot was quite firm between the channels and pools of mud and water. The air was stifling. The tall reeds and grasses seemed to smother one; and above, through their interlacement, shone the full blaze of thenoonday sun. To wade and waddle through such country carrying a double-barrelled ·450 rifle, not on your shoulder, but in your hands for instant service, peering round every corner, suspecting every thorn-bush, for at least two hours, is not so pleasant as it sounds. We emerged at last on the farther side under a glorious tree, whose height had made it our beacon in the depths of the swamp, and whose far-spreading branches offered a delicious shade.

It was three o'clock. We had been toiling for nine hours and had seen nothing—literally nothing. But from this moment our luck was brilliant. First we watched two wild boars playing at fighting in a little glade—a most delightful spectacle, which I enjoyed for two or three minutes before they discovered us and fled. Next a dozen splendid water-buck were seen browsing on the crest of a little ridge within easy shot, and would have formed the quarry of any day but this; but our ambition soared above them, and we would not risk disturbing the jungle for all their beautiful horns. Then, thirdly, we came slap up against the rhinoceros. How many I am not certain—four, at least. We had actually walked past them as theystood sheltering under the trees. Now, here they were, sixty yards away to the left rear—dark, dim, sinister bodies, just visible through the waving grass.

When you fire a heavy rifle in cold blood it makes your teeth clatter and your head ache. At such a moment as this one is almost unconscious alike of report and recoil. It might be a shot-gun. The nearest rhino was broadside on. I hit him hard with both barrels, and down he went, to rise again in hideous struggles—head, ears, horn flourished agonizingly above the grass, as if he strove to advance, while I loaded and fired twice more. That was all I saw myself. Two other rhinos escaped over the hill, and a fourth, running the other way, charged the native sailors carrying our observation tower, who were very glad to drop it and scatter in all directions.

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