Seven Legs Across the Seas Part 23

A stranger would not know when he had reached the body of the lake, as the course is through blue-water avenues, bordered with tropical green islands, for a large part of the journey. The distance across is 175 miles, and 24 hours was taken in making the journey. The boats on Victoria Nyanza do not travel at night, which accounts for the slow time. The Equator was crossed and recrossed during the 24-hours'

journey, but the game of "Neptune" was not played. The lake is nearly 4,000 feet above sea-level, 240 miles in length, and its area 26,000 square miles.

Although very fertile, none of the islands was inhabited. For centuries most of these had been under cultivation, but the sleeping-sickness plague made such havoc among the natives that the British government some years ago forced them to the mainland.

Entebbe, on the western sh.o.r.e of Victoria Nyanza, is the Imperial capital of Uganda, but Kampala, 23 miles north, is the native capital.

The British government officials are located at the former place, while the native legislature convenes in the latter. Most of the land of Uganda is owned by natives, but no concessions are granted without the approval of British officials. If one wishes to buy land, he must apply for it through the native legislature. Uganda is a rich country, but little land is under cultivation. Indians and Arabs would quickly buy large tracts, but they are not wanted there, as no one profits from Asiatic holdings but Asiatics; besides they would ill-treat the natives. Uganda was made a British Protectorate in 1894. It has an area of 300,000 square miles, that of British-East Africa 200,000 square miles. Europeans in the Uganda Protectorate number only about 2,000.

Built on a high point of land, with two blue-water bays on each side and a wide sweep of Victoria Nyanza spreading out to the horizon; evergreen landscape beyond the mainland borders of the bays; trees smothered with vari-colored flowers, and the streets carpeted with a floral covering which falls from them; bright and pretty-colored birds enhancing the picture, with their sweet carols "at early morn and dewy eve;" bulky banana bushes and papaw, or mummy-apple, trees growing at every turn; the gardens to the homes of the dwellers glowing with flowers--there, away off in Uganda, on the peninsula overlooking the great lake, at Entebbe, we found one of the grandest settings of both land and water scenery the eye could feast on.

This was the first place we observed natives seeking work. When coming from the wharf to the town, tidy, well-developed Waganda would timidly approach, holding in their hands a small book or piece of paper. In the book or on the paper was written their records, good or otherwise, the wages they had received, and the length of time worked at various places. The applicant may be a houseboy, cook or land worker. It is customary, in fact a standard rule, when servants leave employment, to give them a note, which is their reference. None of them know a letter of the alphabet, so have no idea of the nature of the writing.

Mention has been made of the uninviting appearance of the Mkikuyu at Nairobi and the naked Mkavirondo living on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the lake. Here, over 400 miles west of Nairobi and 175 west of Port Florence, we found the splendidly-built, tidily-dressed, clean Waganda. The women of this tribe are almost as well developed as the Zulu women. The Maganda also carries loads on her head. It is hard to understand why these natives, so far away from civilization, are so neatly dressed. The Maganda is a good native.

We were but three miles north of the Equator, at an elevation of 4,000 feet, and the comfortable climate, instead of an almost unbearable one one would expect to encounter here, is a surprise. In the evening the air became so cool that the veranda was vacated for a seat inside.

Less than 150 white persons live in Entebbe, but with the Arabs, Indians, and many natives, the population reaches 20,000. Were government employees to leave, very few Europeans would be left in the capital.

This was one place in which the moving picture was not to be seen, and one is getting pretty well out of the world, so to speak, when he has out-trod the sphere of that common means of amus.e.m.e.nt. But there was a phonograph, owned by an Indian, who lived across the road from where I slept. Indian music is weird with a vengeance. The scale is cast in high C, and the flats and sharps and other "harmonics" that went with the music seemed to be like a clashing of rasps, files and grating iron. At 2 o'clock in the morning the "tormentor" was started, and its weird notes unmercifully pierced the equatorial air until daylight.

The police sometimes stopped the music for a couple of nights, but it was soon heard again. I became well known at the police station through lodging complaints against the owner of that infamous phonograph.

The wharf at the lake was piled high with merchandise and cotton bales. Some of the imports were to be moved into the interior as far as the Belgian Congo. The means of conveyance was the heads of natives--porters, as they are called. From 300 to 600 porters, all looking half-starved, a.s.sembled in front of a shipping agent's office and waited for orders to start on the trip. Horses cannot live in Uganda, so natives take the horses' place. Sixty pounds is the standard load for a porter to carry. The goods are packed and shipped in quant.i.ties conforming to that weight, when it is possible to do so.

The articles carried may be grubhoes, chairs, a box containing canned vegetables or food, a bed spring, bedding, a table, five-gallon cans of oil--anything in the nature of food, clothing, or household furnishings. When the article exceeds 60 pounds, two, three, and even four porters, with bamboo poles, are a.s.signed to the load. The small army of porters--the African freight train--start, with a stick in their hand and 60 pounds of freight on their heads. The destination is Toro, 200 miles further into Africa. White men are in charge of the "freight train." Each porter takes with him a portion of rice or cornmeal. His meat is furnished by the white men in charge, who carry rifles, and by that means game is shot en route. Thirty days is the time required to travel the 200 miles, and for carrying 60 pounds of goods that distance a porter receives $3. A new "freight train" will take up the goods at Toro and advance the cargo further into the wild country. Certain packs of natives will not go further than the sub-stopping place, as natives beyond are generally hostile to tribes stopping at that point. In that way traders living in remote parts are supplied with goods.

We were right in the heart of the sleeping-sickness zone. It has been estimated that 300,000 natives have been swept away by this strange and fatal disease. Remains of huts and other mute evidences of tribal existence at certain parts of the lake districts indicate the wiping out of whole tribes by this pestilence, which accounts for the British government forcing the natives from the lake islands to live on the mainland. Some of these ejected natives try to return to their old home, and it was said to be a pathetic sight when they were forced to change their abode. The islands are infested with the fly whose bite injects the death virus. A strip of territory two miles from the sh.o.r.e of the lake is prohibited ground, and legal punishment is provided for any one found over the fly-infested lines.

Sleeping sickness is caused from a bite of the tsetse fly. It is as large as a horse-fly, and when it bites a victim it usually draws blood. The poison injected infects the blood, and is thought to be extracted from crocodiles by the fly while resting on that beast. It may be weeks, and even months, before the poison affects the victim.

Anyway, mopiness will become noticeable, then drowsiness, accompanied by loss of appet.i.te; then an overpowering desire to sleep overtakes the victim. All the time he is becoming emaciated from lack of food.

This condition continues for months in some instances, and there are cases where victims have moped and drowsed for years. Some of the deaths are very painful, while others apparently die in their sleep.

Three flies, with Latin names, carry the sleeping sickness virus--the Glossina palpalis, the Glossina morsitans, and the Glossina fusca.

They are generally termed "morsitans," "palpalis" and "fusca." The most advanced medical scientists may be found in this part of the world trying to find out something definite about the virus and devising means for its eradication, but are as yet in the dark concerning how to combat the suffering and fatalities that follow in the wake of this strange disease. Sleeping sickness is prevalent in some parts of Rhodesia, Central Africa and in other interior sections of the Dark Continent.

The means employed to eradicate the fly is by cutting the brush from the sh.o.r.e of the lake. A fly will not remain in the sun long, so when the brush has been cut and a fly's resting place, the shade, is removed, he leaves the brush-barren district and seeks shady fields.

A gra.s.s--lemon gra.s.s, it is called--with a leaf a quarter of an inch wide, which grows to two feet high, is often planted on the land from which the brush has been cleared. The gra.s.s has an oily, lemon taste, which the tsetse fly does not fancy, and he leaves the cleared section.

In the early days Stanley and those that came later to these parts crossed the lake in canoes, rowed by natives. That was a dangerous undertaking, as the lake then, as to-day, was inhabited by hippopotami and crocodiles. As stated in Leg Two, the "hippo" will not harm a person in the water, but he may overturn a boat that attempts to ride over him, when the crocodile would devour those cast overboard.

Most of the wild animals in that part of the world are protected from hunters by government laws, but the hippopotamus and the crocodile are left to the mercy of any who wish to kill them. The big water-cows are very destructive to growing grain and vegetables. They come out at night to forage, when they destroy gardens, corn fields and grain.

These animals travel a mile or more from the sh.o.r.e for food. The only time when a "hippo" will attack a person is if the latter should be between the water and the beast.

Coffee and rubber plantations have been laid out and promise large returns in the future. The natives raise a great deal of cotton, and cotton gins are located at many of the lake ports. So much cotton is produced that the lake boats cannot keep the wharves and G.o.downs from being overloaded.

Three years' growth is required before the rubber tree is tapped.

Several diagonal circles are cut in the bark. A piece of wood, with sharp nails, similar to a hair comb, is pressed against the tender bark. White sap then oozes from the tree and runs down a gutter cut in the bark. At the end of the gutter a tin spout connects, down which the latex runs into a tin cup on the ground. An ounce of sap is produced from a tapping. A tree is tapped every day for a month, then allowed to rest for a month. Sap will run from a tree but half an hour a day. Natives gather the cups from each tree, emptying each ounce in a larger vessel. The latex collected is put in tanks five feet long and six inches wide. The next day the sap is taken out, when it will have become a white strip, like a piece of fat pork. The slab or sheet of raw rubber is next put through a press twice, which squeezes out water and impurities. The sheet of raw rubber remains unbroken, and its thickness is reduced to a quarter of an inch. It is then rolled together, like belting, put into a drying place, where it remains for a month, after which it is shipped North for refining. Before tapping a tree the bark is cleansed with a carbolic acid wash. The sap is white as milk, and sticky, and remains that color until refined. An average of one pound of rubber a month from a tree is a good yield, and the price ranges from $2 to $3 a pound in the raw state. The trees will produce sap for about ten years, and are from two to eight inches in diameter. Some rubber plantations contain hundreds of thousands of trees, and from 200 to 1,000 natives are employed. The wages paid latex gatherers in Uganda are from $1 to $1.50 a month.

At the market place little cleaning-up was necessary, as vultures pick meat blocks and keep the floors white after the day's business.

A good botanical garden that any city of half a million population would be proud of is found in Entebbe. Often groups of monkeys may be seen jumping from limb to limb and from tree to tree in the garden, each following the same route that the first one traveled.

Missions and missionaries are quite numerous in that section of Africa, almost every religious denomination being represented.

A ricksha is the usual means of traveling. When going from place to place, three natives are a.s.signed to a ricksha, two pushing, with one between the shafts. These have bells tied around their ankles, and they sing from the time they start until they have reached the end of their stage. Each team runs about five miles, when three fresh pullers take charge of the vehicle; then the pa.s.senger will again spin along the road at a speed of five miles an hour, cheered by the tunes of the natives.

"Safari" is a word much used in the Protectorates. When one camps out, or goes on a country journey, he will be on "safari." Often a man's standing is gauged by the number of natives that accompany him. In the eyes of the natives the man with the largest safari is the bigger man.

For that reason a vain man will have a larger force of natives serving him than would be necessary were his position not gauged on that basis. In that and in other ways white men become slaves to the caprice of native opinion.

Natives living in that part of Uganda are ant-eaters. The white ant, another African scourge, builds, unseen, large chocolate-colored mounds of dirt, some of them eight feet in height and from six to eight feet across the base. After reaching a certain age wings grow on the ants, when they emerge from the hill. The natives, aware of the time the exodus is to take place, build a frame of sticks over the cone of the mound, over which is placed a bark cloth. The cone is covered down the sides to a place below which the ants will not break through the dirt. Between the bottom of the upright frame sticks and the mound will be placed a banana leaf, the center pressed down, forming a trench. The ants, on emerging from the mound, fly upward, when they strike the cloth covering and drop into the banana leaf trench. Once their flight is interrupted they cannot fly again. An hour's time is consumed while migrating from the mound--from the time the ants begin to come out until all have left their old home--during which the natives are busy eating the insects that creep out between the leaf cracks. They gather these by the wings, which are an inch in length, and put the live ants into their mouths, wings and all. The swarm of ants is later scooped from the trench, put into baskets made of leaves, taken to the hut, where the wings are plucked, and are then put into a pan and fried. In keeping with the secret and interesting nature of that insect, they do not begin to leave the mound before sunset, and often not until dark. Also, in keeping with the generosity of the Mganda, a member of this tribe, holding a number of ants by their wings in one hand and putting these in his mouth--having an equal number in the other hand--offered to share the winged delicacies with his white spectator.

A variety of gra.s.s, from 6 to 12 feet high, called elephant gra.s.s, grows in that country. Some ivory hunters have met their death owing to wounded elephants secreting themselves in the tall reeds. A hunter would naturally follow the tracks of the great beast, though, being close to his quarry, he could not see him; but the elephant could see the hunter. Before he could protect himself or escape, the powerful trunk would come down on the hunter and deal him a death blow. Ivory from the tusks of the female elephant is the better grade. Ivory smuggling is said to be practiced in that part of the world, as opium smuggling is in some parts of America. While the tusks of some elephants weigh 25 pounds, the average is 15 pounds. Export and import duty on ivory is very high, which accounts for alleged smuggling in that product. Elephants take 30 years to attain their full growth.

The two most dangerous animals in Africa are the buffalo and the rhinoceros. Most animals will run from man, but a buffalo may be just inside tall gra.s.s or a brush thicket, unseen, when he will charge a hunter. The rhinoceros is almost blind, but what he lacks in sight is made up for by his keen scent. As soon as he scents anything he wishes to impale on his horn, he starts in the direction from which he got his lead. When closely pursued by a "rhino," the hunter will stand still until the big beast is immediately in front; then he will side-step. A man can turn much quicker than a "rhino," and in that way one has a chance to get away, or to keep dodging the animal until help comes.

Plural marriage is the custom with these natives, but a wife in Uganda is one-half cheaper than in Zululand, from four to six head of cattle being the standard price of a helpmate.

Bananas and sweet potatoes grow very bountifully, and these two vegetables comprise the princ.i.p.al food of the natives. The banana is boiled when green and eaten. The soil is rich and a chocolate color.

This was the only place in our tour of Africa where pretty birds were seen and also were heard singing. Birds in South Africa seldom sing.

Parrots are on their native heath here.

The sun in that part of the world shines 12 hours a day the year round.

Automobiles, motor trucks, motorcycles and bicycles may be seen spinning along good roads.

My time had been overstayed in Entebbe, so we took our departure for Kampala, the native capital. The lake stopping-place is called Port Bell. Seven miles from the little port is located Kampala, the ancient capital of Uganda, and that distance is traveled in a government motor car. Rubber trees and banana groves line the roadway for the distance.

About 75,000 natives live in Kampala, but the huts are so scattered and buried under banana bushes that one would not think there were one-third that number. It is another Rome, so far as hills are concerned. The government buildings are seen on one hill, the King's house and Ministers' houses on another, and a monastery and a mission stand on other hills. Four hundred Europeans comprise the population.

Our next landing from Kampala was Jinja, another port of Victoria Nyanza, and the most interesting of the lake stops, as we had reached the outlet of that body of water, Ripon Falls, where one looks at the starting point of the historical river Nile, the magnet that figured largely in my giving way to the witchery of the foreground when standing on the sh.o.r.e of the lake at Kisumu some weeks before.

J. H. Speke, an Englishman, in 1858, discovered Victoria Nyanza, but its outlet, hidden by green banks on each side, was not reached until four years later, on his second visit to that section of Africa. He named that neck of water Napoleon Gulf. Speke was the first to reveal the source of the river Nile, which had long been sought by the Egyptians, who had for ages been in the dark concerning the fountain-head of the river that meant so much to them in providing water to grow crops--their life, in fact. When it is recalled that rain has not fallen for thousands of years in some sections of the African continent through which the Nile flows, it is little wonder that the Egyptians were eager to learn of the river's source.

Ripon Falls, named by Speke after the president of the geographical society that financed his explorations, is located a mile from Jinja, and is only 12 feet high and 400 feet wide, but when that plunge has been taken the water becomes the river Nile. From Ripon Falls to Albert Nyanza the river is known as the Victoria Nile. On, on it flows through countries inhabited by savage tribes--by elephants, rhinoceroses, lions and hippopotami--through lakes and great swamps; still on and on through the Soudan, and even further northward, where it is halted for a time by the great a.s.souan Dam. It next pa.s.ses through the desert to Alexandria, Egypt, where it becomes lost in the salted ocean, nearly 4,000 miles from its source.

Until a few years ago visitors to Ripon Falls were forbidden to go close to the section where the water makes its plunge from Victoria Nyanza to the River Nile, as the brush growing on both sides was infested with tsetse flies. The brush was finally cleared and lemon gra.s.s planted. One is not quite safe from being bitten even now, as on the opposite side the brush is dense, and the distance across the river would be none too far for a fly to journey. No one enters that brush unless their hands are covered, and face and neck protected with a heavy veil, to thwart any attack by that winged messenger of death.

From Jinja a railroad, the only one in Uganda, extends northward 59 miles.

Returning by boat to Port Florence, then by train over the mountains to Nairobi, we again feasted our eyes on big game while traveling through the great preserve; next through the Taru Desert, where the leafless trees grow; and finally we rumbled over the trestle spanning the water channel separating Mombasa Island from the mainland.

LEG SIX

CHAPTER I