1934....that grand book of harrison's called" maneaters of tsavo," and which deals...

50

AFRICA, 1934.

By MAJOR D. (WRDON CHEYNE, O.B.E., .M.C.

Royal Army Medical Corps.

THIS is the story with photographs of my tour to East Africa undertaken at the kindest of invitations from my sister and her husband, John Mitchell, my friend of nearly thirty years. We little thought when we first met about 1907 or 1908 when he did my father's work, or later in 1910 when as a very young man I arrived at the Royal Waterloo Hospital, London, to be his junior, that after many years he would be meeting me at the end of the Kenya Uganda Railway as iny brother-in-law and host for what was to be a memorable tour. But so it was and here is the story:-

vVe had arrived at Bombay at the end of 1932 and in 1933 we did not take any leave, so it was decided that H. M. and Peter should go to England where H.M. had her folks still going strong and anxious to see them. both. I had not such pressing calls to the old country.just then and when an invitation to come to Africa arrived I decided to accept.

One of the greatest advantages of living in Bombay is the ease with which one can leave the place and many think that the best view of Bombay, and incidentally India, is from the blunt end ofthe ship going out of Bombay Harbour. I don't agree with this. India has not been too unkind to me since 1919 when I first knew it. The family sailed off home in April and I was left to work things out for myself until J une.By that time I had made all arrangements for my great adventure and June 13saw me pulling out of Back Bay House, Colaba, and making for the dock in which the good ship" Kenya" lay. I was seen off by Sandy Mearns and Colonel Loughnan. "Seen off" is a good way of putting it for it was a very good party. It was pretty dark and the clouds were low and there was distant thunder. But does anyone care for little things like that when he has leave papers in his pocket and is already on a ship?

We had not reached the gates of the docks when there was almost It

complete black-out and down came the rain in sheets and the thunder rolled immediately overhead. This was the start of the Indian monsoon and it was some monsoon. People on shore said we were going down the channel in the wrong direction but I doubted it. Anyhow once outside the harbour we found it was not too bad. Fellow passengers were few, Sir Charles McWatt, a retired D.G., I.M.S., Captain Charles, a nursing sister returning to Africa from New Zealand, and a young Australian going out to try his luck in A(rica. , •

First impressions of the ship, the cabins and the people were good. We did not see very much of the officers that night. We soon settled down to things as we were to be a week before touching anywhere. Bridge, deck

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golf and the like filled in the days and they followed each other all too quickly. Sir Charles never appeare~ till lunch time so we formed our own little party. We were taken all over the ship, ftnd also saw the third Class accommodation which was interesting to me as this class of ship can be converted to troop carrying in a very short time. There is a big trade with Indians to and from the African coast, and people do not as a rule realize what vast numbers of Indians have settled in various parts of Africa. A year later a sister ship of this. one was taken.over by Government to carry the unfortunate British refugees after the Quetta earthquake.

And so the days passed.· ·We crossed the equator but nowadays there is no ceremony or tamasha as some one complained about it.

About seven days out we headed for the Seychelles Islands. Approachillg them one appreciates how mountainous they are. We layoff and were rowed ashore by some of the blackest people I have ever seen. Outside was a reef and the waves breaking over this was a lovely sight. The town was small and not very interesting.

I got the impression that there was too much missionary influence. The girls wore a sort of uniform which for drabness would be very hard to beat. The men looked lazy. We got hold of a car and went fora drive up some of the hills and had some fine views of the beaches and lagoons. The water was beautiful and green on the top of g01den sand. There was a delightful bathing beach declared safe so we had just time to sample this. We had to put off soon after.

On the tenth day out we entered the channel for Mombasa which is narrow for a few miles and then opens up into a very pretty harbour. There was one or two Union-Castle ships about. We had passed some very pretty houses on the way up and I think one was said to be the East African residence of the Aga Khan who has big interests in these parts. We also came alongside some very charming residential parts which were pointed out as the nicest parts to live in. Everything was green-a lovely soft green, indicating plenty of rain and lots of heat which I understand are the chief characteristics of the Mombasa climate.~ Mr. McNiell, a friend of my brother-in-law and sister, was waiting for me. We went first to the hotel for a quick one and then saw about trains. We found that the trains went up country only twice a week but if we liked to make onr own arrangements about food the railway people would put a carriage on to the goods train. The alternatives were to wait in Mombasa or to fly. We decided to go that day and we sent off two of the young people to buy food, provender and things for the party. They came back laden with all sorts of good things and beer and even knives and forks. Tbey did not intend that any of us should starve. I had a charming lunchwitli the McNiells in their very attractive house. We got tothe statiohabo~t 4: o'clock and found that we should be quitecomfcirtable.I had wire'ci the .Cbrmacksthat I hoped to break my journey at ·Nairppi:and see them',. We started off and soon were c cIirribing, for this isa most· remarkable· railway in that it goes




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up to 10,000 feet high in parts. These railways provide for a small charge a roll of bedding, guaranteed disinfested which you have for the journey. India copied this at a much later date. 'l'he carriages are large, rather like the Indian ones, and the bathroom and lavatory accommodation are good. At meals in the_train, which I had later on the Uganda section, and coming back again, they give you the most attractive menu cards which have drawn on them a cross section of the country through which the railway runs .. Before long we had run through the Kikuyu country which came in for a good deal of pUblicity a few years ago over some religious questions. The country was interesting and was everywhere intensely cultivated. There were lots of coffee and good crops of maize, and the cattle looked good. .

We passed through Tsavo. One remembered reading as a young man that grand book of Harrison's called" Maneaters of Tsavo," and which deals with the pioneer work in building this very section of the railway and tells graphically of the encounters here with lions. One very good bit I remember narrates how lions used to come around at night and sniff into the carriages in which the personnel slept and,how one night a lion came and sniffed at the man who was lying in the lower berth and did not like him, so climbed up and had a sniff at the fellow in the top berth and, liking his aroma, carried him off. I think I am right ill saying that the man who was not taken is still living at Nairobi. He could quite easily be as I met the missionary people at Kampala who had walked up this very route even before the railway started.

I don't think any of us slept much that night, whether on account of the lion tales which were told or not, I don't know. I think we were all afraid we might miss something good. Anyhow morning came and we were up a few thousand feet and it was quite cool. Soon we arrived somewhere about the famous Athi plain which extends for miles before you reach Nairobi and we were now all on the alert to see what game we should pass. We did not have long to wait.

Soon we saw hundreds cif zebra, wildebeest, and in the distance I saw a herd of some half a dozen giraffe. I also saw a wart hog. There was also a fair amount of small deer of various kinds like Thomson and. other varieties of gazelle. Lions have been seen fro~ the train on many occasions but not on this. I am told that three blasts on the whistle means that the engine driver has sighted a lion. This time there was silence. En passantit was interesting to remember that it was along a. line more or, less parallel to this that the force advanced up ,?ountry after they had finally randed at Tanga, where a disastrous attempt had been made in the first place, to be follo~ed later by success during the Great War. And so we came to Nairobi which we reached about noon and were then up 5,500 feet. There is a nice station and. all appeared up to da~e, including my friend Robin Cormack whom I had not seen for so·me years as he had left the Corps and had joined the Colonial Service. He was stationed herea;nd was in




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temporary charge of the Government Laboratory. He had hoped that I might stay with him some time, but theyhad made arrangements to go off for a holiday then, and I could only stay one night, but I had a very cordial invitation to come back and stay with them on my return journey. I decided to go off the following day to Uganda so I shall tell you all about Nairobi and Kenya later on.

;While I was in Nairobi I was interested to see the arrival of the air mail from home tick to the minute. This was the first time I had seen the organization close up. I was told that there had been some trouble at the aerodrome as there was a rhinoceros hovering about .which they had not been able to catch or drive away. After leaving Nairobi we soon approached the region of the Great Rift Valley. This is a marvellous natural cleft in the world's crust which extends right through Africa and then goes away over Asia Minor where I believe it reappears as the Jordan Valley and from there goes off somewhere else. We went for miles around tbe cleft; it extends for miles across and is highly cultivated. At last one came to the edge of it which was like the side of a 'great wall. In the Rift itself were extinct volcano craters, so at some time in the history of the world's creation th~re must have been some tur~oil around these parts. We were now in a ~ighly cultivated part of Keny~ where cattle rearing and dairying appeared t'o berthe chief industries. They had a co-operative system of selling theirgoQds as I noticedadve~tisements about it at the stations. This appe~rsl'~o pe a good system when one remembers the great distances from a port: .We passed N aivasha w.hich seemed.a most attractive place and rather like a holiday resort as there were Rome very nice bungalows and hotels there with good sailing and presumably fishing on the very extensive lake. I think it was from here that one had a view of Mount Kenya lying away to the east. As the evening fell we came to Lake Nukuru.

Lake Nukuru must surely be one of the sights of Africa if not of the world itself. This is the lake upon which millibns of flamingo live and which from a dist,ance has a beautiful pink appearance from the feathers of these millions. The birds were resting when wep:;tssed and I am told that their density is so great that they have to have a perfectly organized arrangement for their taking off-the birds CHl the outside have to take off first. I have confirmed that something like this is correct from seeing it on the cinema. This area of Kenya has attracted most settlers anll they seelDed to be everywhere. Like most other parts of the world. they are suffering from the depression and overproduction and it was said there was a great excess of coffee in the country and also that there was no market for the miles and miles of sisal which one saw growing in areas of what must have been thousands of acres. The highly developed and very rich gold mines of Kakamega (or something like that name) are on the shore of Lake Victoria somewhere in this region. And so night fell and ~obed for there are big thillgs to be done on the morrow.




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During the night I crossed the equator by train at a height of nearly U,OOO feet; it was very cold "od I was glad of all my coats. In the moruing I woke to find wc had got to '110roro and ,vere in tLe Uganda protectorate. It c;eewed that we had entered a llever ending banaua grove Cor we passed t.hrough lllile~ and miles of this. Vle had descended to under -t,OOO leet and it was warruer.

About breakfast time I was warned tbat we were approaching Jinja and would get a view of the Ripon :I!'alls. These lalls represent the rise of the White Nile frolll Lake Victoria. The 'White Nile meanders through Uganda to enter Lake Alhert nfter tumbling over the JVlurchison Falls,

'l'hc Ripoll Ho.lIs, Jiuja.

about which more auon. 'rho Ripon f;'nlls, as seen froUl the train, did not appear to be vC!ry higL, but they were very broa.d and are spanned hy a goon 'hridge from which I took several photos, my first from n. moving train, and I was very pleased with thelll. 'fbere were some houses on the high area, and the fisll iD~ here iR said to be marvellous. Fish ~re frequently seen jumping the ra.pids, but \vhotber: these are son:H~thlng like onr salmon I koow not. }'[m-e uanana groves and ~till more, and then towards noon or fl., little litter the !1rC!fL clears ann 'we pull into I\;:tmfJH.la the end of tlle railwa.y, sowe eight hundred miles from the coast. rrbis js a. hilly place, and it is sometimes called the Athens of Africa from the fact that it stands on seven hills. It is about seven miles fronl Enteb"c. This is tbe official capital of U galld., while Kampala is the busilless capital and "Iso the medical centre, ann .. ",bere the chief places or euucatiou amI lCB.rning a.re sitna.ted. John lIlet me I1no whipped me orr. Up the hill of ::\Iulago and past the bospital builuings and right np to lhe top of the hill, and there stood LOlli in her lovely garden waitin~ for IDe.

Loui and John's bOllse Was Just what T wonld have expected it to be. lt is a bungalow builL on tbe top 01 the hill and surrounded byJ"rg~ termced gardens, with here and there a large l'ose bed. X ow everything is blooming




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in great profusion. My first impression of Africa was how beautiful all the gardens are, and this impression grew and was accentuated with my greater knowledge of this particular area. All around the house was a great archway of Buganvillia, orange, I think, but it was not out.and there was also an enormous archway of the same shrub outside in front of the entrance. There was' also a nice fernery at the entrance of J oho's room. Here lived the parrot, and he was a great talker. His best was to butt in with "What's all this rubbish" when one thought one was really talking well. T distinctly heard him imitating Loui's voice with" John. have you got an aspirin?" The other pets were an Airedale dog, Paddy, who, I believe, met a violent death later, having been bitten by a black mamba and another fox terrier. In Afri-eao it is usual for the' room in which a guest or guests live to be separated from the house proper, and both here and in the Cormack's house in Nairobi this was the case. There is a lot to be said for it. Loui's guest house was in the garden, and bad been the old lab. It was most comfortable, but later I slept on the verandah. There was a very nice swimming pooLin :thegarden.

The house is very nicely ·furnished.; The . lounge isa .large room, and In it are many treasures collected by John from various parts of the world, especiallyA9yssini~. A large Zanzibar chest is notable, andl was lucky ill being presented with one similar, though smaller, before I left. The dining-room was small, .butcosyand at.tractive, especially at night when we had dinner by candlelight. There is no. electricity on the hill which, with all the mighty,water power aBhe backdoor,as it were; is an anachronism. Loui has developed into a complete hen and chicken woman, and has a large stock of choice ducks and chickens which produce large eggs, and when the time comes to eat a chicken it is an occasion in the station, and well it might he so considered for I have seldom eaten better. I quickly settled down to life here after I got accustomed to the height and to -the very strong coffee. I met charming people everywhere, all of whom were very kind to me and invitations to dine and wine were all too frequent. I.went over the hospital on many occasions, and it was a revelation .to see how things had developed since the Government had taken over. Before all the medical work had been in the hands of the mission hospitals and about them I shall write later. Here was a fine staff of medical officers, sisters and subordinates. Here also has a start been made with the creation of a medical subordinate service similar to the Sub-Assistant Surgeon branch of the Indian Medical Department, and John has played and is playing a prominent part in its creation.

I met some of these young Africans and played tennis with them. They have been educated entirely in Kampala, first at the High School, which is, r am told, modelled on Eton, and later at this Medical School of Mulago which r presume is fashioned after Aberdeen. The idea is that these young men should be in charge of District Dispensaries and ultimately of Districts. At present they belong body and soul to Government and bere may lie the




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difficulty in the future as these same young men will want to get the richer prizes as a reward for their labour and to refuse these would seem unreasona.ble. This African Eton College is housed in lovely buildings with glorious playing fields and the outcome of this great experiment with young men whose fathers were comparatively uncivilized in the European sense, win be full of interest. One should mention that the African of all classes is a proud man with nothing of the servile about. him. That accounts for the servants being so appallingly inferior to the Indian. Left to himself the male African would do nothing but wait for his women folk to go out and plough the land and bring home the produce. The gent that Loui so kindly produced to. look after me was a complete washout and just stood by and watched me doing things for myself. The fact that I had come from overseas seemed to impress him in a kind of way. They are as a class dishonest and thefts are all too common. In the house they wear long white gowns and small black caps. They wait efficiently at table and if watched do not do too badly.

Kampala, in common with other parts of East and South Africa, is full of Indians. I was much impressed on the way up to notice that all the station .staffs were Indian, mainly Sikhs, and I talked with some of them. They all looked forward to their return to India, and judging by the very large numbers travelling by the ships many realize their ambitions. In the stores, which are also run largely by Indians, including lots of Parsees, you will find the second generation going strong and maintaining the Indian purity of stock; this generation had never seen India. Mr. Pinto, who ran the grocery store patronized by Loui, was most interested in hearing the news of Bombay, which he had left mltny years previously. Kampala is a large town very well laid out with good roads and good houses. '{'here is a lot of trade with the surrounding district. There are many motor cars and lorries, and one noticed how popular the box van was with its front seats like the usual front seats of a private car, instead of the usual back seats. This part of the car was converted into a van sort of affair, sometimes open, sometimes closed. This is for safari, when you travel in comfort and behind you have all your tentage, stores, beds, and so on.

Dominating the place are two hills upon which are erected the two cathedrals, the Protestant and' the Roman Catholic. The Protestant is justa shade higher. (Nearer to Heaven, perhaps.) I visited both these cathedrals which are very handsome buildings. In the vicmity of the Protestant one are buried some of the unfortunate people who were massacred during the early days by-was it King Mutesa, whose tomb I later visited? He was a real old rip, whose form of amusement to chase away boredom was to throw a few of his enemies to the crocodiles. I met Sir Alfred Cooke, one of the pioneers of missionary work in these parts and one of the party who had walked up from the coast-a grand old man and I believe in his time a very fine doctor. They have a large hospital well equipped, . but it is obvious that the coming of the




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Government hospital has taken away a lot of its usefulness. It is the same thing with Roman Catholic places, though I was impressed with their infant and women work; as the sisters and medical officers work for miserable salaries 1 thi.nk these people are deserving of the very greatest praise for their good works to suffering humanity. In these institutions are African women trained for the nursing service,s and to be midwives, and they are turning out very well. The trouble is the lack of morality. This seems common all over the Protectorate and the venereal problem is a big one, in fact the biggest medical problem. I saw one small girl, a missionary school attendant,a victim of an acquired syphilis. There is a gOod system of venereal disease treatment in the districts which should have good results.

I had a very interesting visit to the prison situated on the way to Entebbe near Victoria Nyanza. Note in talking of the African lakes one can say Lake Victoria or Victoria Nyanza, not Lake Victoria N yanza one so often hears as "N yanz.a" just means lake. This was a large very well built place surrounded by high walls and guarded by the Askaris who appeared very smart. The superintendent showed me all over the place and John and his assistant demonstrated a few medical things notably examples of deficiency diseases. I saw the prisoners at various sorts. of work and also their kitchens. The staple food is M'toki which consists of a mixture of banana and maize. I think recent researches have shown that a little meat and sweet potato is sufficient with the M'toki to keep the men fit and to prevent deficiency diseases, notably keratomalachia which I saw for the first time, having lectured about it many times at Millbank. I also visited the area where those condemned to death are kept pending a reference to Government and during the hearing of various appeals. At the time of my visit there were eighteen awaiting their fate. Most of these had been convicted of arson upon which the Courts look very seriously, as arson with the intention of catching someone in the hut which has been fired has become much too common. I had a demonstration of the hanging process without a victim and was told that it took only six seconds from the time the victim left the cell till he had reached his destination off this earth.

One day we visited Bombo and called on the King's African Rifles. The camp was very orderly, with the little beehive huts. '1'he men were smartness personified. They are officered by men seconded from the British and Indian Armies who do about four or five years in one of the various statiops. ' I also met them in Nairobi. I was serenaded by a great big fellow with a fiddle fashioned out of a gourd and was told that the translation of his song was that I must be a great big white chief who deserved a good wife alld that doubtless I had one at least though I deserved two. Wonderfully wise these people,

We called on some of the district dispensaries and saw the work. One was struck by the good manners of all the. people on the roads. Most




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people gave us a greeting and got out of the way of the car. I picked upa few works of Swahili and when somebody said" Otiano" one could reply ,. BulIungi ", which was much appreciated.

1 had several very good days at Entebbe which as I said· before is the. official, very official, capital. The Governor was away so I did not get called to General Headquarters. I met all the medicaJ staff from the Director of Medical Services downwards and duly accepted their food. We were mutually interested in each others problems. I saw the lab. built at ellormous expense for Lyndhurst .Duke and never occupied by him .. I recollected that the R.A.M.C. had taken a prominent 'Part in the early investigations into sleeping sickness, when Bruce, Gray, Hamerton 'and Bateman had all worked here or in this area.

And so the days passed. Plans had meanwhile been maturing for a s&fari on the.real grand scale and it was proposed that my first tour around should be to give me an idea of the vastness of the country and would be something in the nature of a circular tour of the northern part of the Protectorate skirting the Belgian Congo. I had investigated/the possibilities of visiting the Congo before leaving Bombay, but the Belgian Consul General had not .beenataIl helpful and suggested that I might'be liable to put down 1,000 Beig,ian pounds beside having to be certified as free from every disorder including pregnancy, so I decided against this;' .Well on the first day oLthe safari.we started off: . The party this time! was Loui, Mrs. Hopkins, after.wards referred to.as Doris; andmyselfin J ohn'svery powerful Fiat well loftdedup with. good food and drinkandw.ithsixteen gallons of petrol in a,boxas aieserve.We.weremakingfoi'FortPor,bal where we were to stay the night .on the way .to .the RuwenzoriRange:of mountains popularly known. as .the Mountains of.the Moon. Tberun, was through very interesting country and one of the most pleasant recollections of that day was the enormous number of butterflies we saw. We passed through clouds of them. The radiator of the car was thick with them when we stopped. The ground where it was wet was also thick with them. We saw lots of guinea-fowl but no other game. The route was via Mityana and Mubendi, small places. Approaching the mountain passes we. ran into a big thunder storm with heavy rain. We pulled into Fort Portal all right after negotiating an avenue of papyrus grass which ought to have harboured elephant and probably did.

We lived in Busirasigama, the bloody hill, so called, after some battle in which General Lugard took part. We arrived latish and had not much time to see things, but here again was a glorious garden, a delightful house, really a private house belonging to people called Paul. Mrs. Paul was the daughter of Dr. Neilson and both he and his wife hailed from Aberdeen. Paul was in coffee which for some reason was not paying here and they were running their house as a private hotel and doing it very well, too. Mrs. Paul had all the brains of the partnership; They promised us a good view of the mountains on the morrow. We met. a lady there who was




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about to climb the group which is not an easy matter. I think she succeeded, hut her husband who Was prospecting in Lake Budolf was killed a.uout the same time. \Ve were .5,200 feet up here and were glad of fires aa it \ .... as cold.

Next morning we started oIT early, passing along 1'aul's "Sbamba" where a few nights before tbere had been sixteen elephants. I may say here that there was a good deal of this the-night-before-stuff during my tour, especially as regards lion which I might as well admit now I never saw \Ioose I mean). "If only you had been here yesterday when I was driviug with my children J when little \Villie said' Look, l\.:Inmwy, pretty pussies,' and there at the side of the road was a pride of five lion." That, I quite believe, was true, and I Imow every effort was made to produce lion for me 00 the thoosands of miles I was taken by the great kindness of my ~~h_. .

At "he ma.d,et of the Dagongwn Tribe.

The trip tbis day was grand and we were soon passing the crater lakes of Kdali; the road was very fine but narrow and when "t one side are cmter lakes and at the otber away down bolow are great Iorests full of elephant, Jion and the J..1ord knows \ ..... hat eh;e, ani! when yon l'omolllber that the roa.d js like no knife cdge, the driver does not necrl. to b~ told to l{eep her eye on the road and she surely diel. Vle only got all impression of the 110untains of the Mooll. 'Ve came thro,,~h " long swamp filled with elephant grass and as we approached the clouds cleared cOllsielerahly and we j us! got a glirnpse:oi the twin peaks with their snow capped tops. As we ,vent along the road I spotted a large crowd of people ill a field; so We orew up and fonnd onrE-:p.lvcs ill tlle midst of a most picturesque collectioll of natives ill various states of compa.ra.Live nudity. They were of the. tribe of Bagollgwa and tbis was their market day. They were very friendly and like all the Africans were just as much interested in liS as we were in them. ,Ve saw all sorts of stuff on sale, nOlably fried 10clIsts. Tbey very kindly posed for me to take snapshots and I gave thmn a. few coppers and there was a




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great ,cramble on the part of the slI1,Lllcr fry for these. AfLer this we were amused to come 011 a. notice which rea.d "SLOW DOWN FOH THE EQUA'l'OU."

So we slowed down expecting that pcrhaps tbe line was out of order. Sure enough we came to the equator indicl1ted by two boards, one of which read "SO'CTHERK HEM[S])HERF." and tbe other" NORTH1!.lU' II1!MlSPHERE: ' T stood \vith the line l'nnniug bet.ween my legs.

\Ve speut some tiwe taking views of the line, and I was interested to sce some similar snaps in a weekly paper, but in LlIc mea.nwhile the indicati.ng:

The EqnaLor.

boards had been straightened up a bit. A (tel' this we made for the Ke"ing" Channel, the narrow strip of ,vater betvveen JJnkc George :1nd Lake 1£dwa.rd which has to be negotiated by boat, as tl,ero i. no road or bridge. 'Ne din not have long to wait ani! we got the cltr 011 \vithont any difficnlty and wen~ off aKain OB t,be other side. Again mOTe crater hd{()s, and tbi!:$ was the most <liah~lIlt part of the roaa, as lLe rar.or edge was even more razor edge and the cralers were deeper and the forests were darker. Were we afraid? lEH! However, \Ve came a,t, last to 1\.lbu,rura, vvhere we were to SLOp the night .. but not before \ve ha,d h}1n a.noLher thnnderstOl'Ul, which lllade it diillcnlt to find our ,·""ay about. fl'his \\'<1S perhaps tLe poorest hotel of our tour, It \vn~ r1111 by a Goau. ",\Then we went into et very small sittingroom ,ve thought we bad hit the jungle by mistake as there was a lion or "' panther (skinned) on every chair in the room.




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We were off early the next day to make the most distant part of this tour neatly to the border of the Belgian Congo and we knew we had some difficult roads to negotiate. We climbed through miles of mountain passes over a road, the construction of which must have presented untold problems for the engineers, the most prominent of whom was one Came, who is talked of with baited breath, for he must have done really fine work. As I write this some time after on the Indian Frontier I appreciate that here were similar problems, and perhaps the engineers do not get their just recognition for work of this sort.

We travelled along more of the volcanic zones with rough rugged country and I saw two extinct volcanoes; there are, however, eight volcanoes, two of which are still active, but these I did not see' owing to cloud. We had a very good view of Lake Bunyoni nestling in the hollow. 'l'he area was intensely cultivated and at one place we had what I thought was quite a good cloud of locusts. 'l'hey were like a thick_ faU of large snowflakes, but I was ass_ured that this was nothing, and that when there was a complete" black out" then one had seen locusts. At one point on the road we came to some road repairing work going on by natives in a still greater degree of nakedness. They were dressed in bark cloth, and as this did not fit very well, or when the wind was unfriendly, nothing waS left to the imagination. As a point of medical interest it was noticed that the men were quite naked underbarkcloth, which is unusual in native races. The girls were handsome and again I was-fortunate ill obtaining a very good picture of two real beauties.

We were climbing nearly all the time and we came soon to the bamboo belt at about 8,700 feet. We descended again to 6,500 feet, which is the height of Kabale, where we were making for. We passed Came's house, an attractive little cottage with one of the most glorious gardens I have ever seen. We stopped. It was empty and not very well looked after and we picked strawberries in his garden. And so we came to Kabale and to the White Horse Inn, which wants a page to itself.

We arrived at the top of the hill to find one of the most delightful places it has been my fortune to get to. The place was built of red brick and heavily thatched with thlck~lephant grass. It was perishing cold so we were delighted to enter and find a large common room with an enormous wood fire blazing ill the open fire place. Presently a lady, dressed in corduroy trousers and a man's coat, appeared. This was the Proprietress, Mrs. Adamson, and a very charming competent Woman she was. Mr. Adamson was evidently delicate and did the secretarial work, but

. Mrs. Adamson was the driving force, and woe betide any servant who did not jump to it. Our rooms were detached from this main portion and were in line; the partitions were not very thick, so if one wished to communicate with the person in the next room but one, then one just raised one's voice a little more. They were _comfortable rooms and we spent a good night and had excellent food and drink. I can heartily




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62 Ourrent Literature

recommend the White Horse Inn. Mrs. Adamson, as a sop to convention and perhaps as a compliment to me, appeared in a different pair of trousers at night and with a black coat .. Down country I am told she was le deniere en m gowns. 'l'he morning was glorious looking up the grand valley towards the Congo, and with the mists gently rising from the warming ground being twisted into wisps by the gentle breeze the picture was one of sheer joy, and we left it with regret to turn homewards once again. I should mention that we received hospitality from Dr. and Mrs. Burton, who were stationed here. This was evidently a grand place to be stationed, for living was cheap apart from imported stores. I was told one could buy a sheep for half-a-crown, and this was the method of shopping in the cold weather, when one bought the sheep on the Friday and had it in various forms, certainly until the following Wednesday. It was Dr. Burton who very kindly took us a bit further along the road towards the frontier.

We made an early start and returned partly hy the way we had come, as far as Mbarara, and then by a different route making east towards the lakes. This route took us through miles aud miles of what I had almost imagined must be typical African scrub jungle-bush, and if ever during my tour I ought to have seen lion it was in this bit. Actually we saw very little game of any sort. We ultimately arrived at the Kiwala Hotel, Masaka, which was owned by a very nice and capable woman, Mrs. Keble. This hotel overlooked Lakes N abugabu and Victoria, and in the far distance we could see Entebbe and Kampala, but we were in no particular hurry and so the morrow would do for our inspection. This was a bigger hotel in a lovely compound, and everywhere flowers were in great profusion. I met a white hunter here who would have been ready to arrange for a lion or an elephant, but unless one is living at a farm or some such place and sits up, that is an expensive affair as the hunter is paid by the day and naturally is not keen to walk up a lion the first day. The charges vary with the part of the country, but the usual charge is £2 or £3 per day and all expenses, and hunters are seldom teetotal.

(To be continued.)

• (tllrrent ltterature.

BOARD OF EDUCATION. EDUCATIONAL PAMPHLETS, No. 109. Physical Education in Germany. 80 pp. 1937. London: H.M.S.O. [ls.J

Nine British educationists inquiring into physical training had the practical aspects of the present German ideals demonstrated during a ten days' visit, and present their impressions.

Education in each of the Provinces is under a director representing the central Ministry. Under him is a department for physical education of which a deputy i$ chief organizer and inspector.




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1934....that grand book of harrison's called" maneaters of tsavo," and which deals...

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