uator. Here
are tangles and labyrinths, great bamboo forests lost in folds of the
mightiest hills. Here are the elephants. Here are the swinging vines,
the jungle itself.

Yet finally it breaks. We come out on the edge of things and look down
on a great gash in the earth. It is like a sunken kingdom in itself,
miles wide, with its own mountain ranges, its own rivers, its own
landscape features. Only on either side of it rise the escarpments which
are the true level of the plateau. One can spend two months in this
valley, too, and in the countries south to which it leads. And on its
farther side are the high plateau plains again, or the forests, or the
desert, or the great lakes that lie at the source of the Nile.

So now, perhaps, we are a little prepared to go ahead. The guide-book
work is finished for good and all. There is the steaming hot low coast
belt, and the hot dry thorn desert belt, and the varied immense plains,
and the high mountain belt of the forests, and again the variegated wide
country of the Rift Valley and the high plateau. To attempt to tell
you seriatim and in detail just what they are like is the task of an
encyclopaedist. Perhaps more indirectly you may be able to fill in the
picture of the country, the people, and the beasts.

IV. THE FIRST CAMP

Our very first start into the new country was made when we piled out
from the little train standing patiently awaiting the good pleasure
of our descent. That feature strikes me with ever new wonder-the
accommodating way trains of the Uganda Railway have of waiting for you.
One day, at a little wayside station, C. and I were idly exchanging
remarks with the only white man in sight, killing time until the engine
should whistle to a resumption of the journey. The guard lingered about
just out of earshot. At the end of five minutes C. happened to catch his
eye, whereupon he ventured to approach.

"When you have finished your conversation," said he politely, "we are
all ready to go on."

On the morning in question there were a lot of us to disembark-one
hundred and twenty-two, to be exact-of which four were white. We were
not yet acquainted with our men, nor yet with our stores, nor with the
methods of our travel. The train went off and left us in the middle of
a high plateau, with low ridges running across it, and mountains in the
distance. Men were squabbling earnestly for the most convenient loads to
carry, and as fast as they had gained und