Identifier: throughugandatom00purv (find matches)
Title: Through Uganda to Mount Elgon
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Purvis, John Bremner
Subjects: Ethnology Missions
Publisher: London (etc.) : F. T. Unwin
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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No longer the tramp, tramp, tramp, under thebroiling sun, over waterless desert, throughfever-laden swamp or foodless country, for wehave taken a ticket for Uganda at the cost ofRs. 142.5 first class, Rs.71.3 second class, orRs.23.12 third class, and the journey which tookfrom two to three months can now be accom-plished in as many days. And what a journey!Thick forest, rolling plain, howling wilderness,pleasant pasture, hill and dale, mountain andvalley, rushing river, rippling stream, roaringlion, English ox, smart official and naked savage,can all be seen in the course of one day, as weare hurried from the sea-level, up and up, toa height of over 4,000 feet. The Wanyika. No time now to visit the shy and weaklyWanyika people who live near the coast in theirbadly made houses, or to feel anything butthankful as the train rushes across the TaruDesert, with its euphorbia, mimosa scrub, aloe,thorn, and stillness of death : once the bugbearof all travellers to the interior by the British
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35 A Natural Zoo 37 route; now not worth considering, except byfibre experts, some of whom have found it sovaluable that a decorticating plant has beenestablished at Voi. From the railway station at Voi there is agood road practically all the way to the snow-capped and beautiful mountain of Kilima-Njaro, and the country is thickly populatedand well cultivated by the Wataita people, abranch probably of the Gallas. These people have brought the cultivation ofbananas, sweet potatoes, millet, Indian corn, andsugar-cane to a fine art with their wonderfulsystem of irrigation. For ourselves, we shallrejoin our waiting train, after partaking of ourfirst meal since Mombasa, provided at a verysmall charge in the Dak bungalow, quite near tothe railway line. How very different from the old days when ifone wished for a steak, it had to be chosen fromthe innumerable herds of antelope or zebra, thenshot and skinned and cooked ! Not only the Dak bungalow, but the wholecountry onwards from Voi, provid

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