U G A N D A
five days’ march ahead of the Catholic. I was told that
the Catholics had devastated all the country on their
line of march, but I am bound to say that I still found
enough food for my men. It was, however, to say the
least of it, curious that the Catholics went this way instead
of crossing their own provinces, and it hardly seemed the
best way to avoid friction between the two parties.
On the 27th we had a hard day’s march through the
usual swamps, the principal feature of which was the
passage of the river Moanja. It is overgrown with
papyrus, like all the streams in this part of the world,
but is unfortunately deep in the middle—about six feet.
A bridge had been built over it, but of course my donkey
demolished the whole thing as soon as he set hoof on i t ;
and, instead of wading up to the knee, the porters who
followed descended to the waist. The more people passed,
the lower the bridge sank under water, until presently one
of my men went up to the neck. It took an hour’s work
on the part of all my men to get the women and children
over. We then followed the right bank of the river.
It here flows towards the north between a succession of
little hills, among which were marshy valleys covered
with superb tropical forests. As my last pair of boots had
lost their soles the day before, the passing of any difficult
place was no joke. Moreover, as I was trying to cross a
particularly muddy swamp on my donkey, that sagacious
beast plunged up to the belly, and then fell on his side and
shot me into the middle of the mud.
The next day was like the preceding—the same kind of
rivers, the same country, and very similar conduct on the
part of the donkey ; otherwise it was only enlivened by
an attempt, of the women and of some'of the porters to
steal a heap of monkey nuts which were drying in the
sun outside a hut. They were duly chastised.
On Christmas Eve I was so bad with fever that I could
not start till one in the afternoon. My boots were in
pieces, and it was not a pleasing reflection that I should