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National Geographic : 1909 Mar
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AMID THE SNOW PEAKS OF THE EQUATOR The path is nearly always as bad as can be-often it is nothing but a succession of fallen trees and muddy elephant-baths; but there is a subtle fascination about walking through the forest, which in creases as the days go by. The best way to feel the forest is to walk far ahead or, as I lazily preferred to do, miles behind the caravan, far beyond the sound of a disturbing gunshot or of the unceasing chatter of the porters. Sometimes there is a sound of crashing through the trees, where a herd of elephants have been dis turbed in their siesta; sometimes a troop of monkeys dash twittering through the tree-tops, or huge topheavy-looking hornbills fly overhead screaming uncouth discords; but more often the silence of the forest is unbroken and complete, and you may walk for miles at a time and not hear a sound or see a sign of living crea ture. It may be only a result of the half gloom and one's sense of smallness amid the vast surroundings, or it may be an instinct inherited from prehistoric forest dwelling ancestors; but, whatever the cause may be, you find yourself walking with unwonted care and ever on the alert for an unknown something. It was only in the infrequent clearings, where we camped, that we realized how immense, compared with our insignifi cant tents, the trees of the forest are; as a rule, their height is greater in propor tion to their girth than is the case with an ash or an elm. The forest is seldom level; it is always gently rising or falling, as much one way as another, and it was not until we found one day that the streams were no longer flowing to our right into the Semliki that we realized that we had crossed the watershed into the basin of the Congo. Wandering on, day after day, through the forest, one began to wonder, "Shall we come out of it all some day, as one does from a tunnel?" and our coming out of it was almost as sudden as that. Without any warning, except that for a mile or so the trees had become perhaps a little smaller, the forest ended abruptly, and we found ourselves on the edge of an open, hilly, grass country that stretched as far as we could see to east and north. LIONS ARE NOT USUALLY DANGEROUS The few inhabitants of the district about Albert Edward Nyanza, on the Uganda side, seem to be almost wholly a water-side people, who live entirely by fishing. At the southeast corner of the lake are some curious colonies of lake dwellers, whose huts are built several yards from the shore, with the object, presumably, of escaping the attack of the lions, which are always in attendance on large herds of game. At a small village at the extreme south end of the lake our camp was surrounded by a high reed fence for the same purpose, and only a few days before we arrived there a man, who incautiously went outside the fence after dark, had been carried off and eaten. They are chiefly nocturnal in their habits,' and the country where they live is usually so densely clothed with grass or scrub that, unless you go out with the express purpose of hunting them, the chances are very much against catching a glimpse of a lion at all. In cultivated districts, so far from being a source of public danger, lions may be looked upon as the friend of the agriculturist. Like the tigers in some parts of India, their favorite food is the wild pigs and small antelopes which play such havoc among the crops, and their complete extermina tion would not prove to be by any means an unmixed blessing. It is only very rarely that men are attacked by them. Of course, if a man is foolish enough to walk about after dark, he offers a tempt ing meal which no hungry lion would be likely to refuse; but instances of lions, like the famous man-eaters of Tsavo, ac quiring a preference for human flesh and breaking into huts and tents to seize men are quite exceptional. VIRULENT EVER CAUSED BY TICKS We had intended to stop for a few days to visit the villages of the lake dwellers, but in that we had reckoned without the spirillum. There is a species 271
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