Coffee and rubber plantations have been laid out and promise large returns in the future. The natives raise a great deal of cotton, and cotton gins are located at many of the lake ports. So much cotton is produced that the lake boats cannot keep the wharves and godowns from being overloaded.
Three years' growth is required before the rubber tree is tapped. Several diagonal circles are cut in the bark. A piece of wood, with sharp nails, similar to a hair comb, is pressed against the tender bark. White sap then oozes from the tree and runs down a gutter cut in the bark. At the end of the gutter a tin spout connects, down which the latex runs into a tin cup on the ground. An ounce of sap is produced from a tapping. A tree is tapped every day for a month, then allowed to rest for a month. Sap will run from a tree but half an hour a day. Natives gather the cups from each tree, emptying each ounce in a larger vessel. The latex collected is put in tanks five feet long and six inches wide. The next day the sap is taken out, when it will have become a white strip, like a piece of fat pork. The slab or sheet of raw rubber is next put through a press twice, which squeezes out water and impurities. The sheet of raw rubber remains unbroken, and its thickness is reduced to a quarter of an inch. It is then rolled together, like belting, put into a drying place, where it remains for a month, after which it is shipped North for refining. Before tapping a tree the bark is cleansed with a carbolic acid wash. The sap is white as milk, and sticky, and remains that color until refined. An average of one pound of rubber a month from a tree is a good yield, and the price ranges from $2 to $3 a pound in the raw state. The trees will produce sap for about ten years, and are from two to eight inches in diameter. Some rubber plantations contain hundreds of thousands of trees, and from 200 to 1,000 natives are employed. The wages paid latex gatherers in Uganda are from $1 to $1.50 a month.
At the market place little cleaning-up was necessary, as vultures pick meat blocks and keep the floors white after the day's business.
A good botanical garden that any city of half a million population would be proud of is found in Entebbe. Often groups of monkeys may be seen jumping from limb to limb and from tree to tree in the garden, each following the same route that the first one traveled.
Missions and missionaries are quite numerous in that section of Africa, almost every religious denomination being represented.
A ricksha is the usual means of traveling. When going from place to place, three natives are assigned to a ricksha, two pushing, with one between the shafts. These have bells tied around their ankles, and they sing from the time they start until they have reached the end of their stage. Each team runs about five miles, when three fresh pullers take charge of the vehicle; then the passenger will again spin along the road at a speed of five miles an hour, cheered by the tunes of the natives.
"Safari" is a word much used in the Protectorates. When one camps out, or goes on a country journey, he will be on "safari." Often a man's standing is gauged by the number of natives that accompany him. In the eyes of the natives the man with the largest safari is the bigger man. For that reason a vain man will have a larger force of natives serving him than would be necessary were his position not gauged on that basis. In that and in other ways white men become slaves to the caprice of native opinion.
Natives living in that part of Uganda are ant-eaters. The white ant, another African scourge, builds, unseen, large chocolate-colored mounds of dirt, some of them eight feet in height and from six to eight feet across the base. After reaching a certain age wings grow on the ants, when they emerge from the hill. The natives, aware of the time the exodus is to take place, build a frame of sticks over the cone of the mound, over which is placed a bark cloth. The cone is covered down the sides to a place below which the ants will not break through the dirt. Between the bottom of the upright frame sticks and the mound will be placed a banana leaf, the center pressed down, forming a trench. The ants, on emerging from the mound, fly upward, when they strike the cloth covering and drop into the banana leaf trench. Once their flight is interrupted they cannot fly again. An hour's time is consumed while migrating from the mound—from the time the ants begin to come out until all have left their old home—during which the natives are busy eating the insects that creep out between the leaf cracks. They gather these by the wings, which are an inch in length, and put the live ants into their mouths, wings and all. The swarm of ants is later scooped from the trench, put into baskets made of leaves, taken to the hut, where the wings are plucked, and are then put into a pan and fried. In keeping with the secret and interesting nature of that insect, they do not begin to leave the mound before sunset, and often not until dark. Also, in keeping with the generosity of the Mganda, a member of this tribe, holding a number of ants by their wings in one hand and putting these in his mouth—having an equal number in the other hand—offered to share the winged delicacies with his white spectator.
A variety of grass, from 6 to 12 feet high, called elephant grass, grows in that country. Some ivory hunters have met their death owing to wounded elephants secreting themselves in the tall reeds. A hunter would naturally follow the tracks of the great beast, though, being close to his quarry, he could not see him; but the elephant could see the hunter. Before he could protect himself or escape, the powerful trunk would come down on the hunter and deal him a death blow. Ivory from the tusks of the female elephant is the better grade. Ivory smuggling is said to be practiced in that part of the world, as opium smuggling is in some parts of America. While the tusks of some elephants weigh 25 pounds, the average is 15 pounds. Export and import duty on ivory is very high, which accounts for alleged smuggling in that product. Elephants take 30 years to attain their full growth.
The two most dangerous animals in Africa are the buffalo and the rhinoceros. Most animals will run from man, but a buffalo may be just inside tall grass or a brush thicket, unseen, when he will charge a hunter. The rhinoceros is almost blind, but what he lacks in sight is made up for by his keen scent. As soon as he scents anything he wishes to impale on his horn, he starts in the direction from which he got his lead. When closely pursued by a "rhino," the hunter will stand still until the big beast is immediately in front; then he will side-step. A man can turn much quicker than a "rhino," and in that way one has a chance to get away, or to keep dodging the animal until help comes.