Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-10-31

SUNDAY MAGAZINE
the host in rickshaw and | on a tall gray
country bred pony, through miles of beautiful
forest cool of midday and chill of evening
through patches of open country and elephant
grass in the burning sun, across swamps hinged
round with tall, feathery date palms and wild
figs along the wide belt of papyrus reeds that
for miles fill the entire channel and valley OF
the Seziwa River, the Niles first important
tributary from the west below Ripon.
| And whether along the forty miles of twelve
foot main road or the two hundred miles of
base line and still narrower tapping paths. the
| latter sometimes fifty yards apart and some
times thousand, according to the plenty or
scarcity of tapable trees ever about us rose
the tall silver gray of shafts of the Fnnmnid.
| sometimes standing singly sometimes in close
clusters of a dozen or twenty each bearing the
brown scars of the tappers knife.
The station buildings are usually set on well
cleared Interests the superintendent houses
neat bungalows rooted with tin, whose walls,
lintels doors and window frames are made of
the bamboo-like stems of the elephant grass,
bound together with strands of hbrous bark.
quickly and cheaply made, but snug and
cool.
Of evenings, the nearby native hut villages
are ringing with shouts and laughter over all
sorts of merrymaking horseplay. or over wrest-
ling matches not widely differing from or in
ferior to the Greco Roman style.
Botanical Garden Denominations
MOT content with Mabira's native wealth,
~ hundreds of acres about Mbango and the
outlying stations are cleared and planted with
Para and Futumnia, with sisal, cocoa, coffee,
croton oil plant indigo, citronella, cassava.
bananas, sweet potatoes pines, papayas, crops
that, in the thick black loan that makes all
Uganda like to the most luXurlant garden, yield
in profits to the acre two to four times that
realized in temperate zone farming.
Nor is this work IN any measure grOplng or
experimental, for it is under the direction OF
Ernest Brown, formerly an assistant IN the
botanical gardens of Entebbe, where for years
careful study and demonstration has been
going on to prove what commercially valuable
tree and plant life thrives best here. There it
has been proved that, while the CdSftlLod efds-
tied of Central America apparently natures
well, it yields no latex; that Para trees four
years old may measure at three feet from the
ground up to eighteen and three-quarters
inches, and sixteen and one-quarter at six feet,
seven-year- trees up to twenty-seven and
one-half inches at three feet and twenty-three
and one quarter inches at six feet, and at the
latter age may be relied on for one-quarter of
pound to the tree, while after nine years they
are good for one pound; that sisal produces
three per cent. of net fiber against the prime
yield Of three and one-haf per cent. in German
East African coast plantations, where sisal
planters are netting profits up to eighty per
cent
These are dry statistics, perhaps, at first
glance, but vital 10 ruDDer ana nDer manu-
facturers and users of our own country, vital
to our ever swelling surplus capital seeking safe
and profitable employment abroad, absorbing
to the thousands of the more adventurous of
our younger generation, sons of the men who
tackled and tanned the trans-Missouri region,
and whose blood cries out for chance of like
exploits and opportunities.
For myself, an old pioneer of wild places,
and recalling how twenty-five years ago we used
to hustle and compete for arid tracks of grazing
land at fifty cents to two dollars an acre, in
Northwestern Texas and New Mexico, lands
valueless for anything but grazing, which
would carry no more than one head of cattle to
fifteen acres: how the farms of the Eastern and
Central States had to be hewn out of solid walls
of forest and in many places the soil delved for
among rocks in climate where years work
had to be crowded into half year to keep man
and beast from perishing during the other half it
is tremendously impressive to see in British East
Africa lands that will easily carry head of cat
tie to each acre and keep them fat, or here in
Uganda millions of acres under no heavier
growth than elephant grass whose every
square foot is rich and moist as the soil in a
nursery pot, and that besides its high priced
tropical products, grows in big yields at one
point or another, according to altitude and
rainfall most of the grains, vegetables, and
fruits of the temperate zone; lands available to
all corners at two rupees (sixty-six cents) the