[Illustration: A Warm Reception. (See page 46.)]
A STORY OF UGANDA AND THE GREAT CONGO FOREST
What good gift have my brothers, but it came From search and strife and loving sacrifice? SIR EDWIN ARNOLD
HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW TORONTO, MELBOURNE, CAPE TOWN, BOMBAY
REPRINTED 1922 IN GREAT BRITAIN BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH
_Your birthday has come round again--and here, with every good wish, is another book for your shelf. No mailed knights this time; our story is of the present day. Yet you shall find paynim hordes as many and as fierce as you please; yes, and chivalry itself, or I am much mistaken,--although we may not spell it with a capital C. For it is a theory of mine--"Old Uncle and his theories!" I hear you say!--that the spirit of chivalry is as much alive to-day as ever, and finds as free a scope. And if chivalry is, as I take it to be, the championing of the weak and the oppressed, no region of the world offers a wider field than Central Africa, where there is still ample work for the countrymen of Livingstone and Gordon. Some day, perhaps, you may yourself visit that land, and come back with as deep a sense of its glamour and pathos as the rest of us. Meanwhile, since even at Harrow the sky is not always clear, why not on some rainy afternoon pack up your traps and transport yourself in imagination to Uganda with Tom Burnaby? If you return with a certain stock of information about the land and its people--well, your old uncle will be all the better pleased. Not, of course, that this trip should be a reason for neglecting your football--or other duties!_
_Your affectionate uncle,_ _HERBERT STRANG._
PLATE I A WARM RECEPTION . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
PLAN II BAREGA'S VILLAGE DURING THE SIEGE
_A belt of matted woodland. At the edge, three Belgian officers, in light uniform and white topee, lying prone, and peering cautiously out through glasses. Before them, a wide clearing, with a mud-walled town in the midst, and huge forest-trees beyond. Behind, a few score stalwart Bangala, strewn panting on the ground. Over all, the swarming sunlit haze of tropical Africa._
_The gates stand open; peace reigns in Kabambari. But what is peace in Kabambari? Some hundreds of negro slaves are tilling sorghum in the cultivated tract outside the stockaded walls. Their chains clank as they move heavily down the field, dogged by an Arab overseer armed with rifle, scimitar, and whip. The pitiless sun, scorching their bent backs, blackens the scars left by the more pitiless scourge._
