Farther south comes the influence of the regular equatorial rains. The steppe gives place to grasslands, and, above all, to marshes,--hopeless marshes of papyrus, of Phragmites reeds, of the fleecy _Vossia_ grass, of the floating _Pistia stratiotes_, the amaranth, the water-lily, and the ambatch (a gouty bean with orange-coloured blossoms). In these marshes swarm the hippopotamuses and crocodiles, long banished from Egypt proper. Here strides and poses the extraordinary _Balæniceps rex_ or Whale-headed stork. Sacred ibises, spoonbills, stilts, herons, marabou storks, white storks, black storks, saddle-billed storks, tantalus storks, Egyptian geese, spur-winged geese, knobnose geese, ducks of many kinds frequent this dreary land, that, save to birds, has no horizon; for everywhere the view is shut in with walls of reed and rush and amphibious bush. Yet away beyond the marshes--marshes which are really hidden lakes and mighty rivers with false banks of floating vegetation--is a grassy country dotted with stony hillocks, if one travels far enough from the river, and inhabited by naked Nile Negroes. These are tall black men with long, thin shanks, and the gait and attitudes of wading birds. They are cattle-keepers, above all, and their vast unseen herds beyond the marsh lands breed and send forth periodically for the devastation of Africa those cattle plagues which recur at intervals of a few years. [Illustration: TROPICAL FOREST AT ENTEBBE, ON THE NORTH-WEST SHORES OF VICTORIA NYANZA, (Now turned into Botanical Gardens.)] To the southwest of Marshland begins an attractive, even beautiful, park-like country of rolling, grassy downs, interspersed with fine trees of ample foliage, with belts of forest along the rivers. Beyond the parklands rises that tremendous tropical forest which passes thence uninterruptedly over the water-parting into the basin of the Congo. This tropical forest, only to be rivalled in luxuriance by that of the Amazons in South America, stretches in a crescent curve along the southwestern edge of the Nile basin to Ruwenzori, and, with a few interruptions, into Unyoro, Uganda, and the northern shores of the Victoria Nyanza. On the plateaux lying to the northeast of the Victoria Nyanza are other areas of dense forest, but not always tropical in character,--forests consisting of great conifers and tree-heaths, which reappear on the high mountains of Abyssinia. To the immediate south of the marshy country appears more parkland on either side of the Mountain Nile, and in the countries of the Acholi, the Lango, and the Lotuka. Beyond this parkland is the great area of marshes between the Victoria Nile and Mount Elgon. North of Elgon the parkland becomes more arid. East and west of the Victoria Nyanza are beautiful and healthy plateaux ranging from six thousand to ten thousand feet in altitude, and highly suggestive of Europe and the Cape of Good Hope in their vegetation.