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 north-west through Ufa, receiving a number of tributaries, among which the Syun, the Tanyp and the Ufa are also navigable. The Byelaya is an important channel for trade; but it sometimes drops to so low an ebb in summer that Steamers cannot proceed beyond Birsk. The Kama flows for 120 m. along the western border of the government.

The average temperature at the city of Ufa is 37° F., and the winter is extremely cold (January 5·5° F., July 68° F.); at the Zlatoust observatory the average temperature is only 32·2° (January 2°; July 61·8°). Even in the hilly tracts of Zlatoust the annual rainfall is not more than 19 in. The rivers are frozen 158 days at Ufa and 202 at Zlatoust.

The estimated population in 1900 was 2,620,600. The government is divided into six districts, the chief towns of which are Ufa, Belebey, Birsk, Menzelinsk, Sterlitamak and Zlatoust. Towns have sprung up around the ironworks at Zatkinsk, Yurezan and Katav-Ivanovsk. The Russian element in the population has rapidly increased (in 1897, 45%; in 1865, 36%), the other ethnographical elements being mainly Bashkirs, Tatars and Meshcheryaks. together with Chuvashes and Cheremisses, Votyaks and Mordvinians. Since the wholesale plundering of the Bashkir lands, which took place under Alexander II., the land has been sold by the nobles, and bought chiefly by the merchant class. Large estates are common, though it is the peasants and the peasants' co-operative societies that cultivate most of the area under crops. Agriculture has greatly developed, owing partly to the Russian immigration and partly to the educational efforts of the local councils; in 1900 there were 4,860,000 acres (16%) under crops and 9,780,000 acres (32%) under cultivation. The principal crops are rye, wheat, oats, barley, millet, buckwheat and potatoes.

UFA, a town and river-port of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, situated 326 m. by rail N.E. of Samara, on the main line from Moscow to Siberia, at the confluence of the Ufa with the Byelaya. Pop., 49,275. The better part of the town contains two cathedrals and a few churches; the remainder is a scattered aggregation of small wooden houses. There are a museum, a public library and a theological seminary; and the industries include iron and copper works, machinery works and saw-mills.

Ufa was founded in 1574. The wooden kreml, or fort, protected by wooden towers and an outer earthen wall, had to sustain the attacks of the revolted Bashkirs and Russian serfs in 1662 and at later dates; and in 1773 Chika, one of the chiefs of the Pugachev revolt, besieged it for four months.

UGANDA, a British protectorate in Eastern Equatorial Africa, lying between Lakes Victoria and Albert and between the Mountain Nile and Lake Rudolf. The same name was originally applied to the Bantu kingdom of Buganda, which is one of the five provinces of the protectorate, but which is now styled officially by the correct native name of “Buganda.” The Swahili followers of the first explorers always pronounced the territorial prefix, Bu, as a simple vowel, U; hence the incorrect rendering “Uganda” of the more primitive Bantu designation. It was first applied to the kingdom of Mutesa, discovered by J. H. Speke in 1862, and in time came to include the large protectorate which grew out of the extension of British influence over Buganda.

Boundaries and Area.—On the north the frontier of the protectorate is an undetermined line running between Lado (which lies a little north of 5° N.) on the Mountain Nile and the watershed of Lake Rudolf. This northern boundary is in any case conterminous with the southern boundary of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. On the east the limit of the Uganda Protectorate in 1901 was the thalweg of Lake Rudolf and a line drawn from the south-eastern coast of that lake south along the edge of the Laikipia and Kikuyu escarpments to the frontier of German East Africa.. The southern frontier of Uganda was the 1st degree of S. lat.; the western was the 30th meridian of E. long., from the German frontier on the south, across Albert Edward Nyanza and the Semliki River to the line of water parting between the systems of the Congo and the Nile (in the country of Mboga); thence northwards this western boundary descended to the north coast of Albert Nyanza at Mahagi, and then followed the main stream of the Nile to about 5° N. In 1904, however, it was found that the 30th meridian had been placed some 25 m. west of its true position in the maps used when the frontier was agreed upon, and that if it was maintained as the dividing line it would cut off the Uganda Protectorate from access to Albert Edward Nyanza while giving a corner of the Congo forest to Uganda. A survey commission was subsequently dispatched, and in 1910 British, Belgian and German delegates met in Brussels to draw up a new frontier line. Germany was interested in the dispute, inasmuch as the southern frontier of the Uganda Protectorate coincided with the northern frontier of German East Africa. Moreover Germany, Great Britain and Belgium (as inheritor of the Congo State) had conflicting claims in the region N.E. of Lake Kivu. On the 14th of May 1910 a protocol was signed defining the new frontier as follows: From the north end of Lake Kivu the Congo-German frontier turns east by north, traversing the volcanic region of Mfumbiro and crosses the summit of Mt Karissimbi to the summit of Mt Sabyino, where the British, Belgian and German frontiers meet. From Mt Sabyino the frontier between Belgian Congo and the Uganda Protectorate goes in a direct line north to Mt Nkabwe, and thence along the Ishasha River, to its mouth on the S.E; shores of Albert Edward Nyanza. Thence it crosses that lake in a straight line and afterwards the Ruwenzori to its highest point, Margherita peak, whence it follows the Lamia River to its junction with the Semliki. From that point the frontier is formed by the Semliki to its mouth and the middle of Albert Nyanza to a point opposite Mahagi, where it meets the Congo-Sudan frontier.

Meantime in 1903 the then Eastern province of the Uganda Protectorate had been transferred to the adjoining East Africa Protectorate, the new eastern boundary being the west coast of Lake Rudolf, the river Turkwel, the eastern flanks of Mt Elgon, the Sio River, and a line running south from the mouth of the Sio across Victoria Nyanza to 1° S. The area of the protectorate, approximately 150,000 sq. m. in 1901, has been reduced by these changes to about 110,000 sq. m.