384 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1891. 



The forests have a most curious appearauce. The trees, although often 

 of very thick trunks, are not tall but somewhat stunted. The trunks 

 and larger branches are completely covered with orchids, lichens, ferns, 

 and moss. From every limb and twig hang long festoons of gray moss 

 {orchUlaf), while the ground is thickly carpeted with ferns of a species 

 resembling "love in a tangle" {selaginella). 



Some of the huge tree trunks are perfect botanical gardens, from the 

 number and variety of the plants growing upon them. As to Ohaga, it 

 has but few e(]uals on the earth in beauty of scenery. Looking from 

 the porch of my house, the prospect lies before me of hill rising beyond 

 hill crowned with plantations of bananas, hillsides covered with grain, 

 and pastures dotted with flocks of sheep and goats in the little val- 

 leys. Two thousand feet below stretches the vast wilderness of plain into 

 Masai-land, with Mount Meru in the distance; above me, over the zone 

 of forest, rises the snow capped dome of Kibo. Truly one's lot might 

 be cast in worse places than in Chaga. 



Chaga stretches from Useri upon the extreme northeast corner of the 

 mountain to Kibonoto on the southwest corner, a distance of about 60 

 miles, and is inhabited by a population of about 60,000. At no point 

 does the cultivation extend lower than 3,000 feet, and nowhere above 

 5,400. This narrow zone is from two to four or five miles Avide. It is 

 divided into no less than thirty states, each governed by a more or less 

 independent sultan, and separated from its neighbors by a strip of 

 wilderness or by a deep gorge, as the case may be. The largest state, 

 Machame, contains probably 10,000 people, while some of the lesser 

 have only a hundred or two subjects. 



The state of Useri lies at the northern corner. It has a population 

 of 5,000 to 6,000, and is governed by Malimia, an energetic sultan, who 

 is, however, rather shy of strangers, having a fear of being bewitched. 

 When Bishop Parker visited him a few years ago he was kept waiting 

 two days before being accorded an audience. 



Mr. Stephens and I visited him a year since, but his majesty declined 

 an interview. West of Useri lies Kimangelia, divided among a number 

 of small chiefs, all feudatories of Useri. South, along the whole east 

 face of Kilimanjaro, are the Kombo, the poorest and most primitive of 

 the Wa Chaga. They have but little intercourse with the coast traders, 

 and no European has yet visited their country. They are divided into 

 at least ten chieftaincies, some of which are feudatories of Mandara; 

 others, being independent, form convenient hunting-grounds for the 

 slave raids of that chief and his allies. 



At the southeast corner of Chaga is the little state of Mwika; next 

 to the westward is the Msai, divided into upper and lower. Then comes 

 Mambo. All these are small and unimportant. Next in order is Marang, 

 whose sultan, Miliari, has 500 to 600 warriors. He is a great friend 

 to the Buroi)eans, and is about the best chief to have intercourse 

 with that can be found in Africa. I have lived in his country many 

 months, and never had the slightest trouble with him. All his Eu- 



