AND THE IIUDOLP BASIN 



;57 



The seeiierv round Kisuiuu and Port Florence is not particularly 

 preposses^^ing. Indeed, the tourist's first introduction to the Victoria 

 Nvanza at this point will occasion him much disappointment. All he 

 will see before him is Kavirondo Bay or Gulf, that lengthy northern 

 l)rolongation of the ^'ictoria Nyanza. This is a huge backwater of the 

 lake, where the water stagnates and entirely loses the blue limpidity 

 ordinarily characteristic of the Victoria Nyanza. It has a dirty green or 

 even a dirty hrown look. »Seen from a distance wiien ruffled by the wind, 

 it so closely resembles a red ploughed field that it is difficult to belieye 

 you are looking on a sheet of water. The ground is either a rank marsh 

 (where the only b(^auti(ul feature are the numerous sacred ibises of 



31. ox KAVIKONDO DAY, VIC'TOIUA NYANZA 



inky black and snowy white) or harsh rock. There are yery few trees, 

 and the principal object in all these landscapes is the candelabra eu])hoi-Iiia. 

 If the reader (who will frequently see this form of yegetation api)e;iring 

 and reappearing in my })hotoora})hs) wishes to realise what this strange 

 tree looks like, let him imagine a gigantic cabbage or cauliflower which 

 has run to stalk, only to countless stalks, many-jointed, and of gouty 

 thickness. They curye u})wards from the head of the trunk something 

 like the arms of a candelabra. The stem which supports this heavy mass 

 of succulent yegetation is short, irregular in its swollen girth, and generally 

 of a scaly grev. Tlie huge plant is usually loosely and insufficiently 

 rooted in the soil, for it freciuently topples over with its own weight in a 



