62 



THE CENTRAL PROVINCE 



exceeding 9,700 feet. This is probably correct ; but as the mountain rises 

 sheer from a flattish plain studded with tiny volcanic cones — a plain which 

 is at a general altitude of 4,000 feet — it has the appearance of attaining 

 to at least 10,000 or 11,000 feet at its highest point. Parts of Pebasien 

 are richly clothed with forest, but farther to the north the rich vegetation 

 on the mountains gradually disappears, and the heights assume an arid 

 appearance of tumbled rocks interspersed with stunted trees and thin 

 grass. 



Away to the east of Pebasien the eye of the landscape artist notes 

 with delight the fantastic heights of the Sfik and the Karamojo 

 Mountains, some of them with crags thousands of feet in altitude, 

 rising perpendicular or inclined at an angle of 100 , as if falling over. 

 On the south-east of Pebasien appear those strange pyramidal hillocks 

 to which I have made allusion in describing the »Suk country. I 

 cannot insist too much on the remarkably regular form of these natural 

 pyramids. One feels convinced again and again in regarding them that 

 they must be artificial mounds, like those vestiges of a lost civilisation in 

 North America. They are, I suppose, little more than the worn-down 

 fragments of a table-land, though what agency causes them to assume their 



53. A DISTANT VIEW OF MOV.NT DEBA.SIEN (FROM NORTH-EAST ELGON), WITH HVK PYRAMIDAL 



HILLS IN FOREGROUND 



