RUWENZORI AND ITS SNOWS 189 



The villages of the Bakoiijo and Baamba are often very prettilv 

 perched on the summits of subsidiary supports of the mountain at 

 altitudes of 6,000 or 7,000 feet. These little collections of neat huts, 

 made of banana leaves, are ensconced in sheltered nooks on ledges and 

 jilatforms overhanging great precipices. These people dwell no higher 

 than the banana will flourish, though in their hunting expeditions after 

 the hyrax, whose flesh they love, they go sometimes to the verge of the 

 snow. They are very fond of smoking hemp or tobacco, but especially 

 hemp, in pipes made of the long stem of a banana frond. These ])eople 

 wear little or nothing in the way of clothing when in their homes. They 

 start for their excursions towards the snow-line shielded at most by capes 

 of hyrax or monkey I'ur. When these men were with me about the 

 snow and ice, I supplied them with blankets, but they would often leave 

 these behind in the rock shelters where we were camped sooner than 

 have the bother of carrying them. 



It is curious that the southern prolongation of the Ruwenzori range 

 towards Lake Albert Edward should exhibit a certain tendency to drought 

 and a relatively poorer vegetation, with a greater proportion of bare rock, 

 than the other parts of the mountain east, west, and north, whereon 

 a rainfall of over 100 inches a year is precipitated. At the base of 

 these southern spurs of Kuwenzori the country has quite a parched and 

 sterile aspect. This is something like, though not so })lainly marked, the 

 contrast between the south side and the north side of Kilimanjaro, though 

 in the case of the last-named mountain it is the south side which is 

 endowed witli a heavy rainfall and abundant vegetation. 



The country round the base of Ruwenzori is very often suliject ta 

 earthquake shocks. These are sometimes severe enough to lay buildings 

 of wattle and daub in ruins. Hot springs, as I have already mentioned,, 

 are found at intervals all round the lower parts of the mountain, and 

 the chain of extinct craters with crater lakes in them extends almost 

 unbroken from the north-western part of Ankole to the north end of 

 Kuwenzori, along the foot-hills. ISome of these crater lakes of East and 

 North Toro are as beautiful as those I have described in Ankole, and 

 contain small fish and numbers of duck and grebe, the large-crested 

 grebe, as well as the small South African dabchick. 



