Through Ruanda to Lake Kiwu 69 



left of the little wood. They fell the best trees, hew down the 

 bamboo-cane, and burn away the undergrowth ; consequently, the 

 few trees which are left standing perish also. They then till the 

 land and sow it with peas, and proceed to impoverish Ruanda by 

 treating further tracts of forest in the same fashion. If the 

 people settled on this land thus made arable and fit for tillage, 

 there would be some sense in it ; but simply to burn a bit of forest 

 away to plant a few peas, and then destroy it further, bit by bit, 

 causes everyone regret, even though they be not experts on 

 afforestation or sylviculture, more especially in a country so lack- 

 ing in trees as Ruanda.' 



" I cannot vouch for the existence of these ' patriarchs,' but 

 as to the devastation of the forest, the missionary, Roehl, has 

 certainly not misrepresented matters. 



" The forest received us into its arms, the mountain forest of 

 Rugege, as beautiful as any in Usambara, or on the Uganda 

 Railway, or on the Mau plateau ; glorious in its splendour and 

 its exuberance, yet almost oppressive in consequence of its pro- 

 fusion of vegetation entirely new to us, which we at first nearly 

 despaired of mastering. 



" As we knew we could not be far av/ay from the upper source 

 of the Rukarara, we decided to camp in its vicinity. We soon 

 found it, a clear stream flowing through marsh and woody dingle, 

 perhaps only some two or three metres broad and thirty centi- 

 metres deep. On the further side we saw a hill covered with a 

 sort of steppe grass, fairly level at its base. At first we thought 

 of camping there, but as we had a vivid remembrance of the cold 

 on the previous night, and we feared the strong radiation in the 

 open space, we clambered up the hill and pitched our camp on 

 the edge of the forest under the protection of the trees. There 

 we rested — some forty metres above the cradle of the sacred Nile 

 and some two thousand metres above the level of the sea — and 

 gazed out into the brilliant moonlight towards the mountain 

 forest, in which the tops of the trees showed up clear and 

 distinct in the silvery light. Then we looked down at the delicate 

 shrub lacery that embroiders the course of the Rukarara and up 



