THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 167 



Ikorongo. We were at the head of a long easy slope 

 to a distant stream, and could look across to another 

 range about eight miles away, with a fine table moun- 

 tain in it. After a time we struck into a beaten broad 

 path, and so about eleven came to the village of Iko- 

 rongo, and saw our first Ungruimi. 



The village consisted of scattered houses, each with 

 its boma of thorn or young euphorbia shoots, and its 

 little flock of granaries, like children about it. The 

 houses are large and neat, made of a stout wall three or 

 four feet high, and a high-pointed thatched roof through 

 which the centre pole projects. This is triumphantly 

 topped with an empty gourd from which sometimes 

 little palms are growing. I suspect this latter is less 

 from a sense of aesthetics than as a charm or magic. 

 The granaries are exactly similar except that they are 

 taller in the walls in proportion to their height, which 

 is in the waUs seven or eight feet by four or five in diam- 

 eter. They are rarely perpendicular, so they stand 

 about in drunken fashion as though coming home from 

 a debauch. The grass roofs are held down by heavy 

 twisted grass ropes thrown around them neghgently 

 with quite the air of a garland. 



The people keep chickens, dogs, goats, sheep, and 

 the fattest, finest humped cattle I have seen out here.* 



They raise a sort of rape called m 'wembe which they 



*This place is in the extreme limit of the tsetse country; in fact, I found 

 several abandoned villages where the deadly fly had of late years extended 

 its boundaries. 



