2i6 FROM KIVU TO TANGANYIKA 



by European settlers. The land is amazingly fertile, 

 and the natives, who are industrious, lack only 

 training to become excellent agriculturists. The 

 Belgians, for some reason, have a strong prejudice 

 against the district, and officials very much resent 

 being sent there, perhaps because a few people 

 have died there of ' blackwater ' fever, but the 

 disease was almost certainly contracted elsewhere. 

 The country is high, the rains are not very severe, 

 and the climate ought, on the face of it, to be 

 perfectly healthy ; personally, I felt more ' fit ' there 

 than I had done at any time since we left Ruwenzori. 

 Sheep and cattle thrive extraordinarily all over the 

 district ; the former are so cheap that at Nya- 

 Lukemba we bought twelve for six dotis of 

 calico — that is, at a cost of about one shilling 

 and threepence a piece. Congo officers returning 

 from Kivu generally take a flock of sheep with 

 them, and if only as many as lo per cent, of them 

 survive the journey, they are sure to make a large 

 profit by selling them when they reach the Congo, 

 where sheep are rare and costly. 



As we went south from Lake Kivu, we found the 

 hills becoming steeper and less cultivated, until they 

 culminated in a succession of knife-edoed ridsfes 

 at the top of slopes covered with grass and flowers, 

 and in the valleys were roaring torrents. About 

 thirty miles from the lake the hills end abruptly, 

 and fall away steeply into the Tanganyika plain. 

 Coming over the last of the ridges, we saw the end 



