DISCOVERY OF THE VICTORIA N'YANZA. 37 



from the cold and moisture of the earth. This dis- 

 trict is occupied by a tribe called "Waumba; to the 

 east of it, thirty miles distant, are the "Wanatiya, and 

 thirty miles westward, the Wazinza tribes. 



At 6 A.M. on the 27th we crawled through the open- 

 ing in the palisading which forms the entrances of 

 these villages, and at once perceived a tall, narrow pil- 

 lar of granite, higher than Pompey's at Alexandria, or 

 kelson's Monument in Charing Cross, towering above 

 us, and having sundry huge boulders of the same com- 

 position standing around its base, much in the same 

 peculiar way as we see at Stonehenge, on Salisbury 

 Plain. This scene strikes one with wonderment at 

 the oddities of nature, and taxes one's faculties to 

 imagine how on earth the stones ever became tilted 

 up in this extraordinary position ; but farther on, 

 about five miles distant, we encountered another and 

 even higher pillar, that quite overtopped the trees 

 and everything about it. This and the former one 

 served as good station-marks for the whole journey, 

 the latter being visible at eight miles' distance. After 

 the first eight miles, which terminates the cultivated 

 district of Salawe", the track penetrated a waterless 

 desert of thorn and small tree forest, lying in a broad 

 valley between low hills. As the sick Belooch still 

 occupied my steadier donkey Ted, I was compelled to 

 mount the half-broken Jenny so playful with her 

 head and heels, that neither the Shaykh nor any other 

 man dared sit upon her. The man's sickness appears 



