CLIMATE— FLOEA— FAUNA. 75 



dale alternate with the plateaux ; but during the rainy season the land is mostly 

 flooded or changed to a swamp. All the villages and cultivated tracts have had to 

 be distributed over the uplands, the intervening valleys being utilised only as 

 grazing lands during the dry season. The hills consist of granites clothed here 

 and there with a thin layer of vegetable humus, sufficient to support a little brush- 

 wood. 



East of the inland sea the soil, being less copiously watered, is strewn with 

 brackish or saline depressions, while farther north a large space between the Victoria 

 and Albert lakes is occupied by fresh water morasses, thickets of the nenuphar 

 plant, sluggish streams flowing in broad winding beds. 



Climate — Flora — Fauna. 



Although the Victoria Nyanza is intersected by the equator, the normal heats 

 are tempered by the elevation of the land, by the free passage it offers to every 

 atmospheric current, and by the arborescent vegetation fostered by the tropical rains. 

 Hence the high temperatures prevalent in Nubia, twenty degrees north of the equator, 

 are unknown in this favoured region. Systematic observations made at Rubaga, 

 capital of TJ-Ganda, just north of the line, show that the epithet of " torrid " is 

 inapplicable to the climate of these countries. The glass never rose above 95° F. 

 or fell below 51°, the mean between these extremes being about 79° for the whole 

 year. This is the temperature of Canton, Tunis, and New Orleans, and is much 

 lower than that of Cairo, Bagdad, Havana, Rio de Janeiro, not to speak of such 

 sultry places as Bushir, Mascat, Karachi, Bistra, or Murzuk, &c. 



The prevailing winds are from the south and south-east, attracted by the rarefied 

 air of the Sahara. Storms, which nearly always take place about the same hour in 

 the afternoon, are generally the result of a collision between these southern currents 

 and others from the north and north-west. In this region, which corresponds with, 

 that of the "Black Cauldron" in the Atlantic, heavy rains prevail throughout 

 the year, except perhaps in July, which is a comparatively dry month. The greatest 

 downpours are in September, October, and November, and again in April, although 

 according to Wilson the mean annual rainfall does not exceed 50 inches in TJ-Ganda, 

 where there are no lofty ranges to intercept the moisture-charged clouds. The 

 months are here marked by no transitions of heat and cold, and as the rainy seasons 

 of autumn and spring are the most conspicuous phenomena of the solar year, the 

 people of TJ-Ganda have taken as the natural divisions of time these epochs, which 

 also coincide with their agricultural divisions. Hence their years are only half the 

 length of ours, each consisting of six months, the first of which is called the " sowing 

 month," the five others the " eating months." 



Favoured by an abundant rainfall, the flora is very rich in the fertile regions 

 encircling Lake Victoria, where the soil consists of vegetable humus resting on a 

 red clay mixed with sand some 35 feet thick. In TJ-Ganda about the equator there 

 is no break in the verdure which everywhere clothes the land. The banana and 

 other plantations, forming extensive gardens in which the villages are embowered 



