186 A NATURALIST IN MID-AFRICA. 



The authorities for the preceding are chiefly 

 the maps given in the Challenger reports. For 

 Nyassaland, however, I have copied Captain 

 Kobertson's report : vide British Central African 

 Gazette, vol. i. p. 14. For Mombasa I have 

 used results given me by Captain Coathupe, 

 formerly in command of the Indus in Kilindini 

 harbour ; and for Zanzibar I have copied from 

 the Zanzibar Gazette, Nov. 14, 1894. 



The climate of Mombasa itself and the whole 

 of the dry Thorn-tree Acacia desert, as far as 

 Kibwezi, is probably not at all a bad one. This is 

 part of the curious waterless zone of East Africa, 

 which occupies a very large proportion of the 

 German territory and ends northwards in the 

 unmitigated deserts of Somaliland. This is the 

 second sub-division of the Cocoanut zone noticed 

 above. It is, of course, the drought that renders 

 it comparatively healthy. Mombasa island, though 

 it should have a climate almost as bad as Zanzibar, 

 consists of coral rock and has no appearance, so 

 far as the vegetation goes, of the dense tangled 

 and moist jungle which seems, according to Cap- 

 tain Lugard, to mark the Sabakhi valley. On the 

 other hand, the heat is extremely trying. During 

 my journey I had at Buchuma a temperature of 

 102 degrees in the shade of a double-roofed tent, 

 and at Ngomeni of 104! The average maxim urn 

 temperature, as far as Mto Andei, being as much 

 as 93 degrees. Such temperatures never occurred 



