32 EASTERN ETHIOPIA m 



lives of men and beasts as well as projjerty. The boat 

 from which we witnessed this terrible display had a 

 piece of the mainmast detached by lightning in a 

 previous voyage. 8omc of the American passengers 

 appropriated the fragments with the intention of 

 having them made into paper-knives as souvenirs of 

 the storm. 



A Government official who knows the lake and its 

 vicinity well explains the frequency and the inteusit}^ 

 of these electrical storms by the fact that the hills, 

 especially on the north-eastern shores of the lake, 

 contain ironstone in large quantity, and especially on 

 the Nandi escarpment. Standing on the hills above the 

 escarpment the storms seem to be beneath the feet of 

 the observer, and the currents of lightning appear to 

 strike the face of the cliffs. 



The destructive force of such stoi'ms may be 

 appreciated when one learns that thirty -two head of 

 cattle were killed by one of these terrible flaming electric 

 swords. These storms are accompanied by extremely 

 heavy rain — more correctly, falling sheets of water. 



In the rainy season waterspouts occur, so that a 

 voyage on the Victoria Nyanza may be as much marred 

 by wind, storms, and rain as a voyage on the ocean. 

 There is another curious and also unpleasant occurrence 

 occasionally encountered on this wonderful lake, namely 

 mosquito clouds. One morning whilst crossing the 

 lake in the neighbourhood of the Buvuma archipelago I 

 noticed in several directions an appearance like clouds 

 of smoke, and at first thought that these smoke clouds 

 came from fires on the islands. On watching them 

 closely and remembering that the surface of the lake is 

 nearly four thousand feet above sea-level I thought 

 they might be clouds. Then the columns assumed 

 fantastic shapes and began to gyrate over the lake, 

 condensing and attenuating. Then one laroe cloud, in 

 the form of a hollow cylinder, approached, encompassed 

 , the steamer, and enveloped it in millions of gnats. 



