350 MOUNT MOEUMBWA. 



hand to hold on long enough to ensure safety in the passage ; 

 and had the foremost of the party lost his hold he would have 

 hurled all behind him into the river at the foot of the promon- 

 tory ; yet in this wild hot region, as they descended again to the 

 river, they met a fisherman casting his hand-net into the boiling 

 eddies, and he pointed out the cataract of Morumbwa; within 

 an hour they were trying to measure it from an overhanging 

 rock, at a height of about one hundred feet. "When you stand 

 facing the cataract, on the north bank, you see that it is situated 

 in a sudden bend of the river, which is flowing in a short curve; 

 the river above it is jammed between two mountains in a channel 

 with perpendicular sides, and less than fifty yards wide ; one or 

 two masses of rock jut out, and then there is a sloping fall of 

 perhaps twenty feet in a distance of thirty yards. It would stop 

 all navigation, except during the highest floods; the rocks 

 showed that the water then rises upwards of eighty feet perpen- 

 dicularly. 



Still keeping the position facing the cataract, on its right side 

 rises Mount Morumbwa, from two thousand to three thousand 

 feet high, which gives the name to the spot. On the left of the 

 cataract stands a noticeable mountain which may be called onion- 

 shaped, for it is partly conical, and a large concave flake has 

 peeled off, as granite often does, and left a broad, smooth, convex 

 face as if it were an enormous bulb. These two mountains ex- 

 tend their bases northwards about half a mile, and the river in 

 that distance, still very narrow, is smooth, with a few detached 

 rocks standing out from its bed. They climbed as high up the 

 base of Mount Morumbwa, which touches the cataract, as they 

 required. The rocks were all water-worn and smooth, with 

 huge pot-holes, even at one hundred feet above low water. 

 When, at a later period, they climbed up the northwestern base 

 of this same mountain, the familiar face of the onion-shaped one 

 opposite was at once recognized ; one point of view on the talus 

 of Mount Morumbwa was not more than seven or eight hundred 

 yards distant from the other, and they then completed the survey 

 of Kebrabasa from end to end. 



They did not attempt to return by the way they came, but 

 scaled the slope of the mountain on the north. It took them 

 three hours' hard labor in cutting their way up through the 



