1873.] THE BORDERS OP BAXGWEOLO. 295 



hours, and then lay down quite done. Cooked coffee — our 

 last — and went on, but in an hour I was compelled to lie 

 down. Very unwilling to be carried, but on being pressed I 

 allowed the men to help me along by relays to Chinama, 

 where there is much cultivation. We camped in a garden 

 of dura. 



13th April. — Found that we had slept on the right bank 

 ■of the Lolotikila, a sluggish, marshy-looking river, very 

 Avinding, but here going about south-west. The country is 

 all so very flat that the rivers down here are of necessity 

 tortuous. Fish and other food abundant, and the people 

 ■civil and reasonable. They usually partake largely of the 

 ■character of the chief, and this one, Gondochite, is polite. The 

 sky is clearing, and the S.E. wind is the lower stratum now. 

 It is the dry season well begun. Seventy-three inches is a 

 higher rainfall than has been observed anywhere else, even 

 in northern Manyuema ; it was lower by inches than here 

 far south on the watershed. In fact, this is the very 

 heaviest rainfall known in these latitudes ; between fifty 

 and sixty is the maximum. 



One sees interminable grassy prairies with lines of trees, 

 occupying quarters of miles in breadth, and these give way 

 to bouga or prairie again. The bouga is flooded annually, 

 but its vegetation consists of dry land grasses. Other bouga 

 extend out from the Lake up to forty miles, and are known 

 by aquatic vegetation, such as lotus, papyrus, arums, rushes 

 of different species, and many kinds of purely aquatic 

 subaqueous plants which send up their flowers only to 

 fructify in the sun, and then sink to ripen one bunch after 

 another. Others, with great cabbage-looking leaves, seem 

 to remain always at the bottom. The young of fish swarm, 

 and bob in and out from the leaves. A species of soft moss 

 grows on most plants, and seems to be good fodder for 

 fishes, fitted by hooked or turned-up noses to guide it into 

 their maws. 



