Chap. II. MOUNT MORUMBWi . 43 



perilous and circuitous route, along which the crags were 

 so hot that it was scarcely possible for the 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 perpendicularly. 



Still keeping the position facing the cataract, on its 

 right side rises Mount Morumbwa from 2000 to 3000 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 extend 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 waterworn and smooth, with huge pot- 

 holes, even at 100 feet above low water. When at a later 

 period they climbed up the north-western base of this 



