714 LIFE OF DA VII) LIVINGSTONE, LL.R 



public may obtain a detailed account of it in my work, " How I Found Living- 

 stone." Thence north is a new country to all, and a brief description may 

 be interesting to students of African geography. 



"North of Muanza a level plain extends as far as the frontier of Usan- 

 dawi, a distance of thirty-five English miles. At Mukondoku the altitude, as 

 indicated by two first-rate aneroids, was 2,800 feet. At Mtiwi, twenty miles 

 north, the altitude was 2,825 feet. Diverging west and north-west, we as- 

 cended the slope of what was apparently a lengthy mountain wall, but upon 

 arriving at the summit we ascertained this to be a wide plateau, covered with 

 forest. The plateau has an altitude of 3,800 feet at its eastern extremity ; 

 but as it extends westward it rises to a height of 4,500 feet. It embraces all 

 Uyanzi, Unyanyembe, Usukuma, Urimi, and Iramba — in short, all that part 

 of Central Africa lying between the valley of the Rufiji south and the Vic- 

 toria Nyanza north ; and the mean altitude of this broad upland cannot 

 exceed 3,500 feet. From Muanza to the Nyanza is a distance of nearly 300 

 geographical miles, yet at no part of this long journey did the aneroids indi- 

 cate a higher altitude than 5,100 feet above the sea. 



" As far as Urimi from the eastern edge of the plateau the land is cover- 

 ed with a thick jungle of acacias, which by its density strangles other species 

 of vegetation. Here and there only in the cleft of a rock a giant euphorbia 

 may be seen, sole lord of its sterile domain. The soil is shallow, and con- 

 sists of vegetable mould mixed largely with sand and detritus of the bare rocks 

 which crown each knoll and ridge, and which testify too plainly to the vio- 

 lence of the periodical rains. In the basin of Matongo, in Southern Urimi, 

 we were informed by the ruins of hills and ridges, relics of a loftier upland, 

 of what has been effected by Nature in the course of long ages. No savant 

 need ever expound to the traveller who views those rocky ruins the geolo- 

 gical history of this country. From a distance we viewed the glistening, 

 naked, and riven rocks, as a most singular scene ; but when we stood 

 among them, and noted the appearance of the fragments of granite, gneiss, 

 and porphyry, peeled, as it were rind after rind, like an onion, or leaf 

 after leaf, like an artichoke, until the rock was wasted away, it seemed 

 as if Dame Nature had left these stony anatomies, these hilly skeletons, 

 to demonstrate her laws and career. It appeared to me as if she said, 

 1 Behold my broad basin of Matongo, with its teeming villages, and herds 

 of cattle, and fields of corn, surrounded by these bare rocks — in primeval 

 time this upland was covered with water, it was the bed of a vast sea. 

 The waters were dried, leaving a wide expanse of level land, upon which I 

 caused heavy rains to fall fire months out of each year during all the ages 

 that have elapsed since first the hot sunshine fell upon the soil. These rains 

 washed away the loose sand, and made deep furrows in course of time, until 

 at certain places the rocky kernel under the soil began to appear. The fur- 



