IN WESTERN UNYAMWEZI. 793 



mountains are higher, and the valleys deeper and narrower. We have no 

 longer the wide, billowy plateau, the successive swells of which make travel 

 and exploration tedious, but lines of mountains of enormous frame, separated 

 from each other by deep narrow valleys, with a hundred geological wonders 

 presented to the view at a glance. From Mlagata mountain, while looking 

 towards the Ufumbiro cones, there were visible three lofty ridges separated 

 by as many broad valleys. First was the Ishango and Muvari ridge, west of 

 the Kagera Lake and valley, and west of this were two ridges, with the valley 

 of Muvari between the two eastermost, and the valley of Ruanda between the 

 two westernmost. The two latter appear to run parallel with each other from 

 east and west of the Ufumbiro mountains, and shut in the valley of the Ni 

 Nawarango or Nawarongo River, which, rising in the Ufumbiro mountains, 

 flows south by west between Muvari and Ruanda, and enters the Akanyaru 

 Lake, which is thirty by twenty miles in extent. From the Akanyaru Lake 

 issues the Akanyaru River, between Ugufu and Kishakka, into the Kagera. 

 The Kagera proper, coming from the south-west, also enters the Akanyaru 

 Lake, but leaves it south of Ugufu and takes a curve north-easterly between 

 Ugufu and Western Usui. West of Akanyaru I could obtain no certain intel- 

 ligence. I have heard of another large lake lying west, but what connection 

 it has with the Kagera, or whether it has any, I cannot learn definitely. One 

 says that it is an arm of Luta Nzige or Lake Albert, another declares it to be 

 a separate water. Whatever it be I trust I shall be able to discover at a later 

 period. 



" With the best intentions to prosecute my explorations along the Kagera 

 I was paralysed by famine in Usui and the hostility of the Warundi, and was 

 therefore obliged to abandon exploration from this side of the Tanganyika. 

 Summing up all the chances remaining for me to do good work without ex- 

 pending vainly my goods and the health and energy left in me, I saw it was 

 useless to sit down and launch invectives against the intractable natives, and 

 that it was far better and more manly to hurry on to other regions and try 

 Lake Albert by another route from the opposite quarter. You will perceive 

 by this letter that I am now in Western Unyamwezi, about fifteen days' jour- 

 ney from Ujiji. What I propose doing now is to proceed quickly to Ujiji, 

 then explore the Tanganyika in my boat, and from Uzige strike north to the 

 Albert, and, if that road be not open, to cross the Tanganyika and travel 

 north by a circuitous course to effect the exploration of the Albert. 



"It may not be actually necessary to explore that lake, for Gordon or some 

 of his officers may have accomplished the work, but I have no means of know- 

 ing whether they have done so or not j it therefore remains for me, if the feat 

 be possible, to circumnavigate it. If it is not, I shall strike out for other 

 regions, and continue exploration elsewhere, until my poverty of goods warns 

 me to return. By the same bearer which conveys this letter to the coast I 

 a4 



