82 



FROM THE COAST TO KILIMANJARO 



the afternoon, to camp again for the night without water, 

 which is not found until the next day. On this occasion we 

 pushed on until near sunset across a steppe with scarcely any 

 trees, and there being nothing to cook, and no water to cook 

 * with, there was soon perfect silence round the fire. 



On this march we met with specimens of the same peculiar 

 and huge growth we had already noticed at Mafi, a kind ot 

 Aristolochia. From a rough, knotty stem, from 20 inches to 

 5 feet in diameter and from 12 to 20 inches high, spring a 

 number of long, thin, almost leafless branches, which mostly 



attach themselves to some bush 

 or tree hard by. The quaintly- 

 formed root is almost entirely 

 exposed to view above the 

 soil, and is not unlike a carrot 

 in consistency. It has a thin, 

 greenish-brown epidermis, with 

 a sort of silvery sheen about 

 it. We did not find this 

 strange plant farther inland 

 than Kilimanjaro. 

 The weather looked very dull and threatening the next 

 morning, and the rugged mountains near by were shrouded in 

 thick mist. Our march led us across flat plains, and then 

 beside the all but dried-up bed of a stream, till we came to the 

 village of Muanamata, also called Mweniba. Very few natives 

 came to our camp, and the chief did not appear till early the 

 next morning. When he approached, with some ceremony, 

 bringing with him two oxen and a goat as his present, we 

 were already on the eve of departure, and the camp presented 

 a very lively appearance. I was only able to give him a bale 

 of goods in return. Muanamata, after whom the village is 

 named, was a shrivelled old man, and even with Jumbe 



