44 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL . AFRICA. 



peared doubly beautiful to me after the silent and 

 spectral mangrove-creeks on the East-African sea- 

 board, and the melancholy, monotonous experience of 

 desert and jungle scenery, tawny rock and sun-parched 

 plain or rank herbage and flats of black mire. Truly it 

 was a revel for soul and sight ! Forgetting toils, 

 dangers, and the doubtfulness of return, I felt willing 

 to endure double what I had endured ; and all the 

 party seemed to join with me in joy. My purblind 

 companion found nothing to grumble at except the 

 " mist and glare before his eyes." Said bin Salim 

 looked exulting, — he had procured for me this pleasure, 

 — the monoculous Jemadar grinned his congratulations, 

 and even the surly Baloch made civil salarns. 



Arrived at Ukaranga I was disappointed to find there 

 a few miserable grass-huts — used as a temporary shelter 

 by caravans passing to and from the islets fringing the 

 opposite coast — that clustered round a single Tembe,then 

 occupied by its proprietor, Hamid bin Sulayyam, an Arab 

 trader. Presently the motive of the rascally Fundi, in 

 misleading the caravan, which, by the advice of Snay 

 bin Amir, I had directed to march upon the Kawele 

 district in Ujiji, leaked out. The roadstead of Ukaranga 

 is separated from part of Kawele by the line of the Ruche 

 River, which empties itself into a deep hollow bay, 

 whose chord, extending from N.W. to S.E., is five or 

 six miles in length. The strip of shelving plain between 

 the trough-like hills and the lake is raised but a few feet 

 above water-level. Converted by the passage of a 

 hundred drains from the highlands, into a sheet of 

 sloppy and slippery mire, breast deep in select places, it 

 supports with difficulty a few hundred inhabitants: 

 drenched with violent rain-storms and clammy dews, it 

 is rife in fevers, and it is feared by travellers on ac- 

 count of its hippopotami and crocodiles. In the driest 



