46 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



and the picturesque and varied forms of the mountains, 

 rising above and dipping into the lake, were clad in 

 purplish blue, set off by the rosy tints of morning. 

 Yet, more and more, as we approached our destination, 

 I wondered at the absence of all those features which 

 prelude a popular settlement. Passing the low, muddy, 

 and grass-grown mouth of the Euche River, I could 

 descry on the banks nothing but a few scattered hovels 

 of miserable construction, surrounded by fields of sor- 

 ghum and sugar-cane, and shaded by dense groves of 

 the dwarf, bright-green plantain, and the tall, sombre 

 elaeis or Guinea-palm. By the Arabs I had. been 

 taught to expect a town, a ghaut, a port, and a bazar, 

 excelling in size that of Zanzibar, and I had old, pre- 

 conceived ideas concerning "die Stadt Ujiji," whose 

 sire was the " Mombas Mission Map." Presently Mam- 

 moth and Behemoth shrank timidly from exposure, and 

 a few hollowed logs, the monoxyles of the fishermen, 

 the wood-cutters, and the market-people, either cut the 

 water singly, or stood in crowds drawn up on the 

 patches of yellow sand. About 11 a.m. the craft was 

 poled through a hole in a thick welting of coarse reedy 

 grass and fiaggy aquatic plants to a level landing-place 

 of flat shingle, where the water shoaled off* rapidly. 

 Such was the ghaut or disembarkation quay of the 

 great Ujiji. 



Around the ghaut a few scattered huts, in the 

 humblest bee-hive shape, represented the port-town. 

 Advancing some hundred yards through a din of shouts 

 and screams, tom-toms and trumpets, which defies de- 

 scription, and mobbed by a swarm of black beings, whose 

 eyes seemed about to start from their heads with sur- 

 prise, I passed a relic of Arab civilisation, the " Bazar." 

 It is a plot of higher ground, cleared of grass, and 



