108 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



is bought for four to ten khete, about one third of the 

 market-price at Ujiji. Salt, being imported from 

 Uvinza, is dear and scarce : it forms the first demand 

 for barter, and beads the second. Large fish is offered 

 for sale, but the small fry is the only article of the kind 

 which is to be purchased fresh. The country owes its 

 plenty, according to the guides, to almost perennial 

 showers. 



The inhospitality of the Warundi and their northern 

 neighbours, who would plunder a canoe or insist upon 

 a black- mail equivalent to plunder, allows neither traffic 

 nor transit to the north of Wafanya. Here, therefore, 

 the crews prepare to cross the Tanganyika, which is 

 divided into two stages by the island of Ubwari. 



In Ubwari I had indeed discovered " an island 

 far away." It is probably the place alluded to by 

 the Portuguese historian, De Barros, in this important 

 passage concerning the great lake in the centre of 

 Africa : " It is a sea of such magnitude as to be capable 

 of being navigated by many sail ; and among the islands 

 in it there is one capable of sending forth an army of 

 30,000 men." Ubwari appears from a distance of two days 

 bearing north- west ; it is then somewhat hazy, owing to 

 the extreme humidity of the atmosphere. From Wa- 

 fanya it shows a clear profile about eighteen to twenty 

 miles westward, and the breadth of the western channel 

 between it and the mainland averages from six to seven 

 miles. Its north point lies in south lat. 4° 7', and the lay 

 is N. 17° E. (corrected). From the northern point of 

 Ubwari the eastern prolongation of the lake bears N. 

 3° W. and the western N. 10° W. It is the only 

 island near the centre of the Tanganyika — a long, 

 narrow lump of rock, twenty to twenty-five geo- 

 graphical miles long, by four or five of extreme 

 breadth, with a high longitudinal spine, like a hog's 



