118 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



tions of the cogging Shaykh and the false Msawahili 

 had startled me from the proprieties of reason, and — 

 this was the result ! 



Bombay, when questioned, declared that my com- 

 panion had misunderstood the words of Hamid bin 

 Sulayyam, who spoke of a river falling into, not issuing 

 from the lake ; and added his own conviction that the 

 Arab had never sailed north of Ubwari Island. Sayfu, 

 who at Ujiji had described, as an eye-witness, the 

 mouth of the deversoir and its direction for two 

 days, now owned that he had never been beyond Uvira, 

 and that he never intended to do so. Briefly, I had been 

 deceived by a strange coincidence of deceit. 



On the 28th April, we were driven from the strip of 

 land which we originally occupied by a S. E. gale; here 

 a " blat," or small hurricane, which drives the foaming 

 waters of the tideless sea up to the green margin of the 

 land. Retiring higher up where the canoes were ca- 

 reened, we spread our bedding on the little muddy 

 mounds that rise a few inches above the surface of 

 grass-closed gutter which drains off the showers daily 

 falling amongst the hills. I was still obliged to content 

 myself with the lug-sail, thrown over a ridge-pole sup- 

 ported by two bamboo uprights, and pegged out like a 

 tent below ; it was too short to fall over the ends and to 

 reach the ground, it was therefore a place of passage 

 for mizzle, splash, and draught of watery wind. My 

 companion inhabited the tent bought from the Fundi, it 

 was thoroughly rotted, during his first trip across the 

 Lake — by leakage in the boat, and by being " bushed " 

 with mud instead of pegs on shore. He informed me that 

 there was " good grub " at Uvira, and that was nearly 

 the full amount of what I heard from or of him. Our 

 crews had hutted themselves in the dense mass of grass 



