250 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



mud, or rough blocks of stone, make the porters un- 

 willing to work. 



Breaking ground at 6 a.m. on the 7th December, we 

 marched to Murundusi, the frontier of Usagara and 

 Uhehe. The path lay over a rolling thorny jungle 

 with dottings of calabash at the foot of the Kubeho 

 mountains, and lumpy outliers falling on the right of 

 the road. After three hours' march, the sound of the 

 horses announced the vicinity of a village, and the 

 country opening out, displayed a scene of wonderful 

 fertility, the effect of subterraneous percolations from 

 the highlands. Nowhere are the tamarind, the syca- 

 more, and the calabash, seen in such perfection ; of 

 unusual size also are the perfumed myombo and the 

 mkora, the myongo, the ndabi, the chain vy a, with its 

 edible yellowish-red berries, and a large sweet-smelling 

 acacia. Amidst these piles of verdure, troops of par- 

 roquets, doves, jays, and bright fly-catchers, find a home, 

 and frequent flocks and herds, a resting-place beneath 

 the cool shade. The earth is still sprinkled with " black- 

 jacks," the remains of trees which have come to an 

 untimely end. In the fields near the numerous villages 

 rise little sheds to shelter the guardians of the crops, 

 and cattle wander over the commons or unreclaimed 

 lands. Water, which is here pure and good, lies in pits 

 from fifteen to twenty feet deep, staged over with tree 

 trunks, and the people draw it in large shallow buckets, 

 made of gourds sewn together and strengthened with 

 sticks. Towards the evening, a cold east-wind brought 

 up with it a storm of thunder and rain, which was 

 pronounced by the experts to be the opening of the 

 rainy monsoon in Usagara. 



The next day led us over an elevated undulation 

 cut by many jagged watercourses, and still flanked by 



