BASIN OF KISANGA. 



257 



with watercourses led us to the encamping-ground, a 

 red patch dotted with tall calabashes, and boasting a 

 few pools of brackish water. We had now entered the 

 land of grass-kilts and beehive huts, built for defence 

 upon the ridges of the hills : whilst cactus, aloe, and 

 milk-bush showed the diminished fertility of the soil. 

 About Kiperepeta it was said a gang of nearly 400 

 touters awaited with their muskets the arrival of cara- 

 vans from the interior. 



On the 19th December, leaving Kiperepeta, we toiled 

 up a steep incline, cut by the sinuated channels of water- 

 courses, to a col or pass, the water-parting of this line 

 in Usagara : before south-westerly, the versant thence- 

 forward trends to the south-east. Having topped the 

 summit, we began the descent along the left bank of 

 a mountain burn, the Rufita, which, forming in the 

 rainy season a series of rapids and cascades, casts its 

 waters into the Yovu, and eventually into the Rwaha 

 River. The drainage of the hill-folds cuts, at every re- 

 entering angle, a ragged irregular ditch, whose stony 

 depths are impassable to heavily-laden asses. After a 

 toilsome march of three hours, we fell into the basin of 

 Risanga, which, like others on this line, is an enlarged 

 punchbowl, almost surrounded by a mass of green hills, 

 cone rising upon cone, with tufted cappings of trees, and 

 long lines of small haycock-huts ranged along the 

 acclivities and ridge-lines. The floor of the basin is 

 rough and uneven ; a rich cultivation extends from the 

 hill-slopes to the stream which drains the sole, and 

 fine trees, amongst which are the mparamusi and the 

 sycomore, relieve the uniformity of the well-hoed fields. 

 Having passed through huts and villages, where two 

 up-caravans of Wanyamwezi were halted, displaying and 

 haggling over the cloths intended as tribute to the 



VOL. II. s 



