MABRUKI PASS. 



263 



plunder should a caravan encamp near their crops, 

 muster in force ; the traveller, therefore, must not 

 unpack except at the kraals on either edge of the cul- 

 tivation. 



The dawn of Christmas Day, 1858, saw us toiling 

 along the Kikoboga River, which we forded four times. 

 We then crossed two deep affluents, whose banks were 

 thick with fruitless plantains. The road presently 

 turned up a rough rise, from whose crest began the 

 descent of the Mabruki Pass. This col may be divided into 

 two steps : the first Avinds along a sharp ridge-line, a chain 

 of well-forested hills, whose heights, bordered on both 

 sides by precipitous slopes of earth overgrown with 

 thorns and thick bamboo-clumps, command an extensive 

 view of spur and subrange, of dhun and champaign, 

 sprinkled with villages and dwarf cones, and watered by 

 streamlets that glisten like lines of quicksilver in the 

 blue-brown of the hazy distant landscape. Ensues, after 

 a succession of deep and rugged watercourses, with 

 difficult slopes, the second step ; a short but sharp steep 

 of red earth, corded with the tree-roots that have been 

 bared by the heavy rains. Beyond this the path, 

 spanning rough ground at the hill-base, debouches upon " 

 the course of a streamlet flowing southwards from the 

 last heights of Usagara to the plains of Uziraha in 

 K'hutu. 



The bullock reserved for the occasion having been 

 lost in Uhehe, I had ordered the purchase of half a 

 dozen goats wmerewith to celebrate the day; the porters, 

 however, were too lazy to collect them. My companion 

 and I made good cheer upon a fat capon, which acted as 

 roast-beef, and a mess of ground-nuts sweetened with 

 sugar-cane, which did duty as plum-pudding. The 

 contrast of what was with what might be now, however, 



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