264 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



suggested only pleasurable sensations ; long odds were 

 in favour of our seeing the Christmas Day of 1859, 

 compared with the chances of things at Msene on the 

 Christmas Day of 1857. 



From Uziraha sixteen hours distributed into fourteen 

 marches conducted us from Uziraha, at the foot of the 

 Usagara mountains, to Central Zungomero. The districts 

 traversed were Eastern Mbwiga, Marundwe, and Kireng- 

 we. The road again realises the European idea of Africa 

 in its most hideous and grotesque aspect. Animals are 

 scarce amidst the portentous growth of herbage, not a 

 head of black cattle is seen, flocks and poultry are rare, 

 and even the beasts of the field seem to flee the land. 

 The people admitted us into their villages, whose 

 wretched straw-hovels, contrasting with the luxuriant 

 jungle which hems them in, look like birds' nests torn 

 from the trees : all the best settlements, however, were 

 occupied by parties of touters. At the sight of our 

 passing caravan the goatherd hurried off his charge, 

 the peasant prepared to rush into the grass, the women 

 and children slunk and hid within the hut, and no one 

 ever left his home without a bow and a sheath of 

 arrows, whose pitchy-coloured bark-necks denoted a 

 fresh layer of poison. 



We entered Zungomero on the 29th of December, 

 after sighting on the left the cone at whose base rises the 

 Maji ya W'heta, or Fontaine qui bouille. The village 

 on the left bank of the Mgeta, which we had occupied 

 about eighteen months before, had long been level with 

 the ground ; we were therefore conducted with due 

 ceremony into another settlement on the right of the 

 stream. An army of black musketeers, in scanty but 

 various and gaudy attire, came out to meet us, and 

 with the usual shots and shouts conducted us to the 



