102 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



grounds fills them with a chilly clammy atmosphere. 

 Merchants traverse such spots with trembling : in these, 

 the proper places for ambuscade, a few determined men 

 easily plunder a caravan by opposing it in front or by 

 an attack in rear. The ways are often intersected 

 by deep nullahs and water-courses, dry during the hot 

 season, but unfordable when rain falls. In the many 

 clearings, tobacco, maize, holcus, sesamum, and ground- 

 nuts, manioc, beans, pulse, and sweet potatoes flourish ; 

 the pine-apple is a weed, and a few cocos and mangoes, 

 papaws, jack-fruit, plantains, and limes are scattered 

 over the districts near the sea. Kice grows abundantly 

 in the lower levels. The villages are hidden deep in the 

 bush or grass : the crowing of the cocks heard all along 

 the road, except in the greater stretches of wilderness, 

 proves them to be numerous ; they are, however 

 small and thinly populated. The versant, as usual in 

 maritime E. Africa, trends towards the Indian Ocean. 

 Water abounds even at a distance from the rivers ; it 

 springs from the soil in diminutive runnels and lies in 

 " shimo " or pits, varying from surface -depth to 10 feet. 

 The monsoon -rains, which are heavy, commence in 

 March, about a month earlier than in Zanzibar, and the 

 duration is similar. The climate of the higher lands is 

 somewhat superior to that of the valley, but it is still 

 hot and oppressive. The formation, after passing from 

 the corallines, the limestones, the calcareous tuffs, and 

 the rude gravelly conglomerates of the coast, is purely 

 primitive and sandstone : erratic blocks of fine black 

 hornblende and hornblendic rock, used by the people as 

 whetstones and grinding-slabs, abound in the river-beds, 

 which also supply the clay used for pottery. The sub- 

 soil is near the sea a stiff blue loam, in the interior a 

 ruddy quartzose gravel ; the soil is a rich brown or black 



