ICO THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



tion surrounding the westernmost villages of K'hutu. 

 As the land beyond this point, for three long marches, 

 lies barren, the slaves and porters had comfortably 

 housed themselves. The prospect of another night in 

 the plains made me desperate ; I dislodged them, and 

 persuaded them to advance once more. The settle- 

 ments were of the most miserable description ; many 

 were composed of a few sticks lashed together at the top, 

 and loosely covered with a few armfuls of holcus-cane. 

 Here we sighted the cocoa-tree for the last time. The 

 rats were busy in the fields, and the plundered peasants 

 were digging them out for food. At almost every 

 corner of the deeply-pitted path stood a mtego, or trap 

 for small birds, a cage of rush or split bamboo planted 

 in the ground near some corn, where a boy lies waiting 

 till the prey nibbles at the bait, and then creeping up, bars 

 with his hand the little doorway left in one of the sides. 

 Beyond the villages the path forded six times the sandy 

 bed of the Mgeta, whose steep and slippery banks sup- 

 ported dense screens of shrub and grass. Beyond the 

 sixth passage, the road falls into the gravelly river- 

 shoals, with the stream flowing in the other half of the 

 course, under well-wooded masses of primitive hill. 

 After again thrice fording the cold „nd muddy water, 

 which even in the dry season is here ankle, there foot- 

 deep, the road passed some clearings where porcupines 

 and the African red squirrel, a sturdy little animal, 

 with a long thick fur of dark brown, shot with green 

 on the back, and a bright red waistcoat, muzzle, and 

 points, were observed. About noon we diverged a few 

 yards from the Mgeta, and ascended the incline of the 

 first gradient in Usagara, rising about 300 feet from 

 the plain below. This, the frontier of the second region, 

 or ghauts, and the debris encumbering the lowest 



