THE CAMP AT RUMUMA. 



197 



were, therefore, fain to content ourselves and our ser- 

 vants with a little bajri and two eggs. 



After a day's halt at Ndabi we resumed the journey 

 on the 29th August. The path crossed a high and 

 stony hill-shoulder, where the bleak raw air caused one 

 of the porters to lie down torpid like a frozen man. It 

 then stretched over gradually rising and falling ground 

 to a dense bush of cactacese and milk-bush, aloetic plants 

 and thorns, based upon a surface of brickdust-red. Be- 

 yond this point lay another plateau of wavy surface, 

 producing dwarfed and wind-wrung calabashes, and 

 showing grain-fields carefully and laboriously ridged with 

 the hoe. Flocks and herds now appeared in all direc- 

 tions. The ground was in some places rust-coloured, in 

 others dazzlingly white with a detritus of granite ; mica 

 glittered like silver-filings in the sun, and a fine silky 

 grass waved in the wind, bleached clean of colour by the 

 glowing rays. This plateau ended in a descent with 

 rapid slopes, over falls and steps of rock and boulder 

 into the basin of the Eumuma River. It is a southern 

 influent, or a bifurcation of the Mukondokwa, and 

 it drains the hills to the south-west of the Rumuma 

 district, whereas the main stream, arising in the high- 

 lands of the Wahumba or Wamusai, carries off the 

 waters of the lands on the w r est. Losing our way, 

 we came upon this mountain-torrent, which swirls 

 through blocks and boulders under stiff banks of red 

 earth densely grown with brush and reeds ; and to 

 find the kraal we were obliged to travel up the bed-side, 

 through well-hoed fields irrigated by raised water-courses. 

 The khambi was badly situated in the dwarf hollow be- 

 tween the river and the hills, and having lately been 

 tenanted, as the smoking embers showed, it was uncleanly 

 in the extreme. It was heart-breaking to see the asses 



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