220 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



nah, overgrown with stunted straw and hedged in by a 

 bushy forest. At this point massive trees, here single, 

 there in holts and clumps, foliaged more gloomily than 

 churchyard yews, and studded with delicate pink- 

 flowers, rose from the tawny sun-burned expanse around, 

 and defended from the fiery glare braky rings of eme- 

 rald shrubbery, sharply defined as if by the forester's 

 hand. The savannah extended to the edge of a step 

 which, falling deep and steep, suddenly disclosed to 

 view, below and far beyond the shaggy ribs and the dark 

 ravines and folds of the foreground, the plateau of 

 Ugogo and its Eastern desert. The spectacle was 

 truly impressive. The vault above seemed " an ample 

 aether," raised by its exceeding transparency higher 

 than it is wont to be. Up to the curved rim of the 

 western horizon, lay, burnished by the rays of a burn- 

 ing sun, plains rippled like a yellow sea by the wavy 

 reek of the dancing air, broken towards the north by 

 a few detached cones rising island-like from the surface, 

 and zebra'd with long black lines, where bush and scrub 

 and strip of thorn jungle, supplanted upon the water- 

 courses, trending in mazy network southwards to the 

 Rwaha River, the scorched grass and withered cane- 

 stubbles, which seemed to be the staple growth of the 

 land. There was nothing of effeminate or luxuriant 

 beauty, nothing of the flush and fulness characterising 

 tropical Nature, in this first aspect of Ugogo. It ap- 

 peared what it is, stern and wild, — the rough nurse 

 of rugged men, — and perhaps the anticipation of dangers 

 and difficulties ever present to the minds of those 

 preparing to endure the waywardness of its children, 

 contributed not a little to the fascination of the scene. 

 After lingering for a few minutes upon the crest of the 

 step, with feelings which they will understand who 



