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THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



Kraals of thorn, capacious circles enclosing straw 

 boothies, are found at every march, and, when burned 

 or destroyed by accident, they are rebuilt before 

 the bivouac. The roads, as usual in East Africa, are 

 tracks trodden down by caravans and cattle, and the 

 water-course is ever the favourite Pass. Many of the 

 ascents and descents are so proclivitous that donkeys 

 must be relieved of their loads ; and in fording the slug- 

 gish streams, where no grass forms a causeway over the 

 soft, viscid mire, the animals sink almost to the knees. 

 The steepest paths are those in the upper regions ; in the 

 lower, though the inclines are often severe, they are 

 generally longer, and consequently easier. At the foot 

 of each hill there is either a mud or a water-course 

 dividing it from its neighbour. These obstacles greatly 

 reduce the direct distance of the day's march. 



The mountains are well Supplied with water, which tastes 

 sweet after the brackish produce of the maritime valley, 

 and good when not rendered soft and slimy by lying 

 long on rushy beds. Upon the middle inclines the 

 burns and runnels of the upper heights form terraces 

 of considerable extent, and of a picturesque aspect. 

 The wide and open sole, tilled with the whitest and 

 cleanest sand, and retaining pools of fresh clear water, 

 or shallow wells, is edged by low steep ledges of 

 a dull red clay, lined with glorious patriarchs of the 

 forest, and often in the bed is a thickly wooded branch 

 or shoal-islet, at whose upper extremity heavy drift- 

 wood, arrested by the gnarled mimosa-clumps, and the 

 wall of shrubs, attests the violence of the rufous-tinted 

 bore of waves with which a few showers till the broadest 

 courses. Lower down the channels which convey to 

 the plains the surplus drainage of the mountains are 

 heaps and sheets of granite, with long reaches of rough 



