246 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



ruddy plain lay scattered untidy heaps of grey granite 

 boulders, surrounded and capped by tufts of bleached 

 white grass. The copse showed all manner of strange 

 hues, calabashes purpled and burnished by sun and rain, 

 thorns of a greenish coppery bronze, dead trees with 

 trunks of ghastly white, and gums (the blue-gum tree 

 of the Cape ?) of an unnatural sky-blue, the effect of the 

 yellow outer pellicle being peeled off by the burning 

 rays, whilst almost all were reddened up to a man's 

 height, by the double galleries, ascending and descending, 

 of the white ants. Here too, I began to appreciate the 

 extent of the nuisance, thorns. Some were soft and green, 

 others a finger long, fine, straight and woody — they serve 

 as needles in many parts of the country — one, a "cork- 

 ing pin," bore at its base a filbert-like bulge, another was 

 curved like a cock's spur ; the double thorns, placed dos-a- 

 dos, described by travellers in Abyssinia and in the Cape 

 Karroos, were numerous, the " wait-a-bit," a dwarf 

 sharply bent spine with acute point and stout founda- 

 tion, and a smaller variety, short and deeply crooked, 

 numerous and tenacious as fish-hooks, tore without 

 difficulty the strongest clothing, even our woollen 

 Arab " Abas," and our bed-covers of painted canvas. 



Travelling through this broom-jungle and crossing 

 grassy plains, over paths where the slides of elephants' 

 feet upon the last year's muddy clay showed that the 

 land was not always dry, we halted after 11 a.m. for about 

 an hour at the base of a steep incline, apparently an off- 

 set from the now distant Rubeho Range. The porters 

 would have nighted at the mouth of a small drain 

 which, too steep for ascent, exposed in its rocky bed 

 occasional sand-patches and deep pools; Kidogo, however, 

 forced them forwards, declaring that if the asses 

 drank of this u brackish water," they would sicken and 



