THE BRACKISH WATER. 



247 



die. His assertion, suspected of being a " traveller's 

 tale," was subsequently confirmed by the Arabs of 

 Unyanyembe, who declared that the country people 

 never water their flocks and herds below the hill ; there 

 may be poisonous vegetation in the few yards between 

 the upper and the lower pools, but no one offered any 

 explanation of the phenomenon. 



Ascending with difficulty the eastern face of the 

 step, which presented two ladders of loose stones and 

 fixed boulders of grey syenite, hornblende, and greenstone, 

 w T ith coloured quartzes, micacious schistes, and layers of 

 talcose slate glittering like mother- o' -pearl upon the 

 surface, we found a half-way platform some 150 feet of 

 extreme breadth. Upon its sloping and irregular floor, 

 black-green pools, sadly offensive to more senses than 

 one, spring-fed, and forming the residue of the rain-water 

 which fills the torrent, lay in muddy holes broadly fringed 

 with silky grass. Travellers drink without fear this 

 upper Marenga Mk'hali, which, despite its name, is 

 rather soft and slimy, than brackish, and sign of wild- 

 beasts — antelope and buffalo, giraffe and rhinoceros — 

 appear upon its brink. It sometimes dries up in the 

 heart of the hot season, and then deaths from thirst 

 occur amongst the porters who, mostly Wanyanwezi, are 

 not wont to practise abstinence in this particular. 

 " Sucking-places" are unknown to them, water-bearing 

 bulbs might here be discovered by the South African 

 traveller ; as a rule, however, the East African is so 

 plentifully supplied with the necessary that he does not 

 care to provide for a dry day by unusual means. As- 

 cending another steep incline we encamped upon a small 

 step, the half-way gradient of a higher level. 



The 24th Sept. was to be a tirikeza* the Baloch and 



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