248 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



the sons of Ramji spent the earlier half in blowing 

 away gunpowder at antelope, partridge and parrot, 

 guinea-fowl and floriken, but not a head of game found 

 its way into camp. The men were hot, tired and testy, 

 those who had wives beat them, those who had not "let 

 off the steam " by quarreling with one another. Said 

 bin Salim, sick and surly, had words concerning a water- 

 gourd with the brave Khudabakhsh, and the monocular 

 Jemadar, who made a point of overloading his porters, 

 bitterly complained because they would not serve him. 

 At 2 p.m. we climbed up the last ladder of the rough 

 and stony incline, which placed us a few hundred feet 

 above the eastern half of the Lesser Desert. We took 

 a pleasant leave of the last of the rises ; on this line 

 of road, between Marenga Mk'hali and Western Unyam- 

 wezi, the land, though rolling, has no steep ascents nor 

 descents. 



From the summit of the Marenga Mk'hali step we 

 travelled till sunset — the orb of day glaring like a fire- 

 ball in our faces, — through dense thorny jungle and over 

 grassy plains of black, cracked earth, in places covered 

 with pebbles and showing extensive traces of shallow in- 

 undations during the rains; in the lower lands huge 

 blocks of weathered granite stood out abruptly from the 

 surface, and on both sides, but higher on the right hand, 

 rose blue cones, some single, others in pairs like 

 " brothers." The caravan once rested in a thorny cop- 

 pice, based upon rich red and yellow clay whence it was 

 hurriedly dislodged by a swarm of wild bees. As the sun 

 sank below the horizon the porters called a halt on a 

 calabash-grown plain, near a block of stony hill veiled 

 with cactus and mimosa, below whose northern base ran 

 a tree-lined Nullah where, they declared, from the pre- 

 sence of antelope and other game, that water might bo 



