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THE LAKE EEGIONS OF CENTEAL AFEICA. 



The kraals are small dirty circles enclosing a calabash 

 or other tree, against which goods are stacked. The 

 boothies are made of dried canes and stubble, surrounded 

 by a most efficient chevaux de frise of thorn-boughs. 

 At the end of the dry season they are burnt down by 

 inevitable accident. The want of wood prevents their 

 being made solidly, and for the same reason " bois de 

 vache " is the usual fuel of the country. 



The formation of the subsoil is mostly sandstone 

 bearing a ruddy sand. The surface is in rare places a 

 brown vegetable humus, extending but a few inches in 

 depth, or more generally a hard yellow-reddish ferru- 

 ginous clay covered with quartz nodules of many colours, 

 and lumps of carbonate of lime, or white and siliceous 

 sand, rather resembling a well-metalled road or an 

 "untidy expanse of gravel-walk" than the rich moulds 

 which belong to the fertile African belt. In many parts 

 are conical anthills of pale red earth ; in others iron- 

 stone crops out of the plain ; and everywhere fine and 

 coarse grits abound. The land is in parts condemned 

 to perpetual drought, and nowhere is water either good 

 or plentiful. It is found in the serpentine beds of nul- 

 lahs, and after rain in ziwa, vleys, tanks, pools, or ponds, 

 filled by a gentle gravitation, and retained by a strong 

 clay, in deep pits excavated by the people, or in shallow 

 holes "crowed "in the ground. The supplies of this 

 necessary divide the country into three great districts. 

 On the east is Marenga Mk'hali, a thick bush, where a 

 few villages, avoided by travellers, are scattered north 

 and south of the road. The heart of the region is 

 Ugogo, the most populous and the best cultivated 

 country, divided into a number of small and carefully 

 cultivated clearings by tracts of dense bush and timber- 

 less woods, a wall of verdure during the rains, and in 

 the hot season a system of thorns and broom work which 



