GEOGKAPHY OF UGOGO. 



297 



serves merely to impede a free circulation of the air. 

 These seams of waste land appear strange in a country 

 populated of old; the Arabs, however, declare that theland 

 is more thinly inhabited than it used to be. Mgunda 

 Mk'hali, the western division, is a thin forest and a heap 

 of brakey jungle. The few hills are thickly clothed 

 with vegetation, probably because they retain more 

 moisture than the plains. 



The climate of Ugogo is markedly arid. During the 

 transit of the Expedition in September and October, 

 the best water-colours faded and hardened in their pans; 

 India-rubber, especially the prepared article in squares, 

 became viscid, like half-dried birdlime ; " Macintosh " 

 was sticking plaister, and the best vulcanized elastic- 

 bands tore like brown paper. During almost the whole 

 year a violent east- wind sweeps from the mountains. 

 There are great changes in the temperature, whilst the 

 weather apparently remains the same, and alternate 

 currents of hot and cold air were observed. In the long 

 summer the climate much resembles that of Sindh ; 

 there are the same fiery suns playing upon the naked 

 surface with a painful dazzle, cool crisp nights, and 

 clouds of dust. The succulent vegetation is shrivelled 

 up and carbonised by heat, and the crackling covering 

 of clayey earth and thin sand, whose particles are un- 

 bound by dew or rain, rises in lofty whirling columns 

 like water-spouts when the north wind from the Wa- 

 humba Hills meets the gusts of Usagara, which are 

 soon heated to a furnace-breath by the glowing surface. 

 These " p'hepo" or "devils" scour the plain with the 

 rapidity of horsemen, and, charged with coarse grain 

 and small pebbles, strike with the violence of heavy 

 hail. The siccity and repercussion of heat produce an 

 atmosphere of peculiar brilliancy in Ugogo : the milky 

 haze of the coast-climate is here unknown. The sowing 



