GEOGRAPHY OF UGOGO. 



299 



stimulated by a purer atmosphere and the coolness of the 

 night air, is kept within due bounds only by defi- 

 ciency in the means of satisfying it. Those who have 

 seen Africa further west, are profuse in their praises of 

 the climate on their return-march from the interior. 

 The mukunguru, or seasoning fever, however, rarely 

 fails to attack strangers. It is, like that of the second 

 region, a violent bilious attack, whose consequences are 

 sleeplessness, debility, and severe headaches : the hot fit 

 compared with the algid stage is unusually long and ri- 

 gorous. In some districts the parexia is rarely followed 

 by the relieving perspiration ; and when natural dia- 

 phoresis appears, it by no means denotes the termination 

 of the paroxysm. Other diseases are rare, and the terrible 

 ulcerations of K'hutu and Eastern Usagara are almost 

 unknown in Ugogo. There is little doubt that the land, 

 if it afforded good shelter, purified water, and regular 

 diet, would be eminently wholesome. 



In the uninviting landscape a tufty, straggling grass, 

 like living hay, often raised on little mounds, with bald 

 places between, thinly strewed with bits of quartz and 

 sandstone, replaces the tall luxuriant herbage of the 

 maritime plain, and the arboraceous and frutescent 

 produce of the mountains. The dryness of the climate, 

 and the poverty of the soil, are displayed in the larger 

 vegetation. The only tree of considerable growth is 

 the calabash, and it is scattered over the country widely 

 apart. A variety of frankincense overspreads the 

 ground ; the bark is a deep burnished bronze, whitened 

 above with an incrustation, probably nitrous, that re- 

 sembles hoar-frost; and the long woody twigs are 

 bleached by the falling off of the outer integuments. 

 The mukl or bdellium tree rises like a dwarf calabash 

 from a low copse. The Arabs declare this produce of 

 Ugogo (Balsamodendron Africanum to be of good 



