314 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



the Wanyamwezi " Tula' 7 or " Itula," means "put 

 down!" (soil, your pack): as the traveller, whether 

 from the east or from the west, will inevitably be de- 

 layed for some days at this border settlement. Tula is 

 situated in S. lat. 5° 2' and E. long. 33° 57', and 

 the country rises 4,000 feet above sea level. After the 

 gloomy and monotonous brown jungles and thorn 

 forests of Mgunda Mk'hali, whose sinuous line of thick 

 jungle still girds the northern horizon, the fair cham- 

 paign, bounded on either hand by low rolling and 

 rounded hills of primary formation, with a succession of 

 villages and many a field of holcus and sesamum, maize, 

 millet, and other cereals, of manioc and gourds, water 

 melons and various pulses, delights the sight, and 

 appears to the African traveller a Land of Promise. 



The pertinacious Kidogo pressed me to advance, de- 

 claring the Wakimbu of Tura to be a dangerous race : 

 they appeared however a timid and ignoble people, 

 dripping with castor and sesamum oil, and scantily 

 attired in shreds of unclean cotton or greasy goat-skins. 

 At Tura the last of the thirty asses bought at 

 Zanzibar paid the debt of nature, leaving us, besides 

 the one belonging to the Jemadar, but three African 

 animals purchased on the road. A few extra por- 

 ters were therefore engaged. Our people, after the 

 discomforts of the bivouac, found the unsavoury village 

 a perfect paradise ; they began somewhat prematurely 

 to beg for Bakhshish, and Muinyi Wazira requested 

 dismissal on the plea that a slave sent by him on a 

 trading-expedition into the interior had, by dying, en- 

 dangered the safety of the venture. On the morning of 

 the 30th October Kidogo led us over the plain through 

 cultivation and villages to another large settlement on 

 the western outskirt of the Tura district. As I disap- 

 pointed him in his hopes of a Tirikeza, he passed 



