THE ROAD IN EASTERN AFRICA. 



335 



the reader may not be unwilling to hear certain details 

 concerning the " road and the inn " in Eastern Africa ; 

 he is familiar from infancy with the Arab Kafilah and 

 its host of litters and camels, horses, mules, and asses, 

 but the porter-journeys in Eastern Africa have as yet 

 escaped the penman's pen. 



Throughout Eastern Africa made roads, the first test 

 of progress in a people, are unknown. The most fre- 

 quented routes are foot-tracks like goat- walks, one to 

 two spans broad, trodden down during the travelling 

 season by man and beast, and during the rains the path 

 in African parlance " dies," that is to say, it is over- 

 grown with vegetation. In open and desert places four 

 or five lines often run parallel for short distances. In 

 jungly countries they are mere tunnels in thorns and 

 under branchy trees, which fatigue the porter by catch- 

 ing his load. Where fields and villages abound they 

 are closed with rough hedges, horizontal tree-trunks, and 

 even rude stockades, to prevent trespassing and pil- 

 ferage. Where the land is open, an allowance of one- 

 fifth must be made for winding : in closer countries 

 this must be increased to two-fifths or to one-half, and 

 the traveller must exercise his judgment in distributing 

 the inarches between these two extremes. In Uzaramo 

 and K'hutu the tracks run through tali grasses, which 

 are laid by their own weight after rains, and are burned 

 down during the hot seasons : they often skirt cultivated 

 lands, which they are not allowed to enter, miry swamps 

 are spanned, rivers breast-deep, with muddy bottoms and 

 steep slippery banks, are forded, whilst deep holes, the 

 work of rodents and insects, render them perilous to 

 ridden cattle. In Usagara the gradients are surmounted 

 either by beds of mountain torrents or by breasting 

 steep and stony hills, mere ladders of tree-root and 

 loose stones: laden animals frequently cannot ascend 



