130 THE KISINGIRI AND GWASI DISTRICTS 
salty. It is then caught in other vessels and boiled, till by 
the process of evaporation the salt is left behind. Over the 
whole of this dry stony country near the lake, both on the 
islands and mainland, large quantities of the silk cotton plant 
are found. It grows into quite a large shrub, and produces 
a sort of ball about the size of a very large orange, which, 
when ripe, is found to be full of the most beautifully smooth 
silky cotton. 1 It is extraordinary how it grows at all, con- 
sidering the soil in which it is found. The harder, drier and 
more rocky, the better it thrives. About a couple of miles 
back from the Lake shore here, one reaches the foot of a huge 
escarpment, which rises almost perpendicularly from the low 
lands of Kisingiri to Upper Gwasi. The track climbs up 
somewhat to one side of the steepest place, and when it has 
almost reached the top, it turns off to the right and crosses 
the face of what can only be described as a precipice. When 
I went along this road in 1910 at the steepest place where the 
slope on either side was almost sheer up and down, I was 
shown where an elephant had rolled down from top to bottom. 
It had apparently been coming along the higher Gwasi country, 
and when it reached the crest of the hill, had missed its footing 
and rolled head over heels right down to the bottom, where 
it was found, almost reduced to pulp, by some natives who 
had been cutting wood. Their attention was attracted by 
the noise made by the animal falling, and they saw what must 
indeed have been a most extraordinary sight. Even when 
I saw the place three or four years after the occurrence, traces 
of the fall were still visible. There was a clear line marked 
by broken euphorbias and displaced rocks, showing the terrible 
force with which the huge mass crashed down. 
On reaching the top of the hill, the path descends again 
somewhat to the camping place in Upper Gwasi, a sort of 
hollow in the mountainous range facing the higher part of the 
Ulambwi Valley. Water here is a great difficulty and is only 
obtained at the bottom of the deep pits, which the natives 
dig in one of the side valleys running down from the mountains. 
At a depth of about eight to ten feet, very good water is found. 
1 This plant is an Asclepiad. — E d. 
