THE ALLEGED DESICCATION OF EAST AFRICA 11 
the Lakdera river, which is the dry watercourse which emerges 
from the east end of Lorian swamp, and which can be traced 
down to the Deshek Wama lake and so to the Juba river, was 
once a real river and a tributary of the Juba ; nowadays it 
can hardly be called a river except for the fact that water can 
be found in wells at certain places along its course, and thus 
there is an underground seepage of water which is fed from 
the IJaso Nyiro after every rainy season. The Lorian swamp, 
too, turns out to be much smaller than was originally reported, 
but of course the original reports were very vague. Deshek 
Wama lake only carries water once in every few years, and 
that is almost certain to be either surface water from the 
surrounding country or flood w r ater from the Juba. 
If, as is believed in times past, the Lakdera was a con- 
siderable river with a belt of thick forest on its banks, this 
might have exercised some small effect on the climate of the 
surrounding area. Jilore lake, near the Sabaki river, which 
was quite a considerable sheet of water up to recent years, has 
been steadily diminishing, and is now quite dry, and the site 
is covered with scrub. This may, however, be due to the 
Sabaki river, which fed the lake to a great Extent, having cut 
its channel below the level of the inlet to the lake. Baratumo 
lake, on the south of the Sabaki river between Jilore and 
Malindi, is also said to be now dry. 
Proceeding west over the Mau escarpment we descend to 
Lake Victoria, and there we find definite evidences that that 
lake once extended eastwards as far as Muhoroni, roughly 
400 feet above the present lake-level, and it was probably the 
waters of the lake which, converted into steam, afforded the 
motive power that broke down the crater wall of the great 
volcano now called Tinderet. I doubt if this fall of the level 
of Lake Victoria is entirely due to the wearing away of the sill 
of the natural dam formed by the granite dyke at Jinja, known 
as the Ripon Falls ; I am inclined to believe that the decrease 
in rainfall has had a greater effect. 
The German authorities inform me that Lake Rukwa at 
the south-east corner of Lake Tanganyika has much decreased 
in size during the last fifty years, and that the western portion 
of it has practically disappeared and become swamp ; they also 
