158 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
making a diagonal course, as just described, we had 
arrived at the extreme head of the lake without any 
difficulty. 
The country in which we now found ourselves, Mugi- 
hewa, is situated in the delta of the Rusizi River. It is 
an extremely Hat country, the highest part of which is 
not ten feet above the lake, with numerous depressions 
in it overgrown with the rankest of matete-grass and 
the tallest of papyrus, and pond-like hollows, filled with 
stagnant water, which emit malaria wholesale. Large 
herds of cattle are reared on it ; for where the ground is 
not covered with marshy plants it produces rich, sweet 
grass. The sheep and goats, especially the former, are 
always in good condition ; and though they are not to 
be compared with English or American sheep, they are 
the finest I have seen in Africa. Numerous villages are 
seen on this land because the intervening spaces are not 
occupied with the rank and luxuriant jungle common in 
other parts of Africa. Were it not for the Euphorbia 
kolquall of Abyssinia — which some chief has caused to 
be planted as a defence round the villages — one might 
see from one end of Muffiliewa to the other. The waters 
o 
along the head of the lake, from the western to the 
eastern shores, swarm with crocodiles. From the banks, 
I counted ten heads of crocodiles, and the Rusizi, we 
were told, was full of them. 
Ruhinga, who came to see us soon after we had taken 
up our quarters in his village, was a most amiable man, 
who always contrived to see something that excited his 
risibility ; though older by five or six years perhaps— he 
said he was a hundred years old— than Mukamba, he 
was not half so dignified, nor regarded with so much 
admiration by his people as his younger brother. 
Ruhinga had a better knowledge, however, of the country 
than Mukamba, and an admirable memory, and was 
able to impart his knowledge of the country intelligently. 
After he had done the honours as chief to us— presented 
us with an ox and a sheep, milk and honey — we were 
not backward in endeavouring to elicit as much infor- 
mation as possible out of him. 
