188 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
After an examination of these features, we continued 
our journey along the coast of Mazanza, which forms 
the eastern shore of the bay of Shimeeyu, passing by 
the boldly rising and wooded hills of Manassa. At 
4 p.m. we attempted to land in a small cove, but were 
driven away by a multitude of audacious hippopotami, 
who rushed towards us open-mouthed. Perceiving that 
they were too numerous and bold for us, we were 
compelled to drop our stone anchors in forty feet of 
water, about two miles from shore. 
On the 11th of March, after rowing nearly the whole 
day against a head-wind, we arrived at the eastern end 
of Speke Gulf, which here narrows to about seven miles. 
On the southern side Manassa extends from Mazanza, 
its coast-line marked by an almost unbroken ridge 
about two miles inland, varied here and there by 
rounded knolls and hills, from whose base there is a 
gradual slope covered with woods down to the water’s 
edge. The eastern end of the gulf is closed by the 
land of the Wirigedi or, as Saramba called them, the 
AYajika. At the north-eastern end begins Shahshi, 
consisting of a group of sterile hills, which, as we 
proceed west along the north side of the gulf, sink 
down into a naked plain. The Ruana river empties 
itself into the head of the gulf by two narrow mouths 
through a low wooded shore. 
On the 12th we continued to coast along Shahshi’s 
low, bare plain, margined at the water’s edge by 
eschinomense, and a little farther inland lined by 
mimosa, thence past Iramba, a similar country to 
Shahshi, until we reached Pyramid Point, so christened 
from the shape of its hills, but on running up into the 
bay (which lias its greatest width at Rugedzi Strait), 
we found that Pyramid Point really forms the south- 
western end of a mountain-range. One of the most 
conspicuous objects we saw, as we stood on the uplands 
of Usmau, looking towards the N.N.E., was this 
Pyramid Point, but at that time we had, of course, only 
a dim idea of its neighbourhood to the lake. 
Near the Point is a group of small islands, the 
