BOUND LAKE VICTORIA NYANZA. 
189 
principal being Kitaro, on which cattle and goats are 
found. Though the islanders obtain but a scanty sub- 
sistence from the soil, they find reason to congratulate 
themselves in that they are safe from the periodical 
raids made by the Wajika, or Wirigedi, a tribe un- 
pleasantly distinguished for the length of their knives 
and the breadth and weight of their spears. On one of 
this group, which was uninhabited, we stayed to cook 
our mid-day meal. It appeared fair and pleasant 
enough from without — one mass of deepest verdure, 
with a cone rising about 100 feet above the lake. 
Upon exploring it, we found it to be a heap of gigantic 
rocks, between which the deposit of vegetable matter 
SAMA-ULOA, FISH FOUND IN LAKE VICTORIA. 
had given birth to a forest of young trees, the spreading 
green foliage of which was rendered still more im- 
pervious to sunshine by a multitude of parasitical 
plants and llianes, which had woven the whole into as 
thick and dense a shade as I ever remember to have 
seen. Below this mass of tangled branch and leaf the 
thermometer descends to 70° Fahr. ; without, exposed 
to the blazing sun, it ascends to 115° Fahr. 
In the evening we camped on a small island in the 
middle of the bay of Ukerewe, east of the beautiful isle 
of Nifuali, which is inhabited and is the home of an 
industrious colony subject to the king of Ukerewe. 
From the summit of Nifuali we could distinguish the 
