32 
EASTERN ETHIOPIA 
II 
lives of men and beasts as well as property. The boat 
from which we witnessed this terrible display had a 
piece of the mainmast detached by lightning in a 
previous voyage. Some of the American passengers 
appropriated the fragments with the intention of 
having them made into paper-knives as souvenirs of 
the storm. 
A Government official who knows the lake and its 
vicinity well explains the frequency and the intensity 
of these electrical storms by the fact that the hills, 
especially on the north-eastern shores of the lake, 
contain ironstone in large quantity, and especially on 
the Nandi escarpment. Standing on the hills above the 
escarpment the storms seem to be beneath the feet of 
the observer, and the currents of lightning appear to 
strike the face of the cliffs. 
The destructive force of such storms may be 
appreciated when one learns that thirty-two head of 
cattle were killed by one of these terrible flaming electric 
swords. These storms are accompanied by extremely 
heavy rain—more correctly, falling sheets of water. 
In the rainy season waterspouts occur, so that a 
voyage on the Victoria Nyanza may be as much marred 
by wind, storms, and rain as a voyage on the ocean. 
There is another curious and also unpleasant occurrence 
occasionally encountered on this, wonderful lake, namely 
mosquito clouds. One morning whilst crossing the 
lake in the neighbourhood of the Buvuma archipelago I 
noticed in several directions an appearance like clouds 
of smoke, and at first thought that these smoke clouds 
came from fires on the islands. On watching them 
closely and remembering that the surface of the lake is 
nearly four thousand feet above sea-level I thought 
they might be clouds. Then the columns assumed 
fantastic shapes and began to gyrate over the lake, 
condensing and attenuating. Then one large cloud, in 
the form of a hollow cylinder, approached, encompassed 
the steamer, and enveloped it in millions of gnats. 
