TAITA TO KILIMANJARO. 
65 
ment for the right of drinking from their river. How¬ 
ever, a resolute attitude on our part preserved the 
peace, and we were soon on excellent terms with the 
Wa-taita, buying fowls, maize, and honey at a great 
rate. On the morrow we skirted the little river of 
Bura for a few miles, and then, reluctantly leaving its 
belt of rich, majestic forest, plunged resolutely into 
the waterless wilderness which separated ns from the 
base of Kilima-njaro. 
Although the journey before us was a far longer 
one than that terrible march to Maungu, it was, 
nevertheless, marked by no sufferings from fatigue 
and thirst, for I had the men now well in hand, 
and was careful to ascertain that no one had 
started without a due supply of water. The country 
we passed through was indeed a wilderness, but yet 
rather park-like in its aspect. There was an entire 
absence of undergrowth, and tallisli trees with cedar¬ 
like crowns rose at regular intervals, looking, in their 
uniformity of unvarying red trunks and bright green 
compact foliage, like an unskilfully painted landscape. 
Other noticeable features in the scene were the tall 
red ant-hills and, strange imitation, the tall red ante¬ 
lopes, a species of hartebeest , 1 resembling faintly in 
shape the form of a giraffe with sloping hind-quarters, 
high shoulders, and long neck. Being a deep red- 
brown in colour, and standing one by one stock-still 
at the approach of the caravan, it was really most 
difficult and puzzling sometimes to know which was 
hartebeest and which was ant-hill; for the long grass 
hiding the antelope’s legs left merely a red-humped 
mass, which, until it moved, might well be the mound 
of red earth constructed by the white termites. The 
1 Alcelajpihus Cokei. 
F 
