MY FIRST SETTLEMENT ON KILIMANJARO. 139 
hill-sides by the rain), I resolved that hereabouts my 
principal plantations should be made. I obtained 
Mandara’s consent to the plan, and accordingly set 
my man, Kadu Stanley, to work at once, directing 
him to clear away the brushwood, burn it, mix the 
ashes with the soil, and then plough the whole field 
up and break the clods of earth. Soon many a rich 
bed of dark red earth was sown with seed, and 
separated from its fellows by little runnels, along 
which, once a day or oftener, water, diverted from the 
nearest waterfall, was turned. Indeed, perpetual irri¬ 
gation was here much simplified. The plenteous 
stream went bounding through the valley, with a 
cascade every hundred yards or so. From the head 
of these waterfalls nothing was easier than to divert 
a stream on either side, carry it along a banked-up 
channel above your plantations, and turn the water 
wherever you willed into the network of tiny trenches 
which intersected the plots of ground. 
However, artificial irrigation seemed almost a super¬ 
fluity in Gaga, where never a month passed without 
rain, and where the climate was as moist as that of 
Devonshire. I soon began to find that my first care 
must be to get a rain-proof roof to sleep under. Our 
primal houses were roughly made in a very few days. 
The men proceeded to the forest, cut a certain number 
of poles, used those that were forked at one extremity 
as 66 uprights, 55 and laid the horizontal rods across 
them, tying everything securely with long lithe strips 
of wetted banana fibre. Then to this rough frame¬ 
work they affixed a number of smaller sticks, until a 
rough lattice-work was formed, and finally, the whole, 
roof and all, would be neatly thatched with the old 
fronds of the banana-tree, resembling brown paper in 
