LAKE JIB A AND THE BO AD TO GONJA. 307 
coast. Twenty miles beyond Kisiwani we came to the 
pleasing and fruitful district of Gonja, a settlement of 
Wa-zeguha, ruled by sons of Semboja, the chief of 
Usambara, a vassal of the Sayyid of Zanzibar. Here 
signs of coast influence ‘were quite apparent, and for 
the first time since leaving Mombasa at the commence¬ 
ment of the expedition, I knew I was not among 
savages. 
Gonja, with its clear, swift river, its splendid groves 
of forest trees, its luxuriant plantations, reminded us of 
our favourite Taveita, and we felt a keen sympathy 
with this place, which was the first inhabited spot we 
had encountered in seventy miles of wilderness. At 
the back of Gonja, in the Pare hills, the scenery 
was enchantingly lovely-—wooded crags, rich valleys, 
emerald-green banana groves, rippling streams, and 
splendid waterfalls, one of which, another Staubbach, 
gave rise to the river which encircles the town. We 
could see its grey-white shoot of descending water in 
the distance, too far off to show the changing light 
of motion, and apparently as unvarying and immobile 
as the blue hill-side, just like a photographed waterfall. 
On a little peninsula backed by hills, and nearly sur¬ 
rounded by a loop of the river, the rambling village 
of Gonja is built, the whole congeries of houses being 
encircled with a tall fence of euphorbias and other 
prickly shrubs. The dwellings are fashioned much 
after the style of the native houses on the coast— 
structures of wattle and clay, generally divided into 
several apartments. 
We found the chief and notables dressed like respect¬ 
able Arabs, and they greeted us with Arab salutations. 
I ascertained that not only they but the people they 
governed were great linguists. They spoke Ki-zeguha, 
x 2 
