310 
THE KILIMA-NIAllO EXPEDITION,\ 
here finds cover, sustenance, and water, for the 
Mkomazi flows through the centre. 
We found the recent spoor of elephants, and saw 
at different times giraffes, elands, gnus, and cobus 
antelopes. I shot a cow eland, but she managed to 
get away into the dense bush, and we had not time to 
follow her trail. Baboons were singularly abundant 
in the big trees, and as for the guinea-fowls !—I never 
saw the like in any part of Africa. Altogether this 
Mkomazi valley teemed with life, and would doubtless 
prove as fine a hunting-ground as Nguruhgani, or the 
vicinity of Lake Jipe. 
As we approached Mazindi, the capital of King 
Semboja, the forest trees grew loftier and richer in 
foliage, and the ground began to change from the flat 
plain to a succession of ridges and low hills. We 
were, indeed, approaching the verge of Usambara; in 
fact a kind of “ undercliff,” lying at the foot of those 
extraordinary mountains which towered from 4000 
to 7000 feet above the plain. In all my varied African 
experiences, in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria, in the 
Che 11a range of Southern Angola, on Kilima-njaro, or 
elsewhere, I have never seen anything so unique and 
strangely imposing as the western aspect of Usambara. 
Imagine giant cliffs of granite and limestone rising 
nearly like a sheer wall 4000 feet and more from the 
plain. The ascent looks impossible, and one imagines 
a descent might only be performed by lowering oneself 
from the top with several thousand feet of rope. At the 
back of this giant barrier of granite there lies a lovely 
land of forests, streams, and mo an tain meadows,wherein 
reside—strange as it seems to us who wander in this 
savage wilderness !—Englishmen, labouring hard to 
spread all that is best in religion and civilization among 
