Return to the Plateau . 
235 
gravelly, waterless, and lying about three days’ 
journey beyond the screen of wooded hill. It is 
probably sheltered to some extent from the damp 
sea-breeze, and thus to the east there would be a 
“lee-land,” dry, healthy and elevated, which, 
corresponding with Ugogo on the Zanzibar-Tan- 
ganyika line, would account for the light com¬ 
plexions of the people. Early on the morning of 
Thursday, April 17th, the “Eliza” was lying off 
Mr. R. B. N. Walker’s factory, and I was again 
received with customary hospitality by Mr. Hogg. 
These two short trips gave me a just measure 
of the comparative difficulties in travelling through 
Eastern and Western Africa, and to a certain 
extent accounted for the huge vacuum which dis¬ 
figures the latter, a few miles behind the seaboard. 
The road to Unyamwezi, for instance, has been 
trodden for centuries ; the people have become 
trained porters ; they look forward annually to 
visiting the coast, and they are accustomed to the 
sight of strangers, Arabs and others. If war or 
blood-feud chance to close one line, the general 
interests of the interior open another. But in this 
section of Africa there is no way except from 
village to village, and a blood-feud may shut it for 
months. The people have not the habit of dealing 
with the foreigner, whom they look upon as a 
portent, a walking ghost, an ill-omened apparition. 
Porterage is in embryo, no scale of payment 
