e inhabitants of this mountainous region.

This march led us over a high hill to the Mdunhwi river, another
tributary to the Mukondokua. It is all clad in the upper regions with
the slender pole-trees which characterise these hills, intermingled with
bamboo; but the bottoms are characterised by a fine growth of fig-trees
of great variety along with high grasses; whilst near the villages were
found good gardens of plantains, and numerous Palmyra trees. The rainy
season being not far off, the villagers were busy in burning rubble and
breaking their ground. Within their reach everywhere is the sarsaparilla
vine, but growing as a weed, for they know nothing of its value.

Rising up from the deep valley of Mdunhwi we had to cross another
high ridge before descending to the also deep valley of Chongue, as
picturesque a country as the middle heights of the Himalayas, dotted on
the ridges and spur-slopes by numerous small conical-hut villages;
but all so poor that we could not, had we wanted it, have purchased
provisions for a day's consumption.

Leaving this valley, we rose to the table of Manyovi, overhung with much
higher hills, looking, according to the accounts of our Hottentots, as
they eyed the fine herds of cattle grazing on the slopes, so like the
range in Kafraria, that they formed their expectations accordingly,
and appeared, for the first time since leaving the coast, happy at the
prospect before them, little dreaming that such rich places were seldom
to be met with. The Wanyamuezi porters even thought they had found a
paradise, and forthwith threw down their loads as the villagers came to
offer them grain for sale; so that, had I not had the Wanguana a little
under control, we should not have completed our distance that day, and
so reached Manyonge, which reminded me, by its ugliness, of the sterile
Somali land. Proceeding through the semi-desert rolling table-land--in
one place occupied by men who build their villages in large open squares
of flat-topped mud huts, which, when I have occasion to refer to them
in future, I shall call by their native name tembe--we could see on the
right hand the massive mountains overhanging the Mukondokua river, to
the front the western chain of these hills, and to the left the high
crab-claw shaped ridge, which, extending from the western chain, circles
round conspicuously above the swelling knolls which lie between the two
main rocky ridges. Contorted green thorn-trees, "elephan