stiff
ascent, covered with trees and large blocks of granite, excepting only
where cleared for villages; and on we went rapidly, until at noon the
advance party was reached, located in a village overlooking the great
interior plateau--a picture, as it were, of the common type of African
scenery. Here, taking a hasty meal, we resumed the march all together,
descended the great western chain, and, as night set in, camped in a
ravine at the foot of it, not far from the great junction-station Ugogi,
where terminate the hills of Usagara.

Chapter IV. Ugogo, and the Wilderness of Mgunda Mkhali

The Lie of the Country--Rhinoceros-Stalking--Scuffle of Villagers over a
Carcass--Chief "Short-Legs" and His Successors--Buffalo-Shooting--
Getting Lost--A Troublesome Sultan--Desertions from the Camp--Getting
Plundered--Wilderness March--Diplomatic Relations with the Local
Powers--Manua Sera's Story--Christmas--The Relief from Kaze

This day's work led us from the hilly Usagara range into the more level
lands of the interior. Making a double march of it, we first stopped to
breakfast at the quiet little settlement of Inenge, where cattle were
abundant, but grain so scarce that the villagers were living on calabash
seeds. Proceeding thence across fields delightfully checkered with
fine calabash and fig trees, we marched, carrying water through thorny
jungles, until dark, when we bivouacked for the night, only to rest
and push on again next morning, arriving at Marenga Mkhali (the saline
water) to breakfast. Here a good view of the Usagara hills is obtained.
Carrying water with us, we next marched half-way to the first settlement
of Ugogo, and bivouacked again, to eat the last of our store of Mbumi
grain.

At length the greater famine lands had been spanned; but we were not
in lands of plenty--for the Wagogo we found, like their neighbours
Wasagara, eating the seed of the calabash, to save their small stores of
grain.

The East Coast Range having been passed, no more hills had to be
crossed, for the land we next entered on is a plateau of rolling ground,
sloping southward to the Ruaha river, which forms a great drain running
from west to east, carrying off all the rainwaters that fall in its
neighbourhood through the East Coast Range to the sea. To the northward
can be seen some low hills, which are occupied by Wahumba, a subtribe
of the warlike Masai; and on the west is the large forest-wilderness of
Mgunda Mkhali. Ugogo, l