za: but we shall
see afterwards that he was right; and it was in consequence of this
confusion in the treatment of distinctly different geographical features
under one common name by these people, that in my former journey I
could not determine where the lake had ended and the Nile began. Abdulla
again--he had done so on the former journey--spoke to me of a wonderful
mountain to the northward of Karague, so high and steep no one could
ascend it. It was, he said, seldom visible, being up in the clouds,
where white matter, snow or hail, often fell. Musa said this hill was in
Ruanda, a much larger country than Urundi; and further, both men
said, as they had said before, that the lands of Usoga and Unyoro were
islands, being surrounded by water; and a salt lake, which was called
N'yanza, though not the great Victoria N'yanza lay on the other said of
the Unyoro, from which direction Rumanika, king of Karague, sometimes
got beads forwarded to him by Kamrasi, king of Unyoro, of a different
sort from any brought from Zanzibar. Moreover, these beads were said to
have been plundered from white men by the Wakidi,--a stark-naked people
who live up in trees--have small stools fixed on behind, always ready
for sitting--wear their hair hanging down as far as the rump, all
covered with cowrie-shells--suspend beads from wire attached to their
ears and their lower lips--and wear strong iron collars and bracelets.

This people, I was told, are so fierce in war that no other tribe can
stand against them, though they only fight with short spears. When this
discourse was ended, ever perplexed about the Tanganyika being a still
lake, I enquired of Mohinna and other old friends what they thought
about the Marungu river: did it run into or out of the lake? and they
all still adhered to its running into the lake--which, after all, in my
mind, is the most conclusive argument that it does run out of the lake,
making it one of a chain of lakes leading to the N'yanza, and through
it by the Zambezi into the sea; for all the Arabs on the former journey
said the Rusizi river ran out of the Tanganyika, as also the Kitangule
ran out of the N'yanza, and the Nile ran into it, even though Snay said
he thought the Jub river drained the N'yanza. All these statements
were, when literally translated into English, the reverse of what
the speakers, using a peculiar Arab idiom, meant to say; for all the
statements made as to the flow of rivers by the negroes--who a