But in two days’ march we observed that there was another change. We were in a much drier climate, and the superficial aspect of the country was much as might be expected from a comparatively rainless district--it was that of a worn-out and scorched country. The grass was void of succulency and nutriment. The slopes of the rounded hills presented grooves of a brick-dust colour; here and there grew a stunted tree with wrinkled and distorted branches and ugly olive-green leaves, too surely denoting that the best of the soil had been scoured away or consumed by annual conflagrations, that vegetable life was derived under precarious circumstances despite the copious showers of the rainy season. As these hills, which constitute the southern flank of Ruwenzori, present themselves, the plains below, between their base and Lake Albert Edward, share their meagre, famished, treeless, and uninteresting character. Though the vegetation differs, the gum-trees, such as the acacia, the rigid black euphorbia, the milk weed, are indications of a lean soil and salt-effusing earth, and in reality such is the character of the bed of the receded Nyanza. In brief words, the north-west and west sides of Ruwenzori, blessed with almost daily rains and with ever-fresh dews, enjoy perpetual spring and are robed in eternal verdure; the south and south-west sides have their well-defined seasons of rain and drought, and if seen during the dry season, no greater contrast can be imagined than these opposing views of nature’s youth and nature’s decay.