has thickened, the forest of Awamba will advance by degrees, and its trees will exude oil and gum, and bear goodly fruit for the uses of man. That is, in brief, what we learn by observation from the Semliki Valley and the basin of the twin lakes, and what will be confirmed during our journey over the tracts of lake-bed between Rusessé and Unyampaka. [Sidenote: 1889. June 16. Rusessé.] Between Rusessé and Katwé is an extensive plain, dipping down in a succession of low terraces to the Nyama-gazani River, and covered with pasture grass. This terraced plain is remarkable for its growth of euphorbia, which have been planted by generations of Wasongora to form zeribas to protect their herds from beasts of prey and for defence against the archers and spearmen of predatory tribes, and which thickly dot the plains everywhere. Many of these euphorbia, that stood in circles round the clustered huts, were venerable patriarchs, quite five centuries old; hence we assume that the Wasongora have been established in this region for a long time, and that they formed a powerful nation until the Waganda and Wanyoro, furnished with guns and rifles by Arabs, came sweeping through the land on their periodic raids. Readers of ‘Through the Dark Continent’ will remember the story of the Katekiro’s raid, that must have occurred about eighteen years ago, and of the reported marvels said to have been met by the host, as they travelled through a great plain where there were geysers spouting mud, hot springs, intolerable thirst, immense loss of life, ruthless conflicts between the native tribe and the Waganda, and bad water that killed hundreds. We are now on the land which witnessed the raid of the Waganda, and which then despoiled of its splendid herds of cattle. Since that time Kabba Rega, with the aid of his musket-armed Wara-Sura, has occupied the land, usurped the government of the country, and has possessed himself of every cow. Captain Casati has informed me that he once witnessed the return of the raiders from Wasongora, and saw the many thousands of cattle which they had taken. The wide expanses of flats, white with efflorescing natron, teeming with hot springs and muddy geysers, turned out to be pure exaggerations of an imaginative boy, and nothing of all the horrors expected have we seen except perhaps a dreary monotony of level and uniformity of surface features, grass fallen into the sere through drought, and tufts of rigid euphorbia, so characteristic of poor soil. The silence of the plain is due to the wholesale expatriation of the tribe; thirst, because, as we near the Lake borders, the tributaries lie far apart; sickness, from the habit of people drinking the stagnant liquid found in pits. The grass of the plain grieved us sorely while travelling through it. The stalks grew to the height of three feet, and its spikelets pierced through the thickest clothing, and clung to every garment as we passed by, and became very irritating and troublesome.