give us a sumptuous dinner previous to our departure--The last letter from Mr. A. M. Mackay, dated January 5, 1890. [Sidenote: 1889. July 28. Karagwé.] A stranger entering Ankori or Karagwé in the dry season, and taking a casual view around, and seeing only vast spaces made black with fire, and lines and massive outcroppings of grey rock, long mountainous ridges heaving one after another, all burnt up, and scorched to seeming desolateness, would be apt to exclaim impatiently, “Show me one beauty spot on the face of it!” This man is an old acquaintance of mine. He is a spleeny, querulous, joyless fellow, of thin blood and aching liver. He will go to the Congo, or to East Africa, or to Bechuanaland, and standing on an ant-heap, he will ask with a sneer, “Do you call this Africa? Pho!” Nevertheless, within three weeks after the fire which burnt the sere grass, and gave the land an aspect of desolation, the young grass is waving merrily, exulting in its youth, and beauty, and greenness over mountain summit, slope, and valley, and these two pasture-lands, renowned for the breeding of their cattle, really look beautiful. I have seen them now under two aspects. To Ankori I give the preference. In it are mighty extents of plain stretching in a hazy, billowy manner, broken up here and there by humpy eminences, pap-like hills, and dwarfish mounts, divided by tributaries of the Alexandra like the Rwizi, or by feeders of the Albert Edward like the Rusango, and all within curving lines of grand grass-covered ranges, which separate one broad river basin from another. It seems as though all this was arranged after some cunning plan, to meet the exigencies of exclusive tribes. The plan has been defeated, however, for Antari reigns over the basins of the Rwizi, the Namianja, the Rusango, and many another stream, despite the mountainous dyke, and of late years he has annexed Mpororo country, and if his power were equal to his ambition he would probably annex Karagwé, and Koki, and Uddu, down to the Victoria Lake. We are now in Karagwé. The Alexandra Nile--drawing its waters from Ruanda, Mpororo, to the west; and from north, Uhha; and north-east, Urundi and Kishakka--runs north along the western frontier of Karagwé, and reaching Ankori, turns sharply round to eastward to empty into the Victorian Sea; and as we leave its narrow valley, and ascend gradually upward, along one of those sloping narrow troughs so characteristic of this part of Central Africa, we camp at Unyakatera, below a mountain ridge of that name, and like the view obtained from that summit two score of times repeated, is all Karagwé. It is a system of deep narrow valleys running between long narrow ranges as far as the eye can reach. In the north of Karagwé they are drained by small streams which flow into the Alexandra. [Sidenote: 1889. July 29. Mtagata.]