These three routes pass through the heart of the great desert and elephant-ground “Mgunda Mk’hali”--explained by the Arabs to mean in Kinyamwezi, the Fiery “Shamba” or Field. Like Marenga Mk’hali, it is a desert, because it contains no running water nor wells, except after rain. The name is still infamous, but its ill-fame rests rather upon tradition than actuality; in fact, its dimensions are rapidly shrinking before the torch and axe. About fifteen years ago it contained twelve long stages, and several tirikeza; now it is spanned in eight marches. The wildest part is the first half from Mdáburu to Jiwe lá Mkoa, and even here, it is reported, villages of Wakimbu are rising rapidly on the north and south of the road. The traveller, though invariably threatened with drought and the death of cattle, will undergo little hardship beyond the fatigue of the first three forced marches through the “Fiery Field;” in fact, he will be agreeably surprised by its contrast with the desert of Marenga Mk’hali. From east to west the diagonal breadth of Mgunda Mk’hali is 140 miles. The general aspect is a dull uniform bush, emerald-coloured during the rains, and in the heats a network of dry and broom-like twigs. Except upon the banks of nullahs--“rivers” that are not rivers--the trees, as in Ugogo, wanting nutriment, never afford timber, and even the calabash appears stunted. The trackless waste of scrub, called the “bush” in Southern Africa, is found in places alternating with thin gum-forest; the change may be accounted for by the different depths of water below the level of the ground. It is a hardy vegetation of mimosas and gums mixed with evergreen succulent plants, cactaceæ, aloes, and euphorbias: the grass, sometimes tufty, at other times equally spread, is hard and stiff; when green it feeds cattle, and when dry it is burned in places by passing caravans to promote the growth of another crop. The groundwork of Mgunda Mk’hali is a detritus of yellowish quartz, in places white with powdered felspar, and, where vegetation decays, brown-black with humus. Water-worn pebbles are sprinkled over the earth, and the vicinity of Fiumaras abounds in a coarse and modern sandstone-conglomerate. Upon the rolling surface, and towering high above the tallest trees, are based the huge granitic and syenitic outcrops before alluded to. The contrast between the masses and the dwarf rises which support them at once attracts the eye. Here and there the long waves that diversify the land appear in the far distance like blue lines bounding the nearer superficies of brown or green. Throughout this rolling table-land the watershed is to the south. In rare places the rains stagnate in shallow pools, which become systems of mud-cakes during the drought. At this season water is often unprocurable in the Fiumaras, causing unaccustomed hardships to caravans, and death to those beasts which, like the elephant and the buffalo, cannot long exist without drinking.