The climate of Ugogo is markedly arid. During the transit of the Expedition in September and October, the best water-colours faded and hardened in their pans; India-rubber, especially the prepared article in squares, became viscid, like half-dried birdlime; “Macintosh” was sticking plaister, and the best vulcanized elastic-bands tore like brown paper. During almost the whole year a violent east-wind sweeps from the mountains. There are great changes in the temperature, whilst the weather apparently remains the same, and alternate currents of hot and cold air were observed. In the long summer the climate much resembles that of Sindh; there are the same fiery suns playing upon the naked surface with a painful dazzle, cool crisp nights, and clouds of dust. The succulent vegetation is shrivelled up and carbonised by heat, and the crackling covering of clayey earth and thin sand, whose particles are unbound by dew or rain, rises in lofty whirling columns like water-spouts when the north wind from the Wahumba Hills meets the gusts of Usagara, which are soon heated to a furnace-breath by the glowing surface. These “p’hepo” or “devils” scour the plain with the rapidity of horsemen, and, charged with coarse grain and small pebbles, strike with the violence of heavy hail. The siccity and repercussion of heat produce an atmosphere of peculiar brilliancy in Ugogo: the milky haze of the coast-climate is here unknown. The sowing season, at which time also trees begin to bud and birds to breed, is about the period of the sun’s greatest southern declination, and the diminution of temperature displays in these regions the effects of the tepid winds and the warm vernal showers of the European continent. There is no Vuli, and thus the climate is unrefreshed by the copious tropical rains. About the middle of November the country is visited by a few preliminary showers, accompanied by a violent tramontana, and the vital principle which appears extinct starts once more into sudden and excessive activity. Towards the end of December the Masika, or rainy season, commences with the wind shifting from the east to the north and north-east, blowing steadily from the high grounds eastward and westward of the Nyanza Lake, which have been saturated by heavy falls beginning in September. The “winter” seldom exceeds the third month, and the downfall is desultory and uncertain, causing frequent droughts and famine. For this reason the land is much inferior in fertility to the other regions, and the cotton and tobacco, which flourish from the coast to the Tanganyika Lake, are deficient in Ugogo, whilst rice is supplanted by the rugged sorghum and maize.