_March 10._—The next day was beautiful. The wild waters of yesterday were calm as those of a pond. The bold hills of Magu, with all their sere and treeless outlines, stood out in fine relief. Opposite them, at about 1300 yards distant, were the brush-covered tops of the Mazanza heights; while between them lay glittering the broad and noble creek which receives the tribute flood of the Shimeeyu, the extreme southern reach of Nile waters. The total length of the course of this river, as laid out on the chart, is 300 miles, which gives the course of the Nile a length of 4200 miles: thus making it the second longest river in the world. The creek extends to a considerable distance, and then contracts to a width of about 400 yards, through which the Monangah, after uniting with the Luwamberri and the Duma rivers, discharges its brown waters, under the name of the Shimeeyu, into the lake. After an examination of these features, we continued our journey along the coast of Mazanza, which forms the eastern shore of the bay of Shimeeyu, passing by the boldly rising and wooded hills of Manassa. At 4 P.M. we attempted to land in a small cove, but were driven away by a multitude of audacious hippopotami, who rushed towards us open-mouthed. Perceiving that they were too numerous and bold for us, we were compelled to drop our stone anchors in 40 feet of water, about two miles from shore. _March 11._—On the 11th of March, after rowing nearly the whole day against a head-wind, we arrived at the eastern end of Speke Gulf, which here narrows to about seven miles. On the southern side Manassa extends from Mazanza, its coast-line marked by an almost unbroken ridge about two miles inland, varied here and there by rounded knolls and hills, from whose base there is a gradual slope covered with woods down to the water’s edge. The eastern end of the gulf is closed by the land of the Wirigedi or, as Saramba called them, the Wajika. At the north-eastern end begins Shahshi, consisting of a group of sterile hills, which, as we proceed west along the north side of the gulf, sink down into a naked plain. The Ruana river empties itself into the head of the gulf by two narrow mouths through a low wooded shore. _March 12._—On the 12th we continued to coast along Shahshi’s low, bare plain, margined at the water’s edge by eschinomenæ, and a little farther inland lined by mimosa, thence past Iramba, a similar country to Shahshi, until we reached Pyramid Point, so christened from the shape of its hills, but on running up into the bay (which has its greatest width at Rugedzi Strait), we found that Pyramid Point really forms the south-western end of a mountain-range. One of the most conspicuous objects we saw, as we stood on the uplands of Usmau, looking towards the N.N.E., was this Pyramid Point, but at that time we had, of course, only a dim idea of its neighbourhood to the lake.