From the day we cross the watershed that divides the affluent of the Tanganika from the head waters of the Luama, there is observed a gradual increase in the splendour of nature. By slow degrees she exhibits to us, as we journey westward, her rarest beauties, her wealth and all the profligacy of her vegetation. In the forests of Miketo and on the western slopes of the Goma mountains she scatters with liberal hand her luxuries of fruits, and along the banks of streams we see revealed the wild profusion of her bounties. As we increase the distance from the Tanganika, we find the land disposed in graceful lines and curves: ridges heave up, separating valley from valley, hills lift their heads in the midst of the basins, and mountain-ranges, at greater distances apart, bound wide prospects, wherein the lesser hill-chains, albeit of dignified proportions, appear but as agreeable diversities of scenery. Over the whole, Nature has flung a robe of verdure of the most fervid tints. She has bidden the mountains loose their streamlets, has commanded the hills and ridges to bloom, filled the valleys with vegetation breathing perfume, for the rocks she has woven garlands of creepers, and the stems of trees she has draped with moss; and sterility she has banished from her domain. Yet Nature has not produced a soft, velvety, smiling England in the midst of Africa. Far from it. She is here too robust and prolific. Her grasses are coarse, and wound like knives and needles; her reeds are tough and tall as bamboos; her creepers and convolvuli are of cable thickness and length; her thorns are hooks of steel; her trees shoot up to a height of a hundred feet. We find no pleasure in straying in search of wild flowers, and game is left undisturbed, because of the difficulty of moving about, for once the main path is left we find ourselves over head amongst thick, tough, unyielding, lacerating grass. At Manyema, the beauty of Nature becomes terrible, and in the expression of her powers she is awful. The language of Swahili has words to paint her in every mood. English, rich as it is, is found insufficient. In the former we have the word Pori for a forest, an ordinary thickly wooded tract, but for the forests of Manyema it has four special words, Mohuro, Mwitu, Mtambani, and Msitu. For Mohuro we might employ the words jungly forest; for Mwitu, dense woods; but for Msitu and Mtambani we have no single equivalent, nor could we express their full meaning without a series of epithets ending with “tangled jungle” or “impervious underwood in the midst of a dense forest”—for such is in reality the nature of a Manyema Msitu. I am of opinion that Manyema owes its fertility to the mountains west of the Tanganika, which by their altitude suddenly cool and liquefy the vapours driven over their tops by the south-east monsoon, for while Uguha west was robed in green, its lake front was black with the ashes of burnt grass.