15th February.--After waiting for a few hours this morning for the rain to subside, we got under way and made straight for Fuga. The first half of the journey led us by well-beaten footpaths through flat cultivated fields of sugar-cane and bananas, tamarind-trees, papaws, and various jungle shrubs, filling up the non-arable surface; and then began a steep ascent by rudely-beaten zigzags, to ease the abruptness of the hill, on which the capital is situated. The whole face of this hill was clothed with large timber trees, around which, here and there, entwining their trunks, clung the delicate sarsaparilla vine; and beneath them flourished, as by spontaneous growth, the universal plantain, a vegetable grown in this country as we do corn, and, like it also, regarded as the staff of life. At length, after a little hard toiling, we emerged from this prodigious wooding, and found ourselves on a naked, bold, prominent point overlooking the whole plain we had left behind, and from which we could clearly see its entire dimensions. To the northward, as already said, was the Makumbara range, a dense compact mass of solid-looking hills, much higher than the spur we stood upon, but joining it to the north-eastward; whilst its other extremity shot out to the north-westward, until it seemed as though it were suddenly cut off by the Pangani river. Beyond the river, again, looking across the western extremity, but farther back than it, other large hills, bedimmed by distance, could be seen tending in a south-westerly direction, which in all probability are a link of the longitudinal chain, which, as our maps will show, fringe the whole of the southern continent of Africa.[39] The country directly beyond the river valley rose into gentle undulations, but on this side all was flat and densely wooded, save in one little spot to the north-west of the Mbara cones, where a sheet of water or small lake made a bald conspicuous place--and here it was, by native report, that elephants and other large game abounded. Having now completed the survey, we proceeded along the shoulder of the hill just ascended, and passing by a ferruginous spring, soon arrived unexpectedly to its inhabitants at Fuga, the capital of Usumbara, and presented ourselves to the astonished Fugaites, who naturally began to question what could possibly be the meaning of this stolen march on them; for, contrary to the laws of the land, no permission to enter their _citadel_ had been asked, and consequently no one was prepared to see or receive us. Access to the village was strictly forbidden to us strangers, until at least the king, whose palace is situated some distance from it, had been consulted with in a certain form of ridiculous ceremony, which, for politeness' sake, we felt ourselves bound to assent to, but in the meanwhile we took possession of some huts close to it, where Mr Krapf, our Church missionary, had some years previously, when visiting this place, taken up his abode.