How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
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To The Men This First Day's March Through The Mountain Region Of
Usagara Was An Agreeable Interlude After The Successive Journey
Over The Flats And Heavy Undulations Of The Maritime Region, But
To The Loaded And Enfeebled Animals It Was Most Trying.
We were
minus two by the time we had arrived at our camp, but seven miles
from Rehenneko, our
First instalment of the debt we owed to Makata.
Water, sweet and clear, was abundant in the deep hollows of the
mountains, flowing sometimes over beds of solid granite, sometimes
over a rich red sandstone, whose soft substance was soon penetrated
by the aqueous element, and whose particles were swept away
constantly to enrich the valley below; and in other ravines it
dashed,, and roared, miniature thunder, as it leaped over granite
boulders and quartz rock.
The 9th of May, after another such an up-and-down course, ascending
hills and descending into the twilight depths of deepening
valleys, we came suddenly upon the Mukondokwa, and its narrow
pent-up valley crowded with rank reedy grass, cane, and thorny
bushes; and rugged tamarisk which grappled for existence with
monster convolvuli, winding their coils around their trunks with
such tenacity and strength that the tamarisk seemed grown
but for their support.
The valley was barely a quarter of a mile broad in some places -
at others it widened to about a mile. The hills on either side
shot up into precipitous slopes, clothed ,with mimosa, acacia,
and tamarisk, enclosing a river and valley whose curves and
folds were as various as a serpent's.
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