We Travelled For Six Hours, And Had Yet Seen No Sign Of Cultivation Anywhere.

According to my map we were yet two long marches from the Malagarazi - if Captain Burton had correctly laid down the position of the river; according to the natives' account, we should have arrived at the Malagarazi on this day.

On the 29th we left our camp, and after a few minutes, we were in view of the sublimest, but ruggedest, scenes we had yet beheld in Africa. The country was cut up in all directions by deep, wild, and narrow ravines trending in all directions, but generally toward the north-west, while on either side rose enormous square masses of naked rock (sandstone), sometimes towering, and rounded, sometimes pyramidal, sometimes in truncated cones, sometimes in circular ridges, with sharp, rugged, naked backs, with but little vegetation anywhere visible, except it obtained a precarious tenure in the fissured crown of some gigantic hill-top, whither some soil had fallen, or at the base of the reddish ochre scarps which everywhere lifted their fronts to our view.

A long series of descents down rocky gullies, wherein we were environed by threatening masses of disintegrated rock, brought us to a dry, stony ravine, with mountain heights looming above us a thousand feet high. This ravine we followed, winding around in all directions, but which gradually widened, however, into a broad plain, with a western trend. The road, leaving this, struck across a low ridge to the north; and we were in view of deserted settlements where the villages were built on frowning castellated masses of rock.

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