Of Tea.

Abdullah bin Nasib, who was found encamped here with five hundred pagazis, and a train of Arab and Wasawahili satellites, who revolved around his importance, treated me in somewhat the same manner that Hamed bin Sulayman treated Speke at Kasenge.

Followed by his satellites, he came (a tall nervous-looking man, of fifty or thereabouts) to see me in my camp, and asked me if I wished to purchase donkeys. As all my animals were either sick or moribund, I replied very readily in the affirmative, upon which he graciously said he would sell me as many as I wanted, and for payment I could give him a draft on Zanzibar. I thought him a very considerate and kind person, fully justifying the encomiums lavished on him in Burton's `Lake Regions of Central Africa,' and accordingly I treated him with the consideration due to so great and good a man. The morrow came, and with it went Abdullah bin Nasib, or "Kisesa," as he is called by the Wanyamwezi, with all his pagazis, his train of followers, and each and every one of his donkeys, towards Bagamoyo, without so much as giving a "Kwaheri," or good-bye.

At this place there are generally to be found from ten to thirty pagazis awaiting up-caravans. I was fortunate enough to secure twelve good people, who, upon my arrival at Unyanyembe, without an exception, voluntarily engaged themselves as carriers to Ujiji. With the formidable marches of Marenga Mkali in front, I felt thankful for this happy windfall,, which resolved the difficulties I had been anticipating; for I had but ten donkeys left, and four of these were so enfeebled that they were worthless as baggage animals.

Mpwapwa - so called by the Arabs, who have managed to corrupt almost every native word - is called "Mbambwa" by the Wasagara. It is a mountain range rising over 6,000 feet above the sea, bounding on the north the extensive plain which commences at Ugombo lake, and on the east that part of the plain which is called Marenga Mkali, which stretches away beyond the borders of Uhumba. Opposite Mpwapwa, at the distance of thirty miles or so, rises the Anak peak of Rubeho, with several other ambitious and tall brethren cresting long lines of rectilinear scarps, which ascend from the plain of Ugombo and Marenga Mkali as regularly as if they had been chiselled out by the hands of generations of masons and stonecutters.

Upon looking at Mpwapwa's greenly-tinted slopes, dark with many a densely-foliaged tree; its many rills flowing sweet and clear, nourishing besides thick patches of gum and thorn bush, giant sycamore and parachute-topped mimosa, and permitting my imagination to picture sweet views behind the tall cones above, I was tempted to brave the fatigue of an ascent to the summit. Nor was my love for the picturesque disappointed. One sweep of the eyes embraced hundreds of square miles of plain and mountain, from Ugombo Peak away to distant Ugogo, and from Rubeho and Ugogo to the dim and purple pasture lands of the wild, untamable Wahumba. The plain of Ugombo and its neighbour of Marenga Mkali, apparently level as a sea, was dotted here and there with "hillocks dropt in Nature's careless haste," which appeared like islands amid the dun and green expanse.

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