Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/427

 lagoon. This unexplored basin appears to be encircled by tracts of pasturage, where the nomad Galla herdsmen have their southernmost camping-grounds. West of Baringo Thomson came upon the headstreams of the Wei-Wei river, which flows in the direction of this terminal depression, or of Lake Sûk, another large basin reported to exist in the same region.

East of the great volcanic fissure containing the flooded depressions of the salt and freshwater lakes following in a long line from Manyara to Zamburu, the whole land, apart from a few scattered salines, belongs to the oceanic area of drainage. Even the western slope of Kilima-Njaro, turned towards the interior of the continent, sends some of its waters to the rivers flowing eastward to the Indian Ocean. But this is a very rugged mountainous region, and in immediate

proximity to the coast begin the heights which rise continually higher and higher until in the mighty Kilima-Njaro they at last penetrate beyond the line of perpetual snows. The first hills visible from the sea are the Usambara uplands, an almost isolated granitic mass with mostly rounded crests, some of which attain an altitude of 5,000 feet. From the town of Bulua, which crowns one of these crests, a view is still commanded of the seaboard 60 miles distant, with its fringe of verdant vegetation and broken line of gulfs and headlands.

These uplands are followed towards the north-west by the Paré range, beyond which the horizon is broken by the Ugono ridge, dominating on the west the charming Lake Jipé, and north of which towers the imposing mass of the giant of African mountains. On the continually ascending plains, which extend from the coast at Mombaz towards Kilima-Njaro, the surface is strewn with granite eminences from 4,000 to 5,000 feet, which in several places are disposed in the form of regular ranges. Such peaks as Kilibasi, or Kilimabasi, that is, the