The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

THE CAEAVAN TRADE. 325to forward goods by the long teams of cattle employed by the traders in SouthAfrica. But all these experiments have ended in disappointment, and theUsagara highlanders are now the heirs of the useless waggons abandoned by thewayside near Koiidoa [Mkondoa), the station founded in the year 1881 by theFrench commission of the "African Association."In 1879 it was hoped that the problem oftransport had been solved by introducingfrom India four well- trained elephants. The intelligent and docileanimals did in fact accomplish one-third of the journey without accident ; betweenDar-es-Salaam and Mpwapwa they surmounted all obstacles of mountain, swamp,and river, their only food being herbs and foliage. Kor did they ajipcar to bemuch the worse after an exposure of twenty-three days to the bite of the tsetsepest. It was supposed that the experiment had succeeded, when suddenly one ofthe four died, without any apparent cause. Soon after, all the other elephantsperished in the same way, whether through change of food or of climate, orpossibly worn out by the hardships ofthe route, for along these rugged mountaintracks they had been laden with burdens of sixteen hundred or eighteen hundredpounds weight. Since then the costly experiment has not been renewed, and itis now proposed to settle the question ,of transport by constructing a railway,which as it gradually penetrates into the interior may enable the traders to dispensewith porters and pack animals alike.^Vlong the highways of commerce leading from the coast to Tabora there areno towns properlj' so called. Even the villages are frequently displaced, andmany capitals of petty states visited by the early explorers are now nothing morethan a heap of ruins. The wayside caravanserais most usually selected forrevictualling the convoys are the stations of the missionaries, such as Mamloyaand Jlpirapira, both situated to the west ofthe highlands, on a plateau where theheadwaters of the Wami take their rise, and where the alimentary plants ofEurope thrive to perfection. They stand nearly about midway between Bagamoyoand Tabora, and immediately beyond them begins the wilderness of brushwood,acacias, and gum-yielding plants, which the wayfarer hastens to traverse asrapidly as possible in order to reach the Ugogo villages, themselves scatteredamongst the bush.Bounded on the east by the Marenga Mkhali region, as the wilderness is called,Ugogo stretches westwards to the verge of another solitude known as the ilgundaMkhali, or " Land of Fire." This inhospitable tract, which it formerly requiredfifteen days to traverse, but which has gradually been somewluit reduced byclearing and cultivating the ground, is an open plain covered with scrub, wherethe traveller plods for hours together without noticing the least change in thedreary landscape—everywhere a stunted brushwood, and rolled shingle broughtdown by now dried-up torrents. In some districts of the Land of Fire, masses ofgranite or of syenite stand out amid the scrub, some rounded and hummocky,others presenting the outlines of towers, smooth or fissured, isolated or groupedtogether in hundreds, disposed in avenues, forming huge gateways, or piled interraces one above the other.