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for another’s suffering, and I then recognized
and hailed them as indeed my own poor and
degraded sisters.
Under the new light which had dawned on
me, I reflected that I had done some wrong to
my dusky relatives, and that they might have
been described less harshly, and introduced to
the world with less disdain.
Before I quitted the village, they made me
still more regret my former haughty feelings,
for the chief and his subjects loaded my men
with bounties of bananas, chickens, Indian corn,
and malafu (palm-wine), and escorted me respectfully
far beyond the precincts of the village and
their fields, parting from me at last with the
assurance that, should I ever happen to return
by their country, they would endeavour to
make my second visit to Uhombo much more
agreeable than my first had been.
On the 5th October our march from Uhombo
brought us to the frontier village of Manyema,
which is called Riba-Riba. It is noteworthy as
the starting-point of another order of African
architecture. The conical style of hut is exchanged
for the square hut with more gradually
sloping roof, wattled, and sometimes neatly
plastered with mud, especially those in Manyema.
Here, too, the thin-bodied and long-limbed goat,
to which we had been accustomed, gave place
to the short-legged, large-bodied, and capaciousuddered
variety of Manyema. The grey parrots
with crimson tails here also first began to abound
and the hoarse growl of the fierce and shy
“ soko” (gorilla?) was first heard.
From the day we cross the watershed that
divides the affluents of the Tanganika from the
head-waters of the Luartia, there is observed a
gradual increase in the splendour of nature. By
slow degrees she exhibits to us, as tve journey
westward, her rarest beauties, her wealth, and
all the profligacy of her vegetation. In the
forests of Miketo and on the western slopes of
the Goma mountains she scatters with liberal
hand her luxuries of fruits, and along the banks
of streams we see revealed the wild profusion
o f her bounties.
As we increase the distance from the Tanganika,
we find the land disposed in graceful lines
and curves: ridges heave up, separating valley
from valley, hills lift their heads in the midst of
the basins, and mountain-ranges, at greater distances
apart, bound wide prospects, wherein the
lesser hill-chains, albeit of dignified proportions,
appear but as agreeable diversities of scenery.
Over the whole, Nature has flung a robe of
verdure of the most fervid tints. She has bidden
the mountains looste their streamlets, has commanded
the hills and ridges to bloom, filled the
valleys with vegetation breathing perfume; for
the rocks she has woven garlands of creepers,
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