one rock overhanging and resting on another; the shelter
induced the peculiarly strong and overpowering inclination
to sleep, which too much sun sometimes causes. This sleep
is curative of what may be incipient sunstroke: in its. first
gentle touches, it caused the dream to flit over the boiling
brain, that they had become lunatics and had been sworn in
as members of the Alpine club; and then it became so
heavy that it made them feel as if a portion of existence had
been cut out from their lives. The sun is excessively hot,
and feels sharp in Africa; but, probably from the greater
dryness pf the atmosphere, we never heard of a single case
of sunstroke, so common in India. The Makololo told Dr.
Livingstone they “ always thought he had a heart, but now
they believed he had none,” and tried to persuade Dr. Kirk
to return, on the ground that it must be evident that, in
attempting to go where no living foot could tread, his leader
had given unmistakeable signs of having gone mad. All
their efforts of persuasion, however, were lost upon Dr. Kirk,
as he had not yet learned their language, and his leader
knowing his companion to be equally anxious with himself to
solve the problem of the navigableness of Kebrabasa, was not
at pains to enlighten him. At one part a bare mountain spur
barred the way, and had to be surmounted by a perilous and
circuitous route, along which the crags were so hot that it
was scarcely possible for the hand to hold on long enough to
ensure safety in the passage; and had the foremost of the
party lost his hold, he would have hurled all behind him into
the river at the foot of the promontory; yet in this wild hot
region, as they descended again to the river, they met a fisherman
casting his hand-net into the boiling eddies, and he
pointed out the cataract of Morumbwa; within an hour they
were trying to measure it from an overhanging rock, at a
height of about one hundred feet.' When you stand facing
the cataract, on the north bank, you see that it is situated
in a sudden bend of the river, which is flowing in a short
eurve; the river above it is jammed between two mountains
in a channel with perpendicular sides, and less than fifty
yards wide; one or two masses of rock jut out, and then
there is a sloping fall of perhaps twenty feet in a distance of
thirty yards. I t would stop all navigation, except during the
highest floods; the rocks showed that the water then rises
upwards of eighty feet perpendicularly.
Still keeping the position facing the cataract, on its right
side rises Mount Morumbwa from 2000 to 3000 feet high,
which gives the name to the spot. On the left of the
cataract stands a noticeable mountain which maybe called
onion-shaped, for it is partly conical, and a large concave
flake has peeled off, as granite often does, and left a
broad, smooth convex face as if it were an enormous bulb.
These two mountains extend their bases northwards about
half a ™Ue, and the river in that distance, still very narrow,
is smooth, with a few detached rocks standing out from its
bed. They climbed as high up the base of Mount Morumbwa,
which touches the cataract, as they required. The rocks
were all waterwom and smooth, with huge pot-holes, even
at 100 feet above low water. When at a later period
they climbed up the north-western base of this same
mountain, the familiar face of the onion-shaped one opposite
was at once recognised; one point of view on the talus
of Mount Morumbwa was not more that . 700 or 800 yards
distant from the other, and they then completed the survey
of Kebrabasa from end to end.
They did not attempt to return by the way they came,
but scaled the -slope of the mountain on the north. I t