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We passed close to its forbidding walls, thankful for the calm of the Tanganika. Near Kabogo are some very fine mvule trees, well adapted for canoe building, and there are no loud-mouthed natives about to haggle for the privilege of cutting them.

But, alas! after an hour's search for adventure, I had encountered nothing, and I accordingly waxed courageous, and crept into one of these leafy, thorny caverns, and found myself shortly standing under a canopy of foliage that was held above my head fully a hundred feet by the shapely and towering stems of the royal mvule. Who can imagine the position?

Passing Muikamba, we saw several groves of the tall mvule tree. As far as Bemba the Wabembe occupy the mountain summits, while the Wavira cultivate the alluvial plains along the base and lower slopes of the mountain.

Our ship though nothing more than a cranky canoe hollowed out of a noble mvule tree of Ugoma was an African Argo bound on a nobler enterprise than its famous Grecian prototype. We were bound upon no mercenary errand, after no Golden Fleece, but perhaps to discover a highway for commerce which should bring the ships of the Nile up to Ujiji, Usowa, and far Marungu.

Groups of the Elaeis Guineansis palm embowering some dun-brown village; an array of majestic, superb growth of mvule trees; a broad extent covered with vivid green sorghum stalks; parachute-like tops of mimosa; a line of white sand, on which native canoes are drawn far above the reach of the plangent, uneasy surf; fishermen idly reclining in the shade of a tree; these are the scenes which reveal themselves to us as we voyage in our canoe on the Tanganika.