NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

VEGETATION OF THE NEWLY-DISCOVERED LAKE DISTRICTS OF EASTERN AFRICA.

WE are indebted to Captain Grant-Captain Speke's companion in travel-for having made a unique collection of plants, by the drying process, in the newly-discovered regions of Eastern Africa. This collection having been made over to the Hookerian Herbarium at Kew, the determination of the specimens was begun by Mr. Black, the curator, and when he was unfortunately obliged to give it up from ill-health, it was continued by Dr. T. Thomson, F.R.S.

The catalogue appendaged by the latter gentleman to Captain Speke's "Journal" is based on a comparison of the specimens with the Hookerian Herbarium, and is acknowledgedly imperfect in the present state of our knowledge of the African flora. Large collections have of late years been made in Eastern Africa by Kirk and Meller of Dr. Livingstone's expedition, and in Western Africa by Baikie, Barter, and Mann; but they are still, for the most part, undescribed. We are happy, however, to learn, through Dr. Thomson, that a general flora of Tropical Africa is contemplated by government, on the recommendation of Sir W. Hooker.

The value of such a publication can be scarcely over-estimated, for as we think can be shown, even from a general consideration of the collection brought home by Captain Grant, very valuable additions may be expected to our already large lists of useful and ornamental plants. Timber-trees, fruits, cereals, edible vegetables and plants, applied to different purposes, abound in great variety. Intertropical Africa is one of the original countries of many of the gums, fragrances, and essences familiar to us from Biblical times; and if China acquired renown by its tea and mulberry-worm, Kaffa is entitled to little less distinction as the original country of coffee; but it is, above all, as applied to the arts and to medicine-herbs with as yet untried dyeing, colouring, gummy or resinous, and therapeutic or healing properties, that there are reasons to anticipate the greatest advantages to humanity.

The collection made by Captain Grant consists in all of 750 species, gathered between Zanzibar and the southern border of Egypt. Of these, 420 only belong to known species; and although this number might, Dr. Thomson thinks, be increased to 450 species, still it would leave the large number of 300 species undetermined. Of these, two-thirds at least have, we are told, on a rough estimate, been collected by previous travellers, so that not more than 80 or 100 species are quite new. Granted even that this is probably an over-estimate, it would not in any way affect the light in which we wish to place the collection-that of the possible utility of the flora of a new country-the resources which it appears to have March-VOL. CXXX. NO. DXIX.

afforded to antiquity, and the availability which it presents both in its existing flora, as well by the agricultural indications given by that flora, to a future more enlarged intercourse with the new countries now so recently opened to enterprise and civilisation.

We must not, in contemplating such a future, allow our minds to be downcast by the failure of the Livingstone expedition. The site selected for that opening was close by one of the main outlets of the great lacustrine systems of Central Tropical and Eastern Tropical Africa, and was hence, probably, one of the least healthy to be met with in the country. Quilimane, and the many mouths of the Zambesi, with the great marshy delta, steaming in an African sun, have been long notorious for their unhealthiness. Even the interior-up at Seña and Tête-have been tried by the Portuguese-better adapted than ourselves to such a climate-but they also failed. What is even the interior of such a region, but still the united fall of the Shiré, the Zuambesi, the Liba, the Chobe, and the Zambesi; the first bringing down the overflow of the great lake of the Maravi-the Nyassa par excellence-the second of the Shuia, Ruena, and other interior lakes of unknown character and extent; and the last two draining a very considerable portion of Southern Central Africa? Such a great outlet of interior waters could not in such a climate but be most obnoxious to the health of Europeans.

Too much dependence was also placed upon the probable or possible civilisation and co-operation of the African. The unusual humanity of the uncorrupted Makololo had aroused hopes of improvement in the mind of so amiable a man as Dr. Livingstone, which were only destined to be wrecked by a longer experience. A new and more correct view of the true position of the negro in nature, and of his capabilities for intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, are gradually being introduced into this country by a few, but select band of strong-minded men, who do not allow a mistaken philanthropy and a most erroneous and misplaced sentimentality to sway the conclusions that can be alone deduced from an honest study of the subject to mystify the deductions obtained by their own unbiased judgments, or to pervert the conclusions obtained by positive scientific inquiry.

Add to this, the negroes of the sea-board have been in most points so long subject to the evils of kidnapping, and of mutual attempts of the more powerful to enslave those who are less so, brought about by the traffic in human flesh encouraged among themselves, and without by Eastern nations-Arabs and Turks-by Europeans, notoriously the Portuguese, and by the New World, whether Anglo-Saxon, Spanish, or Portuguese, that an already corrupt nature is in their instance doubly so. An indisposition to labour, favoured by a bountiful climate, is enhanced by insecurity of person and property, and the evil passions of an unrestrained nature are wrought to almost diabolical excesses by the nearest road to wealth being through the commission of unpunished crimes.

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Uganda, Karagwah, Uzinza, and the surrounding regions, are East African Highlands, with a mean elevation above the sea, which may estimated at from 3000 to 4000 feet. The natives are not, strictly speaking, negroes, but semi-Abyssinian-it may be a mixed race of Ethiopic or Arabian and negro, or it may be, as advocated by Captain Speke, of a semi-Shem-Hamitic race of Ethiopia; still they are, to all intents and purposes, more improvable than the pure negro race.

There are some probabilities that a highway will yet be found into the interior of this region by what Speke calls the little Luta Nzige, and which he and Dr. Murie have, from its comparatively low level, thought to be, as it not impossibly is at certain seasons, a backwater of the Nile. There are reasons to believe that there exists-at all events, that there did exist in olden times, and may still exist at certain seasons-a continuous line of lowland navigation by a long and in part unexplored line of lakes, swamps, and rivers between the Nile and the Zambesi. The grounds for such an opinion are too lengthy to be entered upon here, but suffice it that two geographical controversialists are already of opinion, the one that the Tanganyika flows into the Rusizi Lake through Captain Speke's Mountains of the Moon, the existence of which west of the Mfumbiro are not believed in; the other, that Lake Nyassa flows into Tanganyika. The first, one of the opinions (if such can be caught on the wing, when they appear to be ever shifting as new data are brought to light) of Dr. Beke; the second, we believe to be that of Mr. Cooley. The truth may lie with both, and, as Livingstone found the Casai and the Leeba, or Liba, both flowing from Lake Dilolo, so there may be a dividing of waters in the Tanganyika or Nyassa, or in some other portion of the great central line, leaving them to flow in one direction to the Nile, and in the other to the Zambesi. The elevation of Tanganyika (1844 feet above the level of the sea) is such as to allow of a fall into the Nile below the Karuma Rapids. The information obtained from the Arabs, with the exception of what was learnt from the natives at Uvira, upon which little or no dependence can be placed, has always pointed to the same conclusions. The information obtained by M. Lejean of a river and lake of Liba, the latter with an island and the mausoleum of a Mussulman chief upon it, point either to the Ghazi or Holy Island on Luta Nzige, or to a separate lake in the same line between it and Rusizi Lake. The information obtained by Burton and Speke of Lake Tanganyika being navigated by Arab dows, or boats, that were attacked and driven away by the natives, also point to the existence of the same old line of navigation, upon which a monument of some enterprising and possibly once powerful Arab chieftain or holy man might be justly expected to be found.

Be this, however, as it may, the country of the Wahuma-the old kingdom of Kittara, now divided into so many separate states-is a tropical East African Highland region, with a comparative temperate climate, a remarkable vegetation, a cruel but possibly reclaimable people, with vast resources in both its flora and its fauna, and with unlimited agricultural capabilities in certain available products. Whether divided by a deep, navigable, more or less lacustrine channel or not from the other adjacent uplands or highlands of Central Africa, still there is every reason to believe that it is more or less contiguous to such, and that from thence other extensive and probably equally favourably circumstanced and well-populated states having similar resources, stretch far away to the westward, if not to the west coast itself. It will be easily imagined, then, that if such a central line of navigation as is here propounded does exist-and Baker, it is to be hoped, is upon this very field of discoverywhat an opening it will afford to future commerce and civilisation, and to the well-being of as yet unknown races of men!

Burton's "Lake Regions of Central Africa" and Speke's "Journal" are replete with descriptions of the great vegetative features of these remarkable lacustrine regions. These features naturally vary very much with the locality as well as with the district. The coast has its own peculiar features; so have the East African Ghauts, as Burton calls the eastern chain of mountains. The lowland districts of Ugogo and of Ukaranga differ from the most elevated regions of Unyamuezi or of "the Moon," and these, again, from the Highland regions of Karagwah and Uganda. Then, again, we have a wide extent of lake and marsh vegetation, which presents distinctive features at Tanganyika at an elevation of 1844 feet, and at Lake Victoria at 3740 feet above the ocean.

Burton speaks irreverently of the normal vegetation of the lower coast regions. Bald, glaring fields, fœtid bush and grass, and monotonous expanses of dull, dead herbage, he says, conceal swamps and watercourses, hedged in by vegetation whose only varieties are green, greener, and greenest. Nor was he more favourably impressed with the jungle of the same regions, which he describes as being at once hideous and grotesque. "The general appearance is a mingling of bush and forest, which, contracting the horizon to a few yards, is equally monotonous to the eye and palling to the imagination. The black, greasy ground, veiled with thick shrubbery, supports in the more open spaces screens of tiger and spear grass, twelve and thirteen feet high, with every blade a finger's breadth; and the towering trees are clothed from root to twig with huge epiphytes (air-plants), forming heavy columns of densest verdure, and clustering upon the tops in the semblance of enormous birds'-nests. The footpaths in places 'dead'-as the natives say with encroaching bush are crossed by lianas, creepers, and climbers, thick as coir-cables, some connecting the trees in a curved line, others stretched straight down the trunks, others winding in all directions around their supports, frequently crossing one another like network, and stunting the growth of even the vivacious calabash by coils like rope tightly encircling its neck. The earth, ever rain-drenched, emits the odour of sulphuretted hydrogen, and in some parts the traveller might fancy a corpse to be hidden behind every bush."

This, however, applies almost solely to the coast. In the interior matters brighten up. There, where water lies deep below the surface, the hills and hill-plains are clothed with a thin shrubbery of mimosas and other thorny gums. With an improvement in vegetation comes a corresponding improvement in the tone of the spirits. Our enterprising travellers could find pleasure in those forests, of which Burton says they are the only spots in which travelling is enjoyable throughout Eastern Africa.

"In these favoured places," he says, "the traveller appears surrounded by a thick wood which he never reaches, the trees thinning out as he advances. On clear and sunny days the scenery is strange and imposing. The dark red earth is prolonged half way up the tree-trunks by the ascending and descending galleries of the termite: contrasting with this peculiarly African tint, the foliage, mostly confined to the upper branches, is of a tender and lively green, whose open fretwork admits from above the vivid blue or the golden yellow of an unclouded sky."

In the basins, where water is nearer the surface, and upon the banks of

water-courses and rivulets, the now "sweet and fertile" earth produces a rich vegetation and a gigantic growth of timber, which distinguishes this region from others farther west. Usagara is peculiarly the land of jungleflowers and fruits, whose characteristic is a pleasant acidity, a most kindly provision of nature in climates where antiseptics and correctives to bile are almost necessaries of life. They are abundant, but being uncultivated, the fleshy parts are undeveloped. In the plains the air, heavy with the delicious perfume of the jasmine, with the strong odour of a kind of sage, and with the fragrant exhalations of the mimosa flowers, which hang like golden balls from the green-clad boughs, forms a most enjoyable contrast to the fœtid exhalations of the Great Dismal Swamps of the lowlands.

The tamarind, everywhere growing wild, is a gigantic tree. Other trees, among which the mayagea, a spreading tree with a large fleshy red flower, and gourds about eighteen inches long, and hanging by slender cords, are of unusual dimensions; the calabash is converted into a hut;* and the sycomore, which gave its name to Sycominopolis, the modern Kaifa in the Holy Land, and whose favourite habitat in these regions is the lower counter-slope of Usagara, is capable of shading a regiment. On the steep hill-sides again, which here and there display signs of cultiva tion and clearings of green or sunburnt grass, grow parachute-shaped mimosas, with tall and slender trunks, and crowned by domes of verdure, rising in tiers one above the other, like umbrellas in a crowd.

Trees by their stature, the part they occupy in landscape scenery, and the various uses to which they can be put to by man, claim paramount attention in describing the vegetation of a new country. Many of the most important of these in the Lake Districts of Eastern Africa are old friends. Such is the banana-tree, or plantain (Musa sapientum), which excels all other trees in its utility. It constitutes, indeed, the staple food of the people dwelling one degree on either side of the equator, acres of grounds being covered with its groves. "The mdizi, or plantain-tree, says Burton, "is apparently an aborigen of these latitudes; in certain parts, as in Usumbara, Karagwah (Karagwé of Speke), and Uganda, it is the staff of life: in the hilly countries there are, it is said, about a dozen varieties, and a single bunch forms a load for a man" (vol. ii. 58). Grant enumerates only some half a dozen varieties—the boiling, baking, drying, fruit, and wine-making sorts. A chip from the stem washes the hands and makes the wet flesh-rubber of the Waganda; thread and lashings for loads are also taken from the stem; rain is collected in the green leaves, which can be made into an ingenious temporary pipe; the dry leaves make screen-fences and sacks to hold grain or provisions; the fruit dried (from Ugigi, on Lake Tanganyika) is like a Normandy pippin; a variety, when green and boiled, is an excellent vegetable; while another yields a wine resembling hock, or, as some say, cider, in flavour. The plantain ceases to be grown at 2 deg. north. There is also a stumpy little banana, with huge leaves and of a gigantic diameter, being ten feet in circum

*The calabash of the West Indies is the produce of one of the Solanacea (Crescentia cucurbitina), and that of Africa of Tripinnaria Africana, formerly C. pinnata; but Burton applies the term to the sour gourd, or fruit of the baobab (Adansonia digitata). (See vol. i. p. 47.)