Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/407

THE CAEAVAN TRADE. 826 to forward goods by the long teams of cuttle employed by tbe traders in South Africa. I5ut all these experiments have ended in disappointment, and the Usagara highlanders are now the heirs of the useless waggons abandoned by the wayside near Kondoa {Mkondoti), the station founded in the year 1881 by the French commission of the " African Association." In 1879 it was hoped that the problem of transport had been solved by intro- ducing from India four well- trained elephants. The intelligent and docile animals did in fact accomplish one-third of the journey without accident ; between Dur-es-Salaam and Mpwapwa they surmounted all obstacles of mountain, swamp, and river, their only food leing herbs and foliage. Nor did they appear to be much the worse after an exposure of twenty- three days to the bite of the tsetse pest. It was supposed that the experiment had succeeded, when suddenly one of the four died, without any apparent cause. Soon after, all the other elephants perished in the same way, whether through change of food or of climate, or possibly worn out by the hardships of the route, for along these rugged mountain tracks they had been laden with burdens of sixteen hundred or eighteen hundred pounds weight. Since then the costly experiment has not been renewed, and it is 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 dis- pense with porters and pack animals alike. Along the highways of commerce leading from the coast to Tabora there are no towns properly so called. Even the villages are frequently displaced, and . many capitals of petty states visited by the early explorers are now nothing more than a heap of ruins. The wayside caravanserais most usually selected for revictualling the convoys are the stations of the missionaries, such as Mamhoya and Mpiraj)wa, both situated to the west of the highlands, on a plateau where the headwaters of the Wami take their rise, and where the alimentary plants of Europe thrive to perfection. They stand nearly about midway between Bagamoyo and Tabora, and immediately beyond them begins the wilderness of brushwood, acacias, and gum-yielding plants, which the wayfarer hastens to traverse as rapidly as possible in order to reach the TTgogo villages, themselves scattered amongst 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 Mgunda Mkhali, or " Land of Fire." This inhospitable tract, which it formerly required fifteen days to traverse, but which has gradually been somewhat reduced by clearing and cultivating the ground, is an open plain covered with scrub, where the traveller plods for hours together without noticing the least change in the dreary landscape — everywhere a stunted brushwood, and rolled shingle brought down by now dried-up torrents. In some districts of the Land of Fire, masses of granite or of syenite stand out amid the scrub, some rounded and hummocky, others presenting the outlines of towers, smooth or fissured, isolated or grouped together in hundreds, disposed in avenues, forming huge gateways, or piled in terraces one above the other.