Burton regarded the Malagarazi River as the western boundary of "The Land of the Moon." It is in this section of country that Lake Tanganyika is situated.
CHAPTER XX.
"THE LAND OF THE MOON."
"'The Land of the Moon,' which is the garden of Central Inter-tropical Africa, presents an aspect of peaceful rural beauty, which soothes the eye like a medicine, after the red glare of the barren Ugogo and the dark, monotonous verdure of the western provinces.
"The inhabitants are comparatively numerous in the villages, which rise at short intervals above their impervious walls of the lustrous green milk-bush, with its coral-shaped arms, variegating the well-hoed plains.
"In the pasture lands frequent herds of many-colored cattle, plump, well-rounded, and high-humped, like the Indian breeds, and mingled flocks of goats and sheep dispersed over the landscape, suggest ideas of barbarous comfort and plenty.
"There are few scenes more soft and soothing than a view of 'The Land of the Moon' in the balmy evenings of spring. As the large yellow sun nears the horizon, a deep stillness falls upon earth; even the zephyr seems to lose the power of rustling the lightest leaf. The charm of the hour seems to affect even the unimaginative Africans, as they sit in the central spaces of their villages, or, stretched under the forest trees, gaze upon the glories around.
"The rainy monsoon is here ushered in, accompanied and terminated by storms of thunder and lightning, and occasional hail falls. The blinding flashes of white, yellow, or rose color play over the firmament uninterruptedly for hours, during which no darkness is visible.
"In the lighter storms, thirty and thirty-five flashes may be counted in a minute. So vivid is the glare that it discloses the finest shades of color, and appears followed by a thick and palpable gloom, such as would hang before a blind man's eyes, while a deafening roar, simultaneously following the flash, seems to travel, as it were, to and fro overhead. Several claps sometimes sound almost at the same moment, and as if coming from different directions. The same storm will, after the most violent of its discharges, pass over, and be immediately followed by a second, showing the superabundance of electricity in the atmosphere."