CHAPTER XXI.
VIEWS OF LAKE TANGANYIKA.
Burton considered the march from the Malagarazi River to Lake Tanganyika the worst part of his journey. It led through a perfect wilderness, with all the diversities of jungle, swamp, rugged hills, and rocky ravines swept by mountain torrents.
After much labor, Burton and his followers reached the lake. His first feeling was one of disappointment.
Having traveled through screens of lofty grass, which gradually thinned out into a scanty forest, he climbed a steep, stony hill, thinly covered with thorny trees. From the top of this hill he could see a faint streak of light below. This he judged was the lake. Seen through the veil of trees and the broad rays of sunshine, the lake seemed to be shrunken in its proportions.
As he advanced a few steps, the whole scene burst upon his view. He was filled with admiration, wonder, and delight at its beauty. To quote his words:—
"Nothing could be more beautiful, more picturesque, than the first view of Lake Tanganyika, as it lay in the lap of the mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine. Below and beyond a short foreground of rugged and precipitous hill-fold, down which the footpath zigzags painfully, a narrow strip of emerald green, never sere, and marvelously fertile, shelves towards a ribbon of glistening sand, here bordered by sedgy rushes, there cleanly and clearly cut by the breaking wavelets.
"Farther in front stretched the waters, an expanse of the lightest and softest blue, in a breadth varying from thirty to thirty-five miles, and sprinkled by the crisp east wind into tiny crescents of sunny foam.
"The background is a high and broken wall of steel-colored mountain, here flecked and capped with pearly mist, there standing sharply penciled against the azure sky. Its yawning chasms, marked by a deep plum-color, fall towards dwarf hills of mold-like proportions, which apparently dip their feet in the wave.
"To the south, and opposite the long, low point behind which the Malagarazi River discharges the red loam suspended in its violent stream, lie the bluff headlands and capes of Uguha; and, as the eye dilates, it falls upon a cluster of outlying islets speckling a sea horizon.