A few miles beyond the Nyama-gazani River, which is forty feet wide and a foot deep, clear as crystal and beautifully cool, we entered the town of Katwé, the headquarters of Rukara, the commanding chief of the Wara-Sura. He and his troops had left the town the night before, and evidently in such haste that he was unable to transport the grain away.
The town of Katwé must have contained a large population, probably 2,000. As the surrounding country was only adapted for the rearing of cattle, the population was supported by the sale of the salt of the two salt lakes near it. It was quite a congeries of zeribas of euphorbia, connected one with another by mazy lanes of cane hedges and inclosures.
It is situated on a narrow grassy ridge between the salt lake of Katwé and a spacious bay of the Albert Edward Nyanza. In length the ridge is about two miles, and in breadth half a mile from the shore of one lake to the other.
1889.
June 17.
Katwé.
By boiling point the Albert Edward Nyanza is 3,307 feet, the crest of the grassy ridge of Katwé is 3,461 feet, and the Salt Lake is 3,265 feet above the sea. So that the summit of the ridge was 154 feet above the Salt Lake and 112 feet higher than the Albert Edward Lake, and the difference of level between the two lakes was 42 feet. The town is situated 0° 8′ 15″ south of the Equator.
After seeing to the distribution of corn, I proceeded across the ridge, and descending a stiff slope, almost cliffy in its upper part, after 154 feet of a descent, came to the dark sandy shore of the Salt Lake of Katwé, at a place where there were piles of salt-cakes lying about. The temperature of the water was 78·4° Fahrenheit; a narrow thread of sulphurous water indicated 84°. Its flavour was that of very strong brine.[32] Where the sand had been scooped cut into hollow beds, and the water of the lake had been permitted to flow in, evaporation had left a bed of crystal salt of rocky hardness, compacted and cemented together like coarse quartz. The appearance of these beds at a distance was like frozen pools. When not disturbed by the salt-gatherers, the shore is ringed around with Ukindu palms, scrubby bush, reedy cane, euphorbia, aloetic plants; and at Mkiyo, a small village inhabited by salt-workers, there is a small grove of bananas, and a few fields of Indian corn and Eleusine coracana. Thus, though the lake has a singularly dead and lonely appearance, the narrow belt of verdure below the cliffy walls which encompass it, is a relief. Immediately behind this greenness of plants and bush, the precipitous slopes rise in a series of horizontal beds of grey compacted deposit, whitened at various places by thin incrustations of salt. There are also chalky-looking patches here and there, one of which, on being examined, proved to be of stalagmite. In one of these I found a large tusk of ivory, bones of small animals, teeth, and shells of about the size of cockles. There were several of these stalagmite beds around the lake.