The Arabs told me I could reach the N'yanza in fifteen to seventeen marches, and I returned in sixteen, although I had to take a circuitous line instead of a direct one. The provisions, too, just held out. I took a supply for six weeks, and completed that time this day. The total road-distance there and back is 452 miles, which, admitting that the Arabs make sixteen marches of it, gives them a marching rate of more than fourteen miles a- day.
The temperature is greater at this than at any other time of the year, in consequence of its being the end of the dry season; still, as will be seen by the annexed register of one week, the Unyamuézi plateau is not unbearably hot.
Thermometer hung in a passage of our house showed—Morning, Noon,
and Afternoon respectively—
6 A.M. 9 A.M. Noon. 3 P.M. 6 P.M.
73° 75° 84° 86° 84° Mean temperature during
first week or seven days
of September 1858.
71° —- —- 88° —- Extreme: difference, 17°
of variation during 12
hours of day.
Thermometer suspended from ridge-pole of a one-cloth tent pitched
in a close yard:—
6 A.M. 9 A.M. Noon. 3 P.M. 6 P.M.
65° 85° 108° 107° 80° Mean temperature.
63° —- —- 113° —- Extreme: difference, 50°
of variation.
List of Stores along this Line.
Rice is grown at Unyanyembé, or wherever the Arabs settle, but is not common, as the negroes, considering it poor food, seldom eat it.
Animal.
Cows, sheep, goats, fowls, donkeys, eggs, milk, butter, honey.
P.S.—Donkeys are very scarce; only found in a few places in the
Unyamuézi country.