In general the chiefs have shown an anxiety to promote our safety.  The country is a mass of mountains.  On leaving Mataka’s we ascended considerably, and about the end of the first day’s march, near Magola’s village, the barometer showed our greatest altitude, about 3400 feet above the sea.  There were villages of these mountaineers everywhere, for the most part of 100 houses or more each.  The springs were made the most use of that they knew; the damp spots drained, and the water given a free channel for use in irrigation further down:  most of these springs showed the presence of iron by the oxide oozing out.  A great many patches of peas are seen in full bearing and flower.  The trees are small, except in the hollows:  there is plenty of grass and flowers near streams and on the heights.  The mountain-tops may rise 2000 or 3000 feet above their flanks, along which we wind, going perpetually up and down the steep ridges of which the country is but a succession.

Looking at the geology of the district, the plateaux on each side of the Rovuma are masses of grey sandstone, capped with masses of ferruginous conglomerate; apparently an aqueous deposit.  When we ascend the Rovuma about sixty miles, a great many pieces and blocks of silicified wood appear on the surface of the soil at the bottom of the slope up the plateaux.  This in Africa is a sure indication of the presence of coal beneath, but it was not observed cropping out; the plateaux are cut up in various directions by wadys well supplied with grass and trees on deep and somewhat sandy soil:  but at the confluence of the Loendi highlands they appear in the far distance.  In the sands of the Loendi pieces of coal are quite common.[16]

Before reaching the confluence of the Rovuma and Loendi, or say about ninety miles from the sea, the plateau is succeeded by a more level country, having detached granitic masses shooting up some 500 or 700 feet.  The sandstone of the plateau has at first been hardened, then quite metamorphosed into a chocolate-coloured schist.  As at Chilole hill, we have igneous rocks, apparently trap, capped with masses of beautiful white dolomite.  We still ascend in altitude as we go westwards, and come upon long tracts of gneiss with hornblende.  The gneiss is often striated, all the striae looking one way—­sometimes north and south, and at other times east and west.  These rocks look as if a stratified rock had been nearly melted, and the strata fused together by the heat.  From these striated rocks have shot up great rounded masses of granite or syenite, whose smooth sides and crowns contain scarcely any trees, and are probably from 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea.  The elevated plains among these mountain masses show great patches of ferruginous conglomerate, which, when broken, look like yellow haematite with madrepore holes in it:  this has made the soil of a red colour.