Upon looking at Mpwapwa’s greenly-tinted slopes, dark with many a densely-foliaged tree; its many rills flowing sweet and clear, nourishing besides thick patches of gum and thorn bush, giant sycamore and parachute-topped mimosa, and permitting my imagination to picture sweet views behind the tall cones above, I was tempted to brave the fatigue of an ascent to the summit.  Nor was my love for the picturesque disappointed.  One sweep of the eyes embraced hundreds of square miles of plain and mountain, from Ugombo Peak away to distant Ugogo, and from Rubeho and Ugogo to the dim and purple pasture lands of the wild, untamable Wahumba.  The plain of Ugombo and its neighbour of Marenga Mkali, apparently level as a sea, was dotted here and there with “hillocks dropt in Nature’s careless haste,” which appeared like islands amid the dun and green expanse.  Where the jungle was dense the colour was green, alternating with dark brown; where the plain appeared denuded of bush and brake it had a whity-brown appearance, on which the passing clouds now and again cast their deep shadows.  Altogether this side of the picture was not inviting; it exhibited too plainly the true wilderness in its sternest aspect; but perhaps the knowledge that in the bosom of the vast plain before me there was not one drop of water but was bitter as nitre, and undrinkable as urine, prejudiced me against it, The hunter might consider it a paradise, for in its depths were all kinds of game to attract his keenest instincts; but to the mere traveller it had a stern outlook.  Nearer, however, to the base of the Mpwapwa the aspect of the plain altered.  At first the jungle thinned, openings in the wood appeared, then wide and naked clearings, then extensive fields of the hardy holcus, Indian corn, and maweri or bajri, with here and there a square tembe or village.  Still nearer ran thin lines of fresh young grass, great trees surrounded a patch of alluvial meadow.  A broad river-bed, containing several rivulets of water, ran through the thirsty fields, conveying the vivifying element which in this part of Usagara was so scarce and precious.  Down to the river-bed sloped the Mpwapwa, roughened in some places by great boulders of basalt, or by rock masses, which had parted from a precipitous scarp, where clung the kolquall with a sure hold, drawing nourishment where every other green thing failed; clad in others by the hardy mimosa, which rose like a sloping bank of green verdure almost to the summit.  And, happy sight to me so long a stranger to it, there were hundreds of cattle grazing, imparting a pleasing animation to the solitude of the deep folds of the mountain range.