Note 12 — CHAP. XVI. WE RETURN TO UNYANYEMBE.

When my companion returned to Kazeh, he represented Ukerewe and Mazita to be islands, and, although in sight of them, he had heard nothing concerning their connection with the coast. This error was corrected by Salim bin Rashid, and accepted by us. Yet I read in his discovery of the supposed sources of the Nile: “Mansur, and a native, the greatest traveller of the place, kindly accompanied and gave me every obtainable information. This man had traversed the island, as he called it, of Ukerewe from north to south. But by his rough mode of describing it, I am rather inclined to think that instead of its being an actual island, it is a connected tongue of land, stretching southwards from a promontory lying at right angles to the eastern shore of the lake, which being a wash, affords a passage to the mainland during the fine season, but during the wet becomes submerged and thus makes Ukerewe temporarily an island.” The information, I repeat, was given, not by the “native,” but by Salim bin Rashid. When, however, the latter proceeded to correct my companion’s confusion between the well-known coffee mart Kitara and “the island of Kitiri occupied by a tribe called Watiri,” he gave only offence—consequently Kitiri has obtained a local habitation in Blackwood and Petermann.