294 THROUGH UNKNOWN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. 
us, I soon turned toward the camp. We passed many 
groups of warriors, but none of them would venture 
within eighty yards of us. As we approached the camp 
we were met by some more of my boys, who had come 
to protect us. They said that not a native would. come 
near the camp, but that they stood in crowds some dis- 
tance off, arrayed for war. 
I found the camp pitched on a sandy bluff, about eighty 
feet above the lake, and very near to where Count Teleki 
had rested for a month in 1888." It was now July 14, 
1 Lake Rudolf does not appear like a long sheet of water lying in an abrupt 
cut or fissure in the earth’s surface. On the contrary, it is very much spread 
out, except at its southern end. It lies in a shallow sort of basin in an open 
country which slopes very gradually towards the Tana River and the mouth of 
the Jub, from its southeast end, and which is continued in a northwesterly 
direction as an almost level plain to the valley of the Nile. The river Nianam 
cannot be said to flow in a valley for a distance of more than a degree north of 
the lake; but it pursues a very even course through a flat country cut at rare 
intervals by low narrow mountain chains running toward the southwest. The 
fall is only four hundred feet in seventy geographical miles. The southern end 
of the lake, however, marks the rather abrupt termination of the great mountain 
system extending north from Mount Kenya, while twenty miles to the northeast 
the highlands running down from Abyssinia begin to disappear rapidly. A 
narrow mountain chain is continued up from the south along the western shore 
of the lake to near its northern end, and this is the only thing that relieves the 
monotonous and flat appearance of the upper lake region. There are few trees, 
and the open grassy plains seem to vie with the water and the barren rocks in 
producing a most disagreeable glare as long as the scorching sun is above the 
horizon. 
I found the lake to vary in depth from two to twenty-five feet; its elevation 
is over twelve hundred feet above sea-level. There was no broad sandy beach, 
as Count Teleki had found in 1888, for there had been plenty of rain a little 
while before our arrival, and the water was high up among the bushes. It is one 
hundred and thirty-seven English miles in length, and twenty-five miles wide. 
About midway down the eastern shore you pass a little group of mountains 
called Longendoti; and just to the north of these is a large bay, where some 
three hundred Elmolo, or fishermen, are living on little islands near the shore. 
The main body of the Elmolo, numbering about seven hundred souls, are liv- 
ing on the mainland not far from Mount Kulol. There are many people of 
Rusia who have been obliged to support themselves entirely by fishing since 
the cattle disease which some four years ago devastated the country, and ham- 
lets of two or three huts are common along the lake shore. I will mention that, 
although these people live entirely on fish, I did not see a case of leprosy among 
