238 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



with a wonderful variety of creepers. In some places 

 we were clambering over the topmost branches of the 

 tangle of vegetation, and in others we were burrowing 

 into mossy caves and grottoes among the roots. It was 

 a weird and rather uncanny place and, except that it 

 lacked the beauty of colour that is found there, it 

 recalled the forest at ten thousand feet in Ruwenzori 

 more than any other place I have seen. 



At 5,000 feet we found ourselves on the ridge, a 

 narrow knife-edged spur of Mount Godman, and there 

 we camped. It was a most unlikely looking spot for a 

 camp, but the ridge beyond was a great deal worse — 

 it took the Gurkhas many hours to cut the narrowest 

 track along it for half a mile — so we had to make the 

 best of the place that we had reached. A number of 

 trees were cut down and the irregularities of the ground 

 were more or less filled up with the branches, and 

 there we pitched our tents and spread our beds. There 

 was a small shrub (a species of Erica, I think), which, 

 when burnt, filled the air with a delicious smell of 

 incense, strangely out of keeping with our surroundings. 



Though we had been surrounded by dense clouds 

 since we reached the ridge, it obstinately refused to 

 rain for the third day in succession, a thing quite un- 

 precedented in our experience of the country. Happily 

 the mosses, which clothed everything, were full of 

 moisture and we had only to squeeze them like sponges 

 to get water in plenty ; the coolies of course complained 

 of the dirty colour of their rice when it was cooked in 

 mossy water, but we found that it gave to ours an un- 

 familiar and not unpleasant taste. 



