146 THE WEST SIDE OF RUWENZORI 



and putting up shelters for our porters, we sent 

 away our chief of the escort and half of his men 

 with instructions to return in ten days or a fortnight, 

 and Carruthers and I, with a few porters and three 

 soldiers to cut a track, set out for the highest part of 

 the valley. Following, probably, the same route as 

 that taken by Dr. Stuhlmann, we ascended by the 

 ridge between the Butagu and the Wussussa. Though 

 there are no huts higher than our camp at Kaka- 

 longo, we found a vestige of a track leading up the 

 crest of the ridge, used, no doubt, by the natives on 

 their hyrax-hunting expeditions. The forest came 

 to an abrupt end at about 7,500 feet, and the 

 bamboos about 1,000 feet higher, after which we 

 entered on the heath zone, which continued as far 

 as the highest point that we reached. The heaths 

 were mostly in flower, and the air was filled with 

 their scent mixed with the faint pinewood scent of 

 podocarpus. High up among the heaths we found 

 a curious relic of some former European traveller in 

 the shape of fragments of a pair of breeches ; they 

 were of unmistakably English origin, but whose 

 they can have been I have been unable to discover. 

 At a height of 10,400 feet we found a tolerable 

 camping -place in a small depression on the ridge. 

 Looking down the valley, we saw a magnificent view 

 of the forest and the broad Semliki Valley and the 

 distant Congo hills fifty or sixty miles to the west. 

 Behind us towered ridge after ridge, and now and 

 again through the clouds we caught a glimpse of 



