202 LAKE KIVU 



bigger than rabbits. We tried to resuscitate the 

 poor beasts ; but when they were Hfted out of the 

 canoe at the other end of the lake, they could 

 not walk, so we made a present of them to the 

 paddlers. 



Our voyage down the sixty miles of Lake Kivu 

 occupied four days. It was a time which, when 

 I look back upon it, gives me a greater pleasure 

 than any other period of our wanderings in Africa. 

 Lake Kivu is a thing of many and different moods, 

 but beautiful in all of them. At one moment the 

 sun is blazing out of a brilliant sky on the glassy 

 surface of the green water, in which the outline 

 of the hills and the trees on their ridges are perfectly 

 reflected. At another, the sudden south wind comes 

 racing up the lake in a long black line, and the 

 waves grow big as if by magic. And again, 

 black clouds of thunderstorms pour down from 

 the volcanoes ; terrifying peals crash and re-echo 

 from one hill-side to another, and the heavens let 

 loose a flood of waters, and the surface of the 

 lake seethes and hisses like a boiling cauldron. 



The scenery of Kivu is strangely reminiscent of 

 many other places. Our first view of it reminded 

 me, as I have said before, of the English lakes. 

 There was a place which reminded me most forcibly 

 of the Island of Miyajima in the Inland Sea ; and 

 at yet another place I could easily imagine myself 

 on one of the sea lochs on the west coast of Scotland. 

 And the climate (or, to be more accurate, the 



