From Fort Portal to Bujongolo — ^lobuku Valley. 



SCTatched the face and hands of the travellers, led up the 

 spur of Bihunga, and then crossed the tiny Chawa Valley 

 and redescended into the Valley of Mahoma, an important 

 tributary on the right hand of the Mobuku. 



The descent was steep, through a dense forest of tall trees 

 which climbed high up on the precipitous sides of the valley. 

 Nunierous specimens of a tine conifer, the podocarpus, were 

 overgrown with a tangle of creeping plants diversified with 

 brilliant orchids. Under the trees was a dense leafy under- 

 growth mingled with ferns of numerous species, forming so 

 impenetrable a brushwood tliat the path became a veritable 

 tunnel, where one had to walk bent double for long tracts. 

 The bushes and creeping plants covered many fallen tree-trunks, 

 from the rich soil under which numerous specimens were added 

 to the zoological collections. The ground was very damp, in 

 many places soaking, and extremely slippery, and the porters 

 had difticulty in keeping their feet. The way ran through the 

 forest as far as the banks of the Mahoma. 



Once the torrent cro,ssed, the path wound among ferns and 

 tree-ferns of several varieties up a slope so steep as to be 

 extremely laborious for the porters, who marched disbanded 

 and very slowly. At a certain point of altitude the first 

 bamboos and heaths appeared among the ferns. The gi'ound 

 was slippery and muddy, and scattered with rocks of every 

 dimension. 



This slope is merely a great lateral moraine of the glacier 

 which once flowed down the valley and probably covered the 

 whole plain of Ibanda. It is unaccoiuitable that tlie real 

 nature of this ridge should have escaped the notice of so 

 many previous explorers of the Mobuku Valley. A corre- 

 sponding and parallel moraine runs along the opposite or 



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