WE DIG IN 37 



ing houses for otirselves; and good family cottages 

 with rain-proof thatched roofs for the good men 

 whom we had selected from the natives to be our 

 retainers. 



To give a clear idea of our base it is first necessary 

 to give some sort of picture of the lake beside which 

 we had settled. Imagine, if you will, first a gradual 

 slope starting twenty miles south of here, swelling 

 up to this three-peaked mountain, volcanic but now 

 extinct. So long has it been extinct — for ages, just 

 how many, no one can guess — that the earlier reds, 

 violets and blues of its slag and subsoil are covered 

 now with every imaginable shade of green, save in the 

 patches of cliff not yet concealed by the clambering 

 vines, and around which innumerable animals for 

 innumerable years have worn hard trails. 



A lake — our lake — a mile long and a half-mile wide, 

 fills the summit of the age-old crater. Its edges are 

 covered with vegetation, not stagnant and motion- 

 less, but ever swaying and floating and shimmering 

 with a thousand shades bordering on blue and green. 

 On it float coots and ducks; on the limbs of trees 

 overreaching the water sit wise old storks; in the 

 marshes wade blue heron and flamingo with their sun- 

 set breasts. 



Opposite where we camped rose sheer cliffs seem- 

 ingly impassable. Nevertheless, with the glass one 

 could pick out trails around them and circling the 



