118 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



hours to put up a subtense for me to observe to from Lewe. 

 The carriers bore my tent right up to the plateau on top of 

 the peak, though I could not imagine how they did it, as I 

 had great difficulty in getting up myself without any encum- 

 brances. While taking angles to Gamari, I was interrupted 

 by a sudden uproar from the villages below. Running to 

 the edge of the peak, I saw the carriers, who had now returned 

 to the plateau below, in a huddled group surrounded by a 

 posse of Kerri-Kerri shouting and brandishing their spears. 

 They were saying that if the white man wanted food he 

 would have to fight for it. After shouting a few explanations 

 from my post of vantage and offering very good pay, the king 

 promised to go and see about it, for which compliance I 

 afterwards found that he was ignominiously beaten by his 

 people. Two hours later Alexander arrived and told me 

 that some poisoned arrows had been fired at his party from 

 the plateau. The people, however, soon quieted down 

 and we became as good friends with them as with their 

 neighbours at Gamari. On returning to my tent, I found 

 that hosts of white ants were destroying its contents and 

 everything except the instruments had to be hurriedly 

 carried down again. 



Looking northwards, we could not see many more ex- 

 amples of the exact formation of the two stopping-places 

 last described. There seemed to be a series of chalk plateaux 

 stretching for miles, and rising out of these long parallel 

 ridges of crumbling igneous rock, instead of the one central 

 peak as at Gamari and Lewe. There was not a single point 

 to which one could observe, and so far as we could judge — 

 had we gone straight ahead and then taken an azimuth back 



