i 4 DUFILE TO MRULI. 



scattered liuts and villages peeping out of euphorbias and 

 acacias, and here and there an ant-hill, on the summit of 

 which stood out the sharp outline of an antelope ; tall Doleb 

 palms too were visible, many with red, purse-shaped nests, 

 like large fruits, constructed by the weaver birds ; and in the 

 distance before us rose the lofty summits that skirt the western 

 coast of the Albert Lake. In all parts of the river were 

 baskets and weirs, often of great size, indicating an abundance 

 of fish. Large and small fishing-boats, made out of hollowed 

 trunks, crossed the stream in every direction. Their inmates, 

 generally one, but sometimes two and three persons, were very 

 black in colour, and handled their single paddle with great 

 dexterity. 



The euphorbias were very striking in the woods along the 

 bank, not the beautiful column-like euphorbia of which we 

 find isolated specimens in the south, at the foot of, and often 

 upon, the rocks — that only seems to grow on elevated points of 

 land — but the variety which from its entanglement of leafless 

 branches (Salva venia) looks like a broom turned upside down. 



Whilst on the western bank the high mountain chain trends 

 away, the eastern bank had gradually sunk, and formed a stretch 

 of low land, rising towards the east, covered by dried-up yellow 

 grass and many bushes. Numerous large herds of antelopes, their 

 red-brown skin blazing in the sunlight, grazed near the river ; a 

 troop of about thirty elephants moved slowly along the bank, 

 and snarling, frightened monkeys took to flight as the steamer 

 approached the bank. At last the eastern bank ran into a 

 bare, broad spit of land ; the hills on the west bank retreated 

 still farther towards the south-west ; the already broad stream 

 became broader ; the spit of land was past ; we were in the 

 lake! 



Rolling mist, through which only the mountain-tops rose into 

 view, shut in the horizon from all sides, thus leaving the imagi- 

 nation free play. Across the beautiful free expanse of water the 

 steamer turned toward the east, so as to reach the mouth of the 

 Somerset Nile ; and the nearer we got to the land, the thicker 

 became the floating vegetation, as also the tawfs and banks of 

 mud, overgrown by large-leaved water-lilies, and forming the 

 haunt of hundreds of aquatic birds. Plotus mclanogaster is 



