The Eastern Congo 



increases the temperature of that river pretty considerably. 

 The hippos have found this out, and a pool a short way 

 below the junction is a favourite haunt of theirs. As our 

 tents were pitched below the high bluff which here marks 

 the turning point to the west of the Kasali mountains, a 

 number of these great beasts were to be seen below the camp 

 enj ojdng their hot bath. Not being in want of meat and hoping 

 to obtain some moving-pictures of them, I am glad to say 

 they were left unmolested on this occasion, much to the 

 disgust of our porters, however, who were dying for a gorge 

 of their favourite food. 



Although we were only on the outskirts of the extensive 

 lacustrine plains to which I have previously alluded, yet 

 around this camp (which stood on a high pebbly ridge, forming 

 part of the ancient foreshore of the old lake system), we had a 

 glimpse, in the herds of antelope around us, of the extra- 

 ordinary wealth of animal life collected in this comparatively 

 small area by Lake Edward. As it is perhaps the remotest 

 and least accessible of any such places in Africa to-day, it is 

 likely to remain for many a long year a sanctuary for bird 

 and beast, un visited save only by an occasional traveller. 



By selecting a track that led us to an unmapped river 

 called the Ruindi, which rises in a distant corner at the back 

 of the Kasali mountains, we were breaking new ground. 

 The line of the Ruindi River is marked on few if any published 

 maps and is named on none of them, but it is nevertheless a 

 broad and swift, though shallow river, bearing down to the 

 lake a considerable volume of water from some unknown 

 source in the western Rift Valley mountains. It is not 

 definitely known if the waters of Lake Moho and its many 

 marshy surroundings — flying north-west of the Namlagira 



102 



