WE CAMP BY THE LUMI 



209 



Taveta forest ; the trees were not so close together here, and 

 many slender, graceful stems rose to a great height before they 

 put forth their crown of sheltering leaves. Then we skirted 

 along the but slightly ascending base of Kilimanjaro, chiefly 

 over ground strewn with boulders and red or grey volcanic 

 ashes, with here and there masses of lava cropping up. Vege- 

 tation now consisted almost entirely of acacias and baobabs, 

 the latter leafless, whilst the little grass was yellow and dry. 

 The more luxuriant green, which we kept on our right hand 

 at a distance varying from about 220 to 430 yards, marked the 

 course of the Lumi. 



A long halt generally succeeds a short first day's march, as 

 there are always a lot of little things to see to before the 

 journey can be resumed in earnest, but everything went more 

 smoothly this time than we had ventured to hope, the only 

 mishaps having been that one donkey proved quite useless, 

 whilst another fell down and had to be unladen. 



We passed the night by the Lumi, which here flows along 

 a narrow bed of grey tufa, some twenty-two or twenty-three 

 feet deep. A few hundred paces above our camping-place we 

 came upon the short, dried-up, ravine-like bed of a brook, 

 ending abruptly at a precipice some forty feet high. Apparently 

 this stream, when stream it is, flows into the Lumi, and the 

 density of the vegetation making it impossible to get anything 

 of a view will explain the error so many travellers have fallen 

 into in supposing that the Lumi rises at the foot of this pre- 

 cipice. A glance at the map will show, however, that the Lumi 

 is really the lower course of the Eombo. 



Near to us, and parallel with the Lumi, rose a low but very 

 steep ridge, behind which I felt pretty sure I should find the 

 well-known crater-lake Jala, and the next morning I started 

 earlier than the main body of the caravan to visit it. After a 

 quarter of an hour's march I reached the top of the ridge, and 



VOL. I. P 



