150 



ALONG LAKE RUDOLF 



customs of the natives will lead to hostilities. In the present 

 case it was of the utmost importance for us to establish friendly 

 relations with the people of the country, as we were at the 

 end of our resources, and needed not only days, but weeks of 

 rest to recruit. For some days we had secured no game, and 

 were altogether in a most necessitous condition. 



Taking all this into consideration, we decided to make an 

 earlier halt than usual, and to send on only a small carefully 

 selected party of forty men under Lembasso and Qualla, who 

 was unrivalled in knowing how to deal with the most diverse 

 conditions in Africa, with instructions to make advances to 

 the Eeshiat. 



Our march to-day was in a northerly direction close to the 

 beach, and we halted where the coast began to bend north- 

 westward, though the path still ran on northward, in other 

 words, inland. Deep sand covered the beach hard by, this sand 

 being bordered by a pretty thick fringe of bush. The scenery 

 was greener and more inviting here than anything we had so 

 far met with on the lake. Our view was shut in on the north 

 by a low hill with a gentle slope, so we gave most of our atten- 

 tion to the opposite shore of the lake, which was still some 

 twenty- two miles wide. The line of the shore ran on due north, 

 whilst the coast range of hills drew back and stretched away 

 north-westward, the intervening landscape being quite flat. 

 The water of the lake, apparently of little depth, was thick and 

 loam-coloured, whilst from the centre rose up conspicuously a 

 row of dead trees, the occurrence of which in such a situation 

 we could not account for for a long time. We were unable to 

 see where the row of trees ended on the south, as the trunks 

 were at wide intervals from each other, some few being quite 

 isolated. At the north end they were closer together, the 

 already bleached stems rising abruptly from the water. It was 

 evident that they were the remains of submerged vegetation, 



