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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



leopards and another smaller cat were 

 fairly common, but we never chanced to 

 see one. Our first night at Bujongolo I 

 shall never forget by reason of an earth- 

 quake, the most severe I have ever felt, 

 which awoke me from a troubled sleep. 

 Every moment — it seemed to last for 

 minutes instead of, probably, for a few 

 seconds only — I expected to see the cliff, 

 which made our roof, come crashing 

 down to put an untimely end to our 

 travels. 



A short distance above Bujongolo, 

 where it flows through a deep and nar- 

 now gorge, the Mubuku takes a sharp 

 bend to the right (north), and at the 

 same time the valley widens out into the 

 third and last of the great swampy ter- 

 races, at an altitude of rather less than 

 13,000 feet. As one comes out from the 

 last of the heath forest at the bend of the 

 valley, there is suddenly unfolded a glo- 

 rious view of mountains and snowfields. 

 In the middle of the view towers up the 

 beautiful peak Kiyanja (King Edward 

 Peak) with two glaciers on its flanks to 

 the right at the head of the valley, the 

 great Mubuku glacier thrusts its long 

 nose almost down to the valley floor, and 

 on either side are jagged peaks with 

 steep black precipices and gentler slopes 

 of snow. 



During all the eight or nine days that 

 our two expeditions to Bujongolo to- 

 gether counted, I do not suppose that the 

 mountains were visible for half as many 

 hours; but the place was so grim and 

 solemn, and so almost unearthly in its 

 setting, that the scene is far more firmly 

 impressed upon my memory than many 

 that I have seen a hundred times more 

 often. The lower slopes were covered 

 with lobelias and senecios and helichry- 

 sums and the inevitable moss. 



new bird discovered 



Here was found one of the most strik- 

 ing, and not the least interesting, of the 

 many new birds that were discovered by 

 the expedition. This was a sunbird 

 (Nectarinia dartmouthi) of a dark me- 

 tallic green color, shot with a wonderful 

 iridescent purple. Two feathers of its 



tail were prolonged several inches be- 

 yond the others, and upon its breast, 

 almost hidden by the wings, were two 

 tufts of short crimson plumes. To see 

 one of these little birds perched upon a 

 tall blue spike of lobelia, fluttering his 

 wings and flirting his long tail, was one 

 of the prettiest sights imaginable. Sun- 

 birds and large Swifts, which live in the 

 steep rocks like the Alpine Swifts in Eu- 

 rope, were almost the only living things 

 to be seen. 



The first expedition that we made 

 from Bujongolo was to the head of the 

 Mubuku glacier. A mile or more of 

 ploughing through swamp took us to the 

 end of the level terrace, beyond which we 

 mounted at first over an old moraine cov- 

 ered with a forest of senecios, and then 

 over smooth, glacier-worn rocks coated 

 with moss and oozing with water, and 

 up through a curious tunnel, formed by 

 a huge block jammed across a gully, to 

 the foot of the glacier (13,682 feet). We 

 had often noticed far down in the valley 

 below that there was no great difference 

 in the volume of the Mubuku from morn- 

 ing to evening, as there is in the glacier- 

 fed streams of Europe, and the reason 

 was apparent when we came to the Mu- 

 buku glacier. Both early and late there 

 was never more than the merest trickle 

 of water flowing from this glacier. The 

 reason, which has been pointed out by 

 Mr. Freshfield, is that in Africa, as in 

 other tropical and subtropical regions, 

 notably the Sikkim Himalayas, the gla- 

 ciers lose most of their substance by 

 evaporation. 



It was pleasant to think that a part of 

 that tiny stream would perhaps find its 

 way into the great river, which goes 

 swirling past the temple of Abu Simbel 

 and carries fatness to the fields of Egypt. 

 We scrambled up a few hundred feet of 

 loose and rotten rocks, more dangerous 

 than difficult, and then took to the glacier 

 near the top of the ice-fall, where it was 

 necessary to cut a few steps among the 

 seracs. From the top of the ice-fall we 

 made a wide detour across the glacier to 

 avoid the risk of an avalanche from a 

 little hanging glacier on our right — the 



