THE DEVIL'S GLEN. 



223 



On the 18 th September, a final march of four hours 

 placed us in the plains of Ugogo. Leaving the place of 

 the last night's bivouac, we pursued the line of the Dun- 

 gomaro, occasionally quitting it where boulders ob- 

 structed progress, and presently we came to its lower 

 bed, where perennial rills, exuding from its earth-walls 

 and trickling down its side, veiled the bottom with a green 

 and shrubby perfumed vegetation. As the plain was 

 neared, the difficulties increased, and the scenery became 

 curious. The Dungomaro appeared a large crevasse in 

 lofty rocks of pink and gray granite, streaked with 

 white quartz, and pudding'd with greenstone and black 

 horneblend ; the sole, strewed with a rugged layer of 

 blocks, was side-lined with narrow ledges and terraces 

 of brown humus, supporting dwarf cactus and stunted 

 thorny trees ; whilst high above towered stony wooded 

 peaks, closing in the view on all sides. Farther down the 

 bed huge boulders, sunburnt, and stained by the courses 

 of rain4or rents, rose, perpendicularly as walls, to the 

 height of one hundred and one hundred and twenty feet, 

 and there the flooring was a sheet or slide of shiny and 

 shelving rock, with broad fissures, and steep drops, and 

 cups, " potholes," baths, and basins, filed and cut by the 

 friction of the gravelly torrents, regularly as if turned 

 with the lathe. Where water lay, deep mud and thick 

 clumps of grass and reed forced the path to run along 

 the ledges at the sides of the base. Gradually, as the 

 angle of inclination became more obtuse, the bed 

 widened out, the tall stone- walls gave way to low earth- 

 banks clad with gum-trees; pits, serving as wells, appeared 

 in the deep loose sand, and the Dungomaro, becoming a 

 broad, smooth Fiumara, swept away verging southwards 

 into the plain. Before noon, 1 sighted from a sharp turn 

 in the bed our tent pitched under a huge sycomore, on a 



