256 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
them to assist my labouring feet, and at last I emerged 
above the trees and the tangle of meshed undergrowth, 
and stood upright on the curious spiky grass, studded 
with wild pine-apple, ground orchids and aloes, which 
studded the summit. 
After a general look around the island, I discovered 
it was in the form of a rudely-shaped boot -last, lying 
east and west, the lowest part being the flats through 
which I had just struggled. It was about three-quarters 
of a mile long and about 200 yards wide. The heel 
was formed by a narrow projecting ledge rising about 
50 feet nearly perpendicularly from the water. From 
this ledge rose the rock 80 feet above it, and 130 feet, 
therefore, above the water. 
I gazed long on the grand encircling prospect. A 
halcyon calm brooded on 
the lake, eastward, north- 
ward, and southward, 
until the clear sky and 
stainless silver water met, 
the clear bounds of both 
veiled by a gauzy vapour, 
suggesting infinity. In 
a bold, majestic mass to 
the south-east rose Alice 
Island, while a few miles south-east of it appeared the 
Bumbireh group. Opposite me, to the west, and two 
miles from where I stood, was the long cliffy front of 
the plateau of Uzongora, its slowly-rising summit 
gemmed with patches of evergreen banana, until it 
became banked in the distance by lines of hazy blue 
mountains. 
It is a spot from which, undisturbed, the Aye may 
rove over one of the strangest yet fairest portions of 
Africa — hundreds of square miles of beautiful lake 
scenes — a great length of grey plateau wall, upright and 
steep, but indented with exquisite inlets, half surrounded 
by embowering plantains — hundreds of square miles of 
pastoral upland dotted thickly with villages and groves 
of banana. From my lofty eyrie I can see herds upon 
DRINKING VESSELS. 
