From Fort Portal to Bujongolo—Mobuku Valley. 
scratched the face and hands of the travellers, led up the 
spur of Bihunga, and then crossed the tiny Chawa Valley 
and redescended into the Valley of Mahoma, an important 
tributary on the right hand of the Mobuku. 
The descent was steep, through a dense forest of tall trees 
which climbed high up on the precipitous sides of the valley. 
Numerous specimens of a fine conifer, the podocarpus, were 
overgrown with a tangle of creeping plants diversified with 
brilliant orchids. Under the trees was a dense leafy under¬ 
growth mingled with ferns of numerous species, forming so 
impenetrable a brushwood that the path became a veritable 
tunnel, where one had to walk bent double for long tracts. 
The bushes and creeping plants covered many fallen tree-trunks, 
from the rich soil under which numerous specimens were added 
to the zoological collections. The ground was very damp, in 
many places soaking, and extremely slippery, and the porters 
had difficulty in keeping their feet. The way ran through the 
forest as far as the banks of the Mahoma. 
Once the torrent crossed, the path wound among ferns and 
tree-ferns of several varieties up a slope so steep as to be 
extremely laborious for the porters, who marched disbanded 
and very slowly. At a certain point of altitude the first 
bamboos and heaths appeared among the ferns. The ground 
was slippery and muddy, and scattered with rocks of every 
dimension. 
This slope is merely a great lateral moraine of the glacier 
which once flowed down the valley and probably covered the 
whole plain of Ibanda. It is unaccountable that the real 
nature of this ridge should have escaped the notice of so 
many previous explorers of the Mobuku Valley. A corre¬ 
sponding and parallel moraine runs along the opposite or 
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