Chapter 1Y. 
give proof of marvellous agility. They jump from trunk to 
trunk ; they crouch or crawl to slip their loads under the lower 
branches ; they perform miracles of equilibrium upon sloping 
trunks, walking all the time so fast that it is difficult to 
keep up with them. 
The path now returns to the Mobuku, which here is a mere 
Alpine stream buried in the fantastic vegetation on its banks, 
and roofed over with the strange branches mingling and crossing 
above it. The yellow-brown waters are without fish or any 
other form of animal life. The expedition crossed this stream 
to its right bank, and reached the foot of another ledge, about 
600 feet high, formed by an ancient moraine, and likewise 
covered with heath forest and underwood of tall ferns, creeping 
plants, orchids and thorny brambles laden with blossoms 
and with unripe blackberries. In their shade grow violets, 
ranunculus, geraniums, epilobium, umbelliferous species and 
thistles. The ledge leads to the third terrace, where there 
is another rock shelter called Buamba, 11,542 feet above 
the sea. 
Once upon the brow of this ledge and out of the oppressive 
lifelessness of the heath forest, the expedition found itself 
suddenly and without transition in the presence of a picture 
totally different, though no less strange. The long level valley 
bottom, walled in by towering cliffs on either side, stretched up 
to the foot of another step, beyond which the valley narrowed 
into a gorge where stands the shelter of Bujongolo. The peak 
of Kiyanja # with its glaciers rose far off and high above the 
head of the valley. 
The whole valley on every side as far as you could see was 
one mass of luxuriant vegetation of indescribable strangeness. 
* Edward Peak of Mt. Baker. 
132 
