Chapter X. 
specimens from the mud on the banks. Laurent Petigax and 
Brocherel returned later to the lake and were able to confirm 
the observation that it lias normally no emissaries. 
While the members of the expedition were thus occupied at 
Ibanda, the Duke of the Abruzzi was completing the exploration 
of the mountains. He had left Bujongolo on the morning of 
the 13th of July with the guides Joseph Petigax, Ollier, a native 
soldier, a boy, and seventeen native porters including the guide, 
a fine old man of fifty years. At the Fresh field Pass he was 
joined by Sella and Botta, and they proceeded together as far 
as Camp III at the foot of the western slopes of Mt. Baker. 
The valley of the lakes, which they had so often traversed 
in rain and fog, now, on this fine clear day, seemed to offer 
an entirely new prospect. The sun, however, seems almost to 
strike a false note in the dense and melancholy forest of senecios. 
The helichrysums seem like skeleton flowers, and the scene is 
grim, sad, lifeless and brooded over by an oppressive silence. 
On the following day, after a clear sunrise, the air again 
grew dark with mists. They climbed to the Scott Elliot Pass 
by the well-known way and set forth down along the gully 
towards the Bujuku Valley. Those who went ahead were in 
incessant danger of being hit by the stones which the numerous 
party of natives kept rolling down, in spite of all precautions. 
From the foot of the gully, in a very short space of time, 
after crossing the grotesque forest of senecio mingled with 
clumps of everlasting flowers, and interrupted at one point 
by a brief marshy tract covered with reeds, they reached 
the shores of Lake Bujuku (12,855 feet), a splendid sheet 
of calm water upon which they saw a few duck. The 
view of the peaks of Mt. Stanley and Mt. Baker towering above 
them with their grim precipices was, beyond all comparison, 
264 
