the _totos_--small
boys who go along to help the porters--and had started in to beat him.
The boy was probably more frightened than hurt, but the matter was one
demanding instant punitive action. So Abdi immediately inflicted it in a
most satisfying manner.

Once more the silence of the mountain fell upon the camp, but it was
hours before the shock to one's senses could be forgotten. I never
before, nor never again expect to hear screams more harrowing or
terrifying.

The next day a Martian sitting upon his planet with a powerful glass
might have seen the amazing sight of three horses, one mule, two
bullocks, a goat, and a sheep, preceded and followed by over a hundred
human beings, painfully creep over the rim of the crater and
breathlessly pause before the great panorama of Africa that lay
stretched out for hundreds of miles on all sides. It was as though an
army had ascended Mont Blanc, and thus Hannibal crossing the Alps was
repeated on a small scale.

Leaving our horses on the rim of the crater, a few of us climbed the
highest peak, fourteen thousand three hundred and seventy-five feet
high, as registered by my aneroid barometer, and stood where very few
had stood before. Even the official height of the mountain, as given on
the maps, was found to be inaccurate, and illustrated how vaguely the
geographers knew the mountain.

That night we camped in the crater, twelve thousand feet up, and washed
in a boiling sulphur spring that sprang from the rocks on the Uganda
side. Perhaps this was the boiling fountain the superstitious natives
feared, for it was the only one we saw. And perhaps the great gorge
through which the river Turkwel, or Suam, flowed on its long journey
north was the door that Askar had told us about. It was the only door we
saw, but Askar said the door he meant was away off somewhere else, and
he was so vague and confused in his bearings that we felt his
information was unreliable.

The crater of Mount Elgon has long since lost any resemblance to a
volcanic crater. It is a great valley, or bowl, surrounded by a lofty
rim that in reality is a considerable chain of mountains. The bowl is
two or three miles long and as much wide, with tall grass growing on the
small hills inside and thousands upon thousands of curious cactus-like
trees. Several mountain streams tumble down from the gorges between the
peaks and, uniting, flow out of the big gap in one stream, the river
Turkwel, which separates Uga