omestic animals. Donkeys have, together with
men, hitherto been supposed to enjoy a peculiar immunity from
its attacks; but all I have to say, whether it was on account
of their poor condition, or because the tsetse in those parts
is more poisonous than usual, I do not know, but ours succumbed
to its onslaught. Fortunately, however, that was not till two
months or so after the bites had been inflicted, when suddenly,
after a two days' cold rain, they all died, and on removing the
skins of several of them I found the long yellow streaks upon
the flesh which are characteristic of death from bites from the
tsetse, marking the spot where the insect had inserted his proboscis.
On emerging from the great Elgumi forest, we, still steering
northwards, in accordance with the information Mr Mackenzie had
collected from the unfortunate wanderer who reached him only
to die so tragically, struck the base in due course of the large
lake, called Laga by the natives, which is about fifty miles
long by twenty broad, and of which, it may be remembered, he
made mention. Thence we pushed on nearly a month's journey over
great rolling uplands, something like those in the Transvaal,
but diversified by patches of bush country.

All this time we were continually ascending at the rate of about
one hundred feet every ten miles. Indeed the country was on
a slope which appeared to terminate at a mass of snow-tipped
mountains, for which we were steering, and where we learnt the
second lake of which the wanderer had spoken as the lake without
a bottom was situated. At length we arrived there, and, having
ascertained that there _was_ a large lake on top of the mountains,
ascended three thousand feet more till we came to a precipitous
cliff or edge, to find a great sheet of water some twenty miles
square lying fifteen hundred feet below us, and evidently occupying
an extinct volcanic crater or craters of vast extent. Perceiving
villages on the border of this lake, we descended with great
difficulty through forests of pine trees, which now clothed the
precipitous sides of the crater, and were well received by the
people, a simple, unwarlike folk, who had never seen or even
heard of a white man before, and treated us with great reverence
and kindness, supplying us with as much food and milk as we could
eat and drink. This wonderful and beautiful lake lay, according
to our aneroid, at a height of no less than 11,450 feet above
sea-level, and it