le river was fed by small lakes and marshes, in accordance
with my expressed wish to have a better comprehension of the drainage
system of the Mountains of the Moon. He hoped we would follow him,
not by the land route he intended to take, but in canoes which he had
ordered at the ferry below. Starting off shortly afterwards, I made for
the lake, and found the canoes all ready, but so small that, besides two
paddlers, only two men could sit down in each. After pushing through the
tall reeds with which the end of the lake is covered, we emerged in
the clear open, and skirted the further side of the water until a
small strait was gained, which led us into another lake, drained at
the northern end with a vast swampy plain, covered entirely with tall
rushes, excepting only in a few places where bald patches expose the
surface of the water, or where the main streams of the Ingezi and
Luchoro valleys cut a clear drain for themselves.

The whole scenery was most beautiful. Green and fresh, the slopes of the
hills were covered with grass, with small clumps of soft cloudy-looking
acacias growing at a few feet only above the water, and above them,
facing over the hills, fine detached trees, and here and there the
gigantic medicinal aloe. Arrived near the end of the Moga-Namirinzi
hill in the second lake, the paddlers splashed into shore, where a large
concourse of people, headed by Nnanaji, were drawn up to receive me. I
landed with all the dignity of a prince, when the royal band struck up
a march, and we all moved on to Rumanika's frontier palace, talking away
in a very complimentary manner, not unlike the very polite and flowery
fashion of educated Orientals.

Rumanika we found sitting dressed in a wrapper made of an nzoe
antelope's skin, smiling blandly as we approached him. In the warmest
manner possible he pressed me to sit by his side, asked how I had
enjoyed myself, what I thought of his country, and if I did not feel
hungry; when a pic-nic dinner was spread, and we all set to at cooked
plantains and pombe, ending with a pipe of his best tobacco. Bit by
bit Rumanika became more interested in geography, and seemed highly
ambitious of gaining a world-wide reputation through the medium of my
pen. At his invitation we now crossed over the spur to the Ingezi
Kagera side, when, to surprise me, the canoes I had come up the lake in
appeared before us. They had gone out of the lake at its northern end,
paddled into, and then up th