far exceeding his expectations.

The valley as they proceeded became wilder, but more beautiful: it
opened to greater width, the precipices around rose to a thousand feet
in height, covered from their black summits down to the valley with
green shrubs of a thousand hues, through which cascades glittering like
silver in the sun, rushed gurgling and foaming to the river.

At noon the travellers reached a hut inhabited by a friend of Maititi,
named Tibu; the owner also of another hut some miles further up, where
his wife lived with the pigs and dogs! This being the last station on
the road to the Wahiria Lake, it was determined to spend the night here.
Before they set forward in the morning, a large pig was tied up, to be
prepared for killing on the expected return of Mr. Hoffman and his
associates, whom the hospitable Tibu accompanied on the remainder of
their journey.

Here every vestige of a path disappeared. At a height of seven hundred
and eleven feet above the level of the sea, the travellers found
enormous blocks of granite lying in a south-easterly direction. The way
to Wahiria lay towards the south-south-west. They continued ascending
till they reached a marsh in a rocky basin, where wild boars were
running about.

Another steep precipice was to be climbed before they could reach the
Valley of the Wahiria. This stretches from north to south, and forms an
oval, in the centre of which lies the lake, according to barometrical
measurement, one thousand four hundred and fifty feet above the level of
the sea. The surrounding rocks rise perpendicularly more than two
thousand feet. The lake is above a mile and a quarter in
circumference,[4] and receives the springs from the mountains. A little
brook also flows into it from the north, but no channel could be found
by which its waters might be carried off. The depth of the lake near the
shore is eleven, and in the middle not more than seventeen toises. After
Mr. Hoffman had satisfied his curiosity, he returned with his companion
to Tibu's hut, and happily reached its shelter before a heavy storm that
followed them had begun to discharge its fury. Exhausted by the fatigue
of the march, and the oppressive heat, Mr. Hoffman threw himself on his
couch to take a little repose, while his companions killed and roasted
the pig. The storm now burst in tremendous violence over the hut. The
thunder rolled fearfully along the valley, and reverberated from the
rocks; the lightnings