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.
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