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 its climate was quite cold, and not at all unlike
that of England. Indeed, for the first three days of our stay
there we saw little or nothing of the scenery on account of an
unmistakable Scotch mist which prevailed. It was this rain that
set the tsetse poison working in our remaining donkeys, so that
they all died.
This disaster left us in a very awkward position, as we had now
no means of transport whatever, though on the other hand we had
not much to carry. Ammunition, too, was very short, amounting
to but one hundred and fifty rounds of rifle cartridges and some
fifty shot-gun cartridges. How to get on we did not know; indeed
it seemed to us that we had about reached the end of our tether.
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