This second leg of our journey takes us into the heart of Africa. The country is wooded and mountainous. It is very hot, for we are nearing the Equator, which cuts across the upper edge of Lake Victoria. In fact, our pilot will not fly after nine in the morning nor earlier than four o’clock in the afternoon. The air is more “bumpy,” and often terrific thunderstorms seem to fill the sky with sheets of water. In dodging these storms, we must be careful not to fly so far off our course as to be forced to land in the wilds. The country here is a mile or more above sea level, and if we should fly too high in order to avoid the heat gusts, we may have trouble with our engines in the rarefied air. Below us are dense forests and rocky hillsides, and natural landing places hardly exist. As we go down the eastern shore of Lake Victoria we see new sights. These are the water-spouts, great spiral columns whirled up from the lake into the air by the eddying winds. [Illustration: Swamps, huge anthills, scrub bush, outcroppings of rock; and stretches of tall, rank elephant grass combine to make natural landing places exceedingly rare on the second stage of the airplane journey, which is most difficult and dangerous.] [Illustration: The flight from Cairo to the Cape takes the aviator over clusters of native huts, dwarfed to the size of anthills, through which run the signs of civilization—ribbons of well-constructed road.] [Illustration: Fuad I, who became the first king when Egypt was declared a sovereign nation, came of the same family as the khedives of the last hundred years. He gave Egypt its flag, three white crescents and stars on a red field.] Our route from Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, is to the southwest, and we land at Mwanza, on the south shore. This is one of the outposts of the white man’s civilization in “darkest Africa,” From Mwanza we continue southwest across Tanganyika Territory to Abercorn at the lower end of Lake Tanganyika, and then fly on to Broken Hill in northern Rhodesia, where once more we see a railroad.