I had often wondered at Sir Samuel Baker's description of the Albert Nyanza's extension towards the southwest, perhaps oftener after Colonel Mason's mysteriously brusque way of circumscribing its "illimitability," but I can feel pure sympathy with the discoverer now, despite the terrible "cutting off" to which it has been subjected. For the effect upon all of us could not have been greater if the Albert stretched to Khartoum. Whether limited or unlimited, the first view of water and mountain is noble, and even inspiring. Even at its extremity the Lake has a spacious breadth, but as we follow the lines of its mountain banks the breadth widens grandly, the silver colour of its shallow head soon changes into the deep azure of ocean, the continuing expanding breadth, immense girdle of mountains and pale sky, lose their outlines, and become fused into an indefinite blueness at the sea-horizon north-eastward, through which we may vainly seek a limit. Our point of observation was in N. Lat. 1°. 23'.00". The extreme end of the eastern end of the lake bore S.E. magnetic, and the extreme western end bore S.E. and S.E. by S. Between the two extremities there were five inlets, one of which reached two miles further south than any of those observed points. The table-land of Unyoro maintained an almost uniform level as far as we could see, its terminable point being cut off from view by a large shoulder of mountain, that thrust itself forward from the western range. Southward of the lake and between these opposing heights--that of the table-land of Unyoro on the east, and that of the table-land on the west--extended a low plain which formerly, but not recently, must have been inundated by the waters of the lake, but now was dry firm ground, clothed with sere grass, gently rising as it receded south, and finally producing scrubby wood, acacia and thorn, like the terrace directly below us. After a halt of about twenty minutes, we commenced the descent down the slopes of the range. Before the rear-guard under Lieutenant Stairs had left the spot, the natives had gathered in numbers equal to our own, and before the advance had descended 500 feet, they had begun to annoy the rear-guard in a manner that soon provoked a steady firing. We below could see them spread out like skirmishers on both flanks, and hanging to the rear in a long line up the terribly steep and galling path. While they shot their arrows, and crept nearer to their intended victims, they cried, "_Ku-la-la heh lelo?_"--"Where will you sleep to-night? don't you know you are surrounded? We have you now where we wanted you." Our men were not a whit slow in replying, "Wherever we sleep, you will not dare come near; and if you have got us where you wanted us to be, why not come on at once?"