The next day’s march of four miles enabled us to reach Butama, after an experience as opposite to the sloughs, mud, rock, descents and ascents of the day before, as a fine path, broad enough for an European’s wide-stepping feet, could well be in Africa. The sandy loam quickly absorbed the rain; the rank reed-grass, except at rare intervals, afforded a sufficient space between, and troops of elephants had tramped the ground hard. [Sidenote: 1889. May 29. Butama.] An old man, with white hair, and too feeble to flee, had awaited his fate at Butama. On being questioned, he replied that the name of the snow mountains that now were immediately above us at an appalling height, was “Avirika, Aviruka, Avrika, Avruka, Avirika, and Avuruka!” so he rang the changes by pressure of eager questions which he had excited by its relation to Afrika. Upon the Watwa pigmies he was most severe. He charged them with being exceedingly treacherous; that they were in the habit of making friends with chiefs of rich districts by fraudful arts and false professions, and, despite blood-brotherhood, and plighted faith, of suddenly turning upon them and destroying them. On the 30th we reached Bukoko in four hours’ easy travel, for we marched over a smooth graduated terrace formed by the debris rolled down the slopes of the snow mountain, and scoured by repeated falls of rain to a gentle slope, luxuriant with reed-grass, and wonderfully prolific in edibles, where cultivated. Here and there cropped out a monster boulder, half imbedded in the loam and gravelly soil, which had rolled and thundered wildly down when displaced by some landslip, or detached from its resting-place by a torrential shower. Bukoko was a large and powerful settlement and an important cluster of villages; but it struck us as we entered it that it had been for several days abandoned, probably as long ago as a month. Its groves seemed endless and most thriving, and weighted with fruit, and tomatoes grew in prodigious plenty. The scouts, as usual, soon after stacking goods and arranging camp, set out to explore, and in a short time met some people in cotton dresses who were armed with guns, and who fired upon them. We heard the loud boom of percussion muskets, and the sharper crack of rifles, and then there was quiet. Presently the scouts returned to report, and they brought me an Enfield rifle which had been thrown away by the defeated band, two of the men were supposed to be fatally wounded, one was said to be dead. They also brought with them a woman and a boy, who were evidently natives of the country, and could say nothing intelligible. [Sidenote: 1889. May 30. Bukoko.]