Since emerging from the Awamba forest near Ugarama, we had journeyed along a narrow strip, covered with prodigious growth of cane-grass reaching as high as fifteen feet. From eminences it appears to be from three to eight miles wide, separating the deep, dark forest. From the immediate vicinity of the mountain, notwithstanding that the grass was of the height and thickness of bamboo, the path was infinitely better, and we had but to cross one or two ravines and watercourses during a march. A feature of it was the parachute-shaped acacia, which in the neighbourhood of the Nyanza was the only tree visible. Near the forest line this tree disappears, and the vegetation, riotously luxuriant and purely tropical, occupied the rest of the valley. [Illustration: THE TALLEST PEAK OF RUWENZORI, FROM AWAMBA FOREST.] The streams we had lately crossed were cold mountain torrents with fairly wide beds, showing gravel, sand, cobble stones, specimens of the rocks above, gneiss, porphyry, hornblende, sandstone, steatite, hematite, and granite, with several pumice lumps. Three of the principal rivers, called the Rami, Rubutu, and Singiri, were respectively of the temperatures 68°, 62°, and 65° Fahrenheit. [Sidenote: 1889. June 2. Banzombé.] After a halt of two days at Bukoko we marched a distance of eight miles to the village of Banzombé, situate on a narrow, level-topped spur between two deep ravines, on the edge of the forest, which here had crept up to the base-line of the snow mountains. As usual, Ruwenzori was invisible, and I feared we should have little chance of photographing it, or employ any of its lofty peaks to take bearings. The vapours issuing from the Semliki Valley appeared to be weighed down by pressure from above, judging by the long time required for a mass of ascending vapour to each the summit. The smoke of the camp hung over us like a fog until we were nearly blinded and suffocated. Our cattle showed signs of fagging out. We now possessed 104 head, and 30 sheep and goats. On the 3rd of June we reached the little village of Bakokoro, in N. Lat. 0° 37′, and here a Copt, one of four brothers, breathed his last. Three considerable streams had been traversed during the short march of three miles. The temperature of one was 62° Fahrenheit. Unable to trace a path beyond Bakokoro, trending in the direction we required, we halted on the 4th. Jephson was in a high fever; temperature 105°. Mr. Bonny was also suffering; Stairs had recovered. Captain Nelson was robust and strong, and during these days was doing double duty to endeavour to make up for the long months he had been invalided, from October, 1887, to October, 1888. Some plantains measured here were seventeen and a half inches in length, and as thick as the fore-arm. After a short march of two and a half hours, we arrived at Mtarega, situated near the deep gorge of the Rami-Lulu river, as it issued from a deep chasm in the mountains. [Sidenote: 1889. June 3. Bakokoro.]