Our first view, as well as the last, of Lake Albert Edward, was utterly unlike any view we ever had before of land or water of a new region. For all other virgin scenes were seen through a more or less clear atmosphere, and we saw the various effects of sunshine, and were delighted with the charms which distance lends. On this, however, we gazed through fluffy, slightly waving strata of vapours of unknown depth, and through this thick opaque veil the lake appeared like dusty quicksilver, or a sheet of lustreless silver, bounded by vague shadowy outlines of a tawny-faced land. It was most unsatisfying in every way. We could neither define distance, form, or figure, estimate height of land-crests above the water, or depth of lake; we could ascribe no just limit to the extent of the expanse, nor venture to say whether it was an inland ocean or a shallow pond. The haze, or rather cloud, hung over it like a grey pall. We sighed for rain to clear the atmosphere, and the rain fell; but, instead of thickened haze, there came a fog as dark as that which distracts London on a November day. The natural colour of the lake is of a light sea-green colour, but at a short distance from the shore it is converted by the unfriendly mist into that of pallid grey, or sackcloth. There is neither sunshine nor sparkle, but a dead opacity, struggling through a measureless depth of mist. If we attempted to peer under or through it, to get a peep at the mysterious water, we were struck with the suggestion of chaos at the sight of the pallid surface, brooding under the trembling and seething atmosphere. It realised perfectly the description that “in the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” This idea was strengthened when we looked up to examine the composition of this vaporous mist, and to ascertain whether we might call it haze, mist, or fog. The eyes were fascinated with the clouds of fantastic and formless phantasms, the eerie figures, flakes, films, globules, and frayed or wormlike threads, swimming and floating and drifting in such numberless multitudes that one fancied he could catch a handful. In the delirium of fevers I have seen such shapes, like wriggling animalculæ, shifting their forms with the rapidity of thought, and swiftly evolving into strange amorphous figures before the dazed senses. More generally, and speaking plainly, the atmosphere seemed crowded with shadowy, elongated organisms, the most frequent bearing a rough resemblance to squirming tadpoles. While looking at the dim image of an island about three miles from the shore, it was observed that the image deepened, or got more befogged, as a thinner or thicker horizontal stratum of these atmospheric shapes subsided downward or floated upward; and following this with a fixed sight, I could see a vibration of it as clearly as of a stream of sunbeams. From the crest of a grassy ridge and the crown of a tall hill, and the sad grey beach, I