For the first three hours or so of this comparatively rapid flight the forest was found to be by no means dense. The trees grew more or less in clumps, with plenty of open spaces between, many of which were occupied by native villages, the inhabitants of which turned out _en masse_ to gaze in awe at the wonderful sight of the huge ship rushing through the air overhead, and to greet her appearance with weird, blood-curdling cries and the beating of their great war drums. Then they crossed the Aruwimi River--an important tributary of the great Congo, shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori, glistening in the sun. And here the villages abruptly ceased, and the forest growth rapidly thickened, until, with the arrival of noon, they found themselves floating over a mass of foliage so dense that it was impossible to see anything of the ground beneath. They had by this time traversed some two hundred and fifty miles of forest, and they came to the conclusion that they were now near enough to the heart of it for all practical purposes. They therefore slowed the ship down to a speed of ten knots, and rose to a height of two thousand feet, with the object of searching for some opening in the great mass of multi-tinted green beneath them large enough to receive the ship and allow her to come to earth. This they eventually found some ten miles farther south, on the banks of an almost dry stream, flowing in a westerly direction. Four mountain peaks were then in sight to the eastward, at an estimated distance of between forty and fifty miles. By the time that the ship was moored luncheon was on the table; and at the conclusion of the meal Sir Reginald Elphinstone, Colonel Lethbridge, the professor, and Colonel Sziszkinski took their rifles and left the ship upon what they termed a preliminary exploration of the forest in their immediate vicinity.