Having risen to a height of about three hundred feet, he found that he commanded a view of many miles of the country.  Far to the south were the mountains; all around was forest, broken here and there by patches of open rocky ground.  Beneath him the trees were so densely packed that a whole army might have been encamped among them without giving a sign of its presence.  He sped in a straight line west-north-west of the fort, at a speed of between forty and fifty miles an hour; to go faster would have rendered careful exploration of the country difficult.  Having completed ten miles without passing over a single spot of clear ground, he flew about five miles due west, then turned the machine and steered back towards the fort along the next imaginary radius of his circle.  He had arranged that Rodier should scan the country to the left while he himself kept as good a look-out to the right as was possible when he had engine and compass to attend to.  They had not flown far on this backward journey when Rodier, who was using his binocular, shouted that he saw, on a headland far to the left, what appeared to be a native village.  Smith instantly steered towards it.  It was the first evidence of human habitation they had as yet come across, and even at the risk of losing his bearings he must examine it.  He could now afford to go at full speed, and a few minutes brought him above the village, which was a collection of rude huts perched on a steep headland overlooking the sea, and defended on its inland and less precipitous side by barriers of stakes.  The noise made by the engine as the aeroplane swept down towards the village first drew all the inhabitants from their huts into the open enclosure, and then sent them scampering back with shrieks of alarm as they saw the strange object in the air.  A glance sufficed to assure Smith, as he wheeled round the village, that it contained no white men, unless they had been taken inside the huts, which was unlikely.  Without loss of time he steered as nearly as he could towards the point at which he had diverged from his settled course, and returned to the camp, pausing once to examine a small tract where the trees were somewhat thinner, allowing him to see the ground beneath.

Once more he started, steering now in a more westerly direction.  There were several clear spaces along this radius, and Smith flew over them slowly, more than once wheeling about to make sure that his eyes had missed nothing.  But at these times he saw no human beings, nothing but the wild animals of the forest, huge pigs being diminished to the size of rabbits, and dingoes to the size of mice.  These scurried away when they heard the noise of the engine, and Smith hovered around for a time to see if the flight of the animals attracted the attention of men, but in vain.