On the 29th we left our camp, and after a few minutes, we were in view of the sublimest, but ruggedest, scenes we had yet beheld in Africa.  The country was cut up in all directions by deep, wild, and narrow ravines trending in all directions, but generally toward the north-west, while on either side rose enormous square masses of naked rock (sandstone), sometimes towering, and rounded, sometimes pyramidal, sometimes in truncated cones, sometimes in circular ridges, with sharp, rugged, naked backs, with but little vegetation anywhere visible, except it obtained a precarious tenure in the fissured crown of some gigantic hill-top, whither some soil had fallen, or at the base of the reddish ochre scarps which everywhere lifted their fronts to our view.

A long series of descents down rocky gullies, wherein we were environed by threatening masses of disintegrated rock, brought us to a dry, stony ravine, with mountain heights looming above us a thousand feet high.  This ravine we followed, winding around in all directions, but which gradually widened, however, into a broad plain, with a western trend.  The road, leaving this, struck across a low ridge to the north; and we were in view of deserted settlements where the villages were built on frowning castellated masses of rock.  Near an upright mass of rock over seventy feet high, and about fifty yards in diameter, which dwarfed the gigantic sycamore close to it, we made our camp, after five hours and thirty minutes’ continuous and rapid marching.

The people were very hungry; they had eaten every scrap of meat, and every grain they possessed, twenty hours before, and there was no immediate prospect of food.  I had but a pound and a half of flour left, and this would not have sufficed to begin to feed a force of over forty-five people; but I had something like thirty pounds of tea, and twenty pounds of sugar left, and I at once, as soon as we arrived at camp, ordered every kettle to be filled and placed on the fire, and then made tea for all; giving each man a quart of a hot, grateful beverage; well sweetened.  Parties stole out also into the depths:  of the jungle to search for wild fruit, and soon returned laden with baskets of the wood-peach and tamarind fruit, which though it did not satisfy, relieved them.  That night, before going to sleep, the Wangwana set up a loud prayer to “Allah” to give them food.

We rose betimes in the morning, determined to travel on until food could be procured, or we dropped down from sheer fatigue and weakness.  Rhinoceros’ tracks abounded, and buffalo seemed to be plentiful, but we never beheld a living thing.  We crossed scores of short steeps, and descended as often into the depths of dry, stony gullies, and then finally entered a valley, bounded on one side by a triangular mountain with perpendicular sides, and on the other by a bold group, a triplet of hills.  While marching down this valley—­which soon changed its dry, bleached aspect to a vivid green—­we