It took us an hour and more to cross the cup of the volcanic plain,
and another half-hour or so to climb the edge on the farther side. Once
there, however, the view was a very fine one. Before us was a long steep
slope of grassy plain, broken here and there by clumps of trees mostly
of the thorn tribe. At the bottom of this gentle slope, some nine or ten
miles away, we could make out a dim sea of marsh, over which the foul
vapours hung like smoke about a city. It was easy going for the bearers
down the slopes, and by midday we had reached the borders of the dismal
swamp. Here we halted to eat our midday meal, and then, following a
winding and devious path, plunged into the morass. Presently the path,
at any rate to our unaccustomed eyes, grew so faint as to be almost
indistinguishable from those made by the aquatic beasts and birds, and
it is to this day a mystery to me how our bearers found their way across
the marshes. Ahead of the cavalcade marched two men with long poles,
which they now and again plunged into the ground before them, the reason
of this being that the nature of the soil frequently changed from causes
with which I am not acquainted, so that places which might be safe
enough to cross one month would certainly swallow the wayfarer the next.
Never did I see a more dreary and depressing scene. Miles on miles of
quagmire, varied only by bright green strips of comparatively solid
ground, and by deep and sullen pools fringed with tall rushes, in which
the bitterns boomed and the frogs croaked incessantly: miles on miles of
it without a break, unless the fever fog can be called a break. The only
life in this great morass was that of the aquatic birds, and the animals
that fed on them, of both of which there were vast numbers. Geese,
cranes, ducks, teal, coot, snipe, and plover swarmed all around us, many
being of varieties that were quite new to me, and all so tame that one
could almost have knocked them over with a stick. Among these birds I
especially noticed a very beautiful variety of painted snipe, almost the