-- and sniffed it, makes the remembrance of them very poor and
faint. No wonder people get fever at Lamu. And yet the place
was not without a certain quaintness and charm of its own, though
possibly -- indeed probably -- it was one which would quickly
pall.

'Well, where are you gentlemen steering for?' asked our friend
the hospitable Consul, as we smoked our pipes after dinner.

'We propose to go to Mt Kenia and then on to Mt Lekakisera,'
answered Sir Henry. 'Quatermain has got hold of some yarn about
there being a white race up in the unknown territories beyond.'

The Consul looked interested, and answered that he had heard
something of that, too.

'What have you heard?' I asked.

'Oh, not much. All I know about it is that a year or so ago
I got a letter from Mackenzie, the Scotch missionary, whose station,
"The Highlands", is placed at the highest navigable point of
the Tana River, in which he said something about it.'

'Have you the letter?' I asked.

'No, I destroyed it; but I remember that he said that a man had
arrived at his station who declared that two months' journey
beyond Mt Lekakisera, which no white man has yet visited -- at
least, so far as I know -- he found a lake called Laga, and that
then he went off to the north-east, a month's journey, over desert