We had made an ineffectual start on this day, had actually left the village a few hundred yards when we were stopped by the depth of a river forty yards wide and with a current of two and a half miles an hour. The old crone called this the Ituri. Marvelling that between Ipoto and Ibwiri a river 400 yards wide could be narrowed to such a narrow stream, we had returned to Indésura for a day's halt, and I had immediately after sent Lieutenant Stairs and Mr. Jephson with sufficient escort back along yesterday's path to find a ford across the Ituri.
At 4 P.M. both officers returned to report a successful discovery of a ford a mile and a half higher up the stream, and that they had set foot upon the grass-land, in proof of which they held a bunch of fine young succulent grass. Meantime, Uledi and his party had also found another ford waist deep, still nearer Indésura.
On the evening of this day a happier community of men did not exist on the face of the round earth than those who rejoiced in the camp of Indésura. On the morrow they were to bid farewell to the forest. The green grassy region of which we had dreamed in our dark hours, when slumbering heavily from exhaustion of body and prostration from hunger during the days of starvation, was close at hand. Their pots contained generous supplies of juicy meat; in the messes were roast and boiled fowls, corn mush, plantain flour porridge, and ripe bananas. No wonder they were now exuberantly happy, and all except ten or twelve men were in finer condition than when they had embarked so hopefully for the journey in the port of Zanzibar.
On the 4th of December we filed out of Indésura and proceeded to the ford. It was waist deep, and at this place fifty yards wide. Two of the aneroids indicated an altitude of 3050 feet above the ocean--1850 feet higher than the level of the river at the landing-place of Yambuya, and 2000 feet higher than the Congo at Stanley Pool.
From the Ituri we entered a narrow belt of tall timber on its left bank, and, after waiting for the column to cross, marched on, led by Mr. Mounteney Jephson along a broad elephant track for about 600 yards, and then, to our undisguised joy, emerged upon a rolling plain, green as an English lawn, into broadest, sweetest daylight, and warm and glorious sunshine, to inhale the pure air with an uncontrollable rapture. Judging of the feelings of others by my own, we felt as if we had thrown all age and a score of years away, as we stepped with invigorated limbs upon the soft sward of young grass. We strode forward at a pace most unusual, and finally, unable to suppress our emotions, the whole caravan broke into a run. Every man's heart seemed enlarged and lifted up with boyish gladness. The blue heaven above us never seemed so spacious, lofty, pure, and serene as at this moment. We gazed at the sun itself undaunted by its glowing brightness. The young grass, only a month since the burning of the old, was caressed by a bland, soft breeze, and turned itself about as if to show us its lovely shades of tender green. Birds, so long estranged from us, sailed and soared through the lucent atmosphere; antelopes and elands stood on a grassy eminence gazing and wondering, and then bounded upward and halted snorting their surprise, to which our own was equal; buffaloes lifted their heads in amazement at the intruders on their silent domain, heaved their bulky forms, and trooped away to a safer distance. A hundred square miles of glorious country opened to our view--apparently deserted--for we had not as yet been able to search out the fine details of it. Leagues upon leagues of bright green pasture land undulated in gentle waves, intersected by narrow winding lines of umbrageous trees that filled the hollows, scores of gentle hills studded with dark clumps of thicket, graced here and there by a stately tree, lorded it over level breadths of pasture and softly sloping champaigns; and far away to the east rose some frowning ranges of mountains beyond which we were certain slept in its deep gulf the blue Albert. Until breathlessness forced a halt, the caravan had sped on the double-quick--for this was also a pleasure that had been long deferred.