The country through which they were now passing was named Marengi, a land uninhabited by man, the home of herds of countless game.
On they went northward and upward through a measureless waste; plain succeeded plain in endless monotony, distance gave place to distance, and ever there were more beyond.
Gradually the climate grew colder: they were traversing a portion of the unexplored plateau that separates southern from central Africa.

Its loneliness was awful, and the bearers began to murmur, saying that they had reached the end of the world, and were walking over its edge.

Indeed they had only two comforts in this part of their undertaking; the land lay so high that none of them were stricken by fever, and they could not well miss the road, which, if Soa was to be believed, ran along the banks of the river that had its source in the territories of the People of the Mist.
The adventures that befell them were endless, but it is not proposed to describe them in detail.

Once they starved for three days, being unable to find game.

On another occasion they fell in with a tribe of bushmen who harassed them with poisoned arrows, killing two of their best men, and were only prevented from annihilating them through the terror inspired by their firearms, which they took for magical instruments.
Escaping from the bushmen, they entered a forest country which teemed with antelope and also with lions, that night by night they must keep at bay as best they could.