Our men looked blank at this piece of news, and said, "Let us go back to the ship, it is of no use trying to find the lake." "We shall go and see those wonderful rocks at any rate," said the Doctor.

"And when you see them," replied Masakasa, "you will just want to see something else.

But there _is_ a lake," rejoined Masakasa, "for all their denying it, for it is down in a book." Masakasa, having unbounded faith in whatever was in a book, went and scolded the natives for telling him an untruth.

"There is a lake," said he, "for how could the white men know about it in a book if it did not exist ?" They then admitted that there was a lake a few miles off.
Subsequent inquiries make it probable that the story of the "perpendicular rocks" may have had reference to a fissure, known to both natives and Arabs, in the north-eastern portion of the lake.

The walls rise so high that the path along the bottom is said to be underground.