noon
For the first three hours or so of this comparatively rapid flight the forest was found to be by no means dense . The trees grew more or less in clumps , with plenty of open spaces between , many of which were occupied by native villages , the inhabitants of which turned out _ en masse _ to gaze in awe at the wonderful sight of the huge ship rushing through the air overhead , and to greet her appearance with weird , blood-curdling cries and the beating of their great war drums . Then they crossed the Aruwimi River -- an important tributary of the great Congo , shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori , glistening in the sun . And here the villages abruptly ceased , and the forest growth rapidly thickened , until , with the arrival of noon , they found themselves floating over a mass of foliage so dense that it was impossible to see anything of the ground beneath . They had by this time traversed some two hundred and fifty miles of forest , and they came to the conclusion that they were now near enough to the heart of it for all practical purposes . They therefore slowed the ship down to a speed of ten knots , and rose to a height of two thousand feet , with the object of searching for some opening in the great mass of multi-tinted green beneath them large enough to receive the ship and allow her to come to earth . This they eventually found some ten miles farther south , on the banks of an almost dry stream , flowing in a westerly direction .