 CHAPTER 17 A CENT OF THE GREAT PEEK OF CAMERUNES Setting forth how the Voyager is minded to ascend the mountain called Mungo Malobe, or the Throne of Thunder, and in due course, reaches Buuea, situate thereon. After returning from Corisco, I remained a few weeks in Gabun, and then left on the Niger, commanded by Captain Davis. My regrets, I should say, arose from leaving the charms and interests of Congo Frances and had nothing whatever to do with taking passage on one of the most comfortable ships of all those which call on the coast. The Niger was homeward bound when I joined her, and in due course arrived in Cameroon River, and I was once again under the dominion of Germany. It would be a very interesting thing to compare the various forms of European government in Africa, English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, but to do so with any justice would occupy more space than I have at my disposal, for the subject is extremely intricate. Each of these forms of government have their good points and their bad. Each of them are dealing with bits of Africa differing from each other, in the nature of their inhabitants and their formation and so on, so I will not enter into any comparison of them here. From the tag of the Niger I found myself again confronted with my great temptation, the magnificent Mungo Malobe, the Throne of Thunder. Now it is none of my business to go up mountains. There is next to no fish on them in West Africa and a precious little good rank fetish as the population on them is sparse. The African like myself, pouring cool air. Nevertheless I feel quite sure that no white man has ever looked on the great peak of Cameroon without a desire arising in his mind to ascend it and know in detail the highest point on the western side of the continent and indeed one of the highest points in all Africa. So great is the majesty and charm of this mountain that the temptation of it is as great to me today as it was on the first day I saw it when I was feeling my way down the west coast of Africa on the SS Lagos in 1893 and it revealed itself by good chance from its surf washed plinth to its sky scraping summit. Certainly it is most striking when you see it first as I first saw it after coasting for weeks along the low shores and mangrove fringed rivers of the Niger Delta suddenly right up out of the sea rises the great mountain to its 13,760 feet while close at hand to westward towers the lovely island mass of Fernand de Poe to 10,190 feet but every time you pass it by its beauty grows on you with greater and greater force though it is never twice the same. Sometimes it is wreathed with indigo black tornado clouds sometimes crusted with snow sometimes softly gorgeous with gold green and rose colored vapours tinted by the setting sun sometimes completely swathed in dense clouds so that you cannot see it at all but when you once know it is there it is all the same and you bow down in worship. There are only two distinct peaks to this glorious thing that geologists brutally call the volcanic intrusive mass of the Cameroon Mountains with big Cameroon and little Cameroon. The latter mongoma intende has not yet been scaled although it is only 5,820 feet. One reason for this is doubtless that the few people in fever-stricken overworked west Africa who are able to go up mountains naturally drive for the adjacent big Cameroon. The other reason is that mongoma intende to which Burton refers as the awful form of little Cameroon is mostly sheer cliff and is from foot to summit clothed in an almost impenetrable forest. Behind these two mountains of volcanic origin which cover an area on an isolated base of between 700 and 800 square miles in extent there are distinctly visible from the coast two chains of mountains or I should think one chain deflected so-called Rombi and Oman ranges. These are no relations of mongo being a very different structure and conformation. The geological specimens I have brought from them and from the Cameroons being identified by geologists as respectively schistos grit and vesicular lava. After spending a few pleasant days in Cameroon River in the society of Frau Flynn my poor friend Mrs. Degen having I regret to say departed for England on the death of her husband I went round to Victoria Ambus Bay on the Niger and in spite of being advised solemnly by Captain Davis to chuck it as it was not a picnic I started to attempt the peak of Cameroons as follows September 20th 1895 left Victoria at 7.30 whether fine hair von luck though sadly convinced by a series of experiments he has been carrying on ever since I landed and I expect before that you cannot be in three places at one time is still trying to do so or more properly speaking he starts an experiment series for four places manlike instead of getting ill as I should under the circumstances and he kindly comes with me as far as the bridge across the lovely cascading Lucolle River and then goes back at about seven miles an hour to look after Victoria and his six subordinates in detail I with my crew keep on up the grand new road the government is making which when finished is to go from Ambus Bay to Buuya three thousand feet up on the mountain side this road is quite the most magnificent of roads as regards breadth and general intention that I have seen anywhere in West Africa and it runs through a superbly beautiful country it is I should say as broad as Oxford Street on either side of it are deep drains to carry off the surface waters with banks of varied beautiful tropical shrubs and ferns behind which rise 100 to 200 feet high walls of grand forest the column like tree stems either hung with flowering climbing plants and ferns or showing soft red and soft gray shafts 60 to 70 feet high without an interrupting branch behind this again rise the lovely foothills of mongo high up against the sky colored the most perfect soft dark blue the whole scheme of color is indescribably rich and full in tone the very earth is a velvety red brown and the butterflies which abound show themselves off in the sunlight in their canary colored crimson and peacock blue liveries to perfection after five minutes experience of the road I envy those butterflies I do not believe there is a more lovely road in this world and besides it's a noble and enterprising thing of a government to go and make it considering the climate and the country but to get any genuine pleasure out of it it is requisite to hover in a bird or butterfly like way for of all the truly awful things to walk on that road when I was on it was the worst of course this arose from its not being finished not having its top on in fact the bit that was finished and had got its top on for half a mile beyond the bridge you could go over in a bath chair the rest of it made you fit for one for the rest of your natural life for it was one massive broken lava rock and here and there Leviathan tree stumps that had been partially blown up with gunpowder when we near the forest end of the road it comes on to rain heavily and I see a little house on the left hand side and a European engineer superintending a group of very cheerful native spelling timber he most kindly invites me to take shelter saying it cannot rain as heavily as this for long my men also announce a desire for water and so I sit down and chat with engineer under the shelter of his veranda while the men go to the waterhole some 20 minutes off after learning much about the Congo Free State and other matters I presently see one of my men sitting right in the middle of the road on a rock totally unsheltered and a feeling of shame comes over me in the face of this black man's aquatic courage into the rain I go and off we start I conscientiously attempt to keep dry by holding up an umbrella knowing that though hopeless it is the proper thing to do we leave the road about 50 yards above the hut turning into the unbroken forest on the right hand side and following in narrow slippery muddy root beset bush path that was a comfort after the road presently we come to a lovely mountain torrent flying down over red brown rocks in white foam exquisitely lovely and only a shade damper than the rest of things seeing this I solemnly fold up my umbrella and give it to Kiffala I then take charge of fate and Wade this particular stream to requires careful wading the rocks over which it flows being arranged in picturesque but perilous confusion however all goes well and getting to the other side I decide to chuck it as Captain Davis would say as to keeping dry for the rain comes down heavier than ever now we are evidently dealing with a foot hillside but the rain is too thick for one to see two yards in any direction and we seem to be in a ghost land forest for the great palms and redwoods rise up in the mist before us and fade out in the mist behind as we pass on the rocks which edge and screw the path that our feet are covered with exquisite ferns and mosses all the most delicate shades of green imaginable and here and there of absolute gold color looking as if some ray of sunshine had lingered too long playing on the earth and had got shot off from heaven by the mist and so nestling among the rocks until it might rejoin the sun the path now becomes an absolute torrent with mud thickened water which cascades round ones ankles in a sportive way and round ones knees in the hollows in the path on we go the path underneath the water seems a pretty equal mixture of rock and mud but they're not evenly distributed plantations full of weeds show up on either side of us and we are evidently now on the top of a foot hill I suspect a fine view of the sea could be obtained from here if you have an atmosphere that is less than ninety nine three-fourths percent of water as it is a white sheet or more properly speaking considering its soft stuffy wooleness a white blanket is stretched across landscape to the southwest where the sea would show we go downhill now the water rushing into the back of my shoes for a change the path is fringed by high sugar cane like grass which hangs across it in a lackadaisical way swishing you in the face and cutting like a knife whenever you catch its edge and pouring continually insidious reels of water down one's neck it does not matter the whole Atlantic could not get more water on to me than I have already got ever and again I stop and ring up some of it from my skirts for it is weighty one would not imagine that anything could come down in the way of water thicker than the rain but it can when one is on the top of the hills a cold breeze comes through the mist chilling one to the bone and bending the heads of the palm trees sends down from them water by the bucketful with a slap hitting or missing you as the case may be both myself and my men are by now getting anxious for our chop and they tell me we look them big hot soon soon we do look them big hot but with faces of undisguised horror for the big hut consists of a few charred roof mats etc lying on the ground there has been a fire in the simple savage home our path here is cut by one that goes east and west and after a consultation between my men and the bakwiri we take the path going east down a steep slope between weedy plantations and shortly on the left shows a steep little hillside with a long low hut on the top we go up to it and I find it is the habitation of a basal mission black Bible reader he comes out and speaks English well and I tell him I want a house for myself and my men and he says we had better come and stay in this one it is divided into two chambers one in which the children who attend to the mission school stay and wherein there is a fire and one evidently the abode of the teacher I thank the Bible reader and say that I will pay him for the house and I and the men go in streaming and my teeth chatter with cold as the breeze chills my saturated garment while I give out the rations of beef rum blankets and tobacco to the men then I clear my apartment out an attempt to get dry operations which are interrupted by Kefala coming for tobacco to buy firewood off the mission teacher to cook our food by presently my excellent little cook brings in my food and in with it comes to mission teachers our first acquaintance the one with a white jacket and another with a blue they lounge about and spit in all directions and then chiefs commence to arrive with their families complete and they settle into the apartment and ostentatiously ogle the damage on of rum they are as usual in nuisance sitting about on everything no sooner have I taken an unclean looking chief off the wood sofa then I observe another one has silently seated himself in the middle of my open portmanteau removing him and shutting it up I see another one has settled on the men's beef and rice sack it is now about three o'clock and I'm still chilled to the bone in spite of tea the weather is as bad as ever the men say that the rest of the road to Buaya is far worse than that which we have so far come along and that we should never get there before dark and for sure should not get there afterwards because by the time the dark came down we should be in bad place too much therefore to their great relief I say I will set this place one for the night and go on in the morning time off to Buaya and just for the present I think I will wrap myself up in a blanket and try and get the chill out of me so I give the chiefs a glass of rum each plenty of head tobacco and my best thanks for their kind call and then turn them all out I have not been lying down five minutes on the plank that serves for a sofa by day and a bed by night when Charles comes knocking at the door he wants tobacco missionary men no fit to let we have firewood unless we buy him give Charles a head and shut him out again and drop off to sleep again for a quarter of an hour then am aroused by some enterprising sightseers pushing open the window shutters when I look round there are a massive black head sticking through the window hole I tell them respectfully that the circus is closed for repairs and fasten up the shutters but sleep is impossible so I turn out and go and see what those men of mine are after they are comfortable enough around their fire with their clothes suspended on strings in the smoke above them and I envy them that fire I then stroll around to see if there is anything to be seen but the scenery is much like that you would enjoy if you were inside a blamange so as it is now growing dark I return to my room and light candles and read Dr. Gunther on fishes room becomes full of blacks unless you watch the door you do not see how it is done you look at a corner in one minute and it is empty and the next time you look that way it is full of rows of white teeth and watching eyes the two mission teachers come in and make a show of teaching a child to read the bible after again clearing out the rank and fashion of Boana I prepare to try and get sleep not an elaborate affair I assure you for I only want to wrap myself around in a blanket and lie on that blank but the rain has got into the blankets and horror there is no pillow the mission men have cleared their bed paraphernalia right out now you can do without a good many things but not without a pillow so hunt round to find something to make one with find the bible in english the bible in german and two hymn books and a candlestick these seem all the small articles in the room no there's a parcel behind the books mission teachers Sunday trousers make delightful arrangement of books bound round with trousers and the whole affair wrapped in one of my towels never saw till now advantage of Africans having trousers civilization has its points after all but it is no use trying to get any sleep until those men are quieter the partition which separates my apartment from theirs is a bamboo and matt affair straight at the top so living under the roof of a triangular space above common to both rooms also common to both rooms are the smoke of the fire in the conversation Kefala is holding forth in a dogmatic way and some of the others are snoring there is a new idea in decoration along the separating wall mr. Morris might have made something out of it for a dado it is composed of an arrangement in line of stretched out singlets Vaseline the revolver wish those men would leave off chattering kefala seems to know the worst about most of the people black and white down in Ambas bay but i do not believe those last two stories evidently great jokes in next room now kefala has thrown himself still talking in the dark onto the top of one of the mission teachers the women of the village outside have been keeping up this hour and more a most melancholy cooing those foolish creatures are evidently worrying about their husbands who have gone down to market in ambas bay and who they think are lost in the bush i have not a shadow of a doubt that those husbands who are not home by now are safely drunk in town or reposing on the grand new road the kindly government have provided for them either in one of the side dreams or tucked in among the lava rock september 21st cooing went on all night i was aroused about 9 30 p.m. by uproar in adjacent hut one husband had returned in a bellicose condition and whacked his wives and their squarks and squalls instead of acting as a warning to the other ladies stimulate the silly things to go on cooing louder and more intriguingly than ever so that their husbands might come home and whack them too i suppose and whenever the unmitigated hardness of my plank rouses me i hear them still cooing no watchman is required to wake you in the morning on the top of a camera room foothill by 5 30 because about 4 a.m the dank chill that comes before the dawn does so most effectively one old chief turned up early out of the mist and dashed me a bottle of palm wine he says he wants to dash me a foul but i decline and i accept two eggs and give him four heads of tobacco the whole place is swathed in thick white mist through which my audience arrive but i am firm with them and shut up the doors and windows and disregard their bangs on them while i am dressing or rather redressing the mission teachers get in with my tea and sit and smoke and spit while i have my breakfast give me cannibal fans it is pouring with rain again now and we go down the steep hillock to the path we came along yesterday keep it until we come to where the old path cuts it and then turn up to the right following the old path's course and leave buana without a pang of regret our road goes northeast oh the mud of it not the clearish cascades of yesterday but sticky slippery mud intensely sticky and intensely slippery the narrow path which is filled by this is v-shaped underneath from where and i soon find the safest way is right through the deepest mud in the middle the wide mist shuts off all details beyond ten yards in any direction all we can see as we first turn up the path is a patch of kokos of tremendous size on our right after this comes weedy plantation and stretches of sword grass hanging across the road the country is even more unlevel than we came over yesterday on we go patiently doing our mud pulling through the valleys toiling up a hillside among lumps of rock and stretches of forest for we are now beyond buana's plantations and skirting the summit of the hill only to descend into another valley evidently this is a succession of foothills of the great mountain and we are not on its true face yet as we go on they become more and more abrupt in form the valleys mere narrow ravines in the wet season this is only the tornado season each of these valleys is occupied by a raging torrent from the look of the confused water worn boulders now among the rocks there are only isolated pools for the weather for a fortnight before i left victoria had been fairly dry and this rich porous soil soaks up an immense amount of water it strikes me as strange that when we are either going up or down the hills the ground is less muddy than when we are skirting their summits but it must be because on the inclines the rush of water clears the soil away down to the bedrock there is an outcrop of clay down by buana but though that was slippery it is nothing to the slipperiness of this fine soft red brown earth that is the soil higher up and also around ambas bay this gets churned up into a sort of batter where there is enough water lying on it and when there is not an ice slide is an infant to it my men and i flounder about thrice one of them load and all goes down with a squidge and a crash into the sidegrass and says damn with quite the european accent as a rule however we go on in single file my shoes giving out a mellifluous squidge and their naked feet a squish squash the men take it very good temporarily and sing in between accidents i do not feel much like singing myself particularly at one awful spot which was the exception to the rule that ground at acute angles forms the best going this exception was a long slippery slide down into ravine with a long perfectly grassy slope up out of it after this we have a stretch of rocky forest and passed by a widening in the path which i am told is a place where men blow i.e. rest and then pass through another a little further on which is boy's bush market then through an opening in the great war hedge of boy a growing stockade some 15 feet high the lower part of it waddled at the sides of the path here grow banks of bergamot and balsam returning good for evil and smiling sweetly as we crush them thank goodness we are in forest now and we seem to have done with the sword grass the rocks are covered with moss and ferns and the mist curling and wandering about among the stems is very lovely in our next ravine there is a succession of pools part of a mountain torrent of greater magnitude evidently than those we have passed and in these pools there are things swimming spend more time catching them with the assistance of bum i do not value kefala's advice ample though it is as being of any real value in the affair bag some waterspiders and two small fish the heat is less oppressive than yesterday all yesterday one was being alternately smothered in the valley and chilled on the hilltops today it is a more level temperature about 70 degrees i fancy the soil up here about 2500 feet above sea level though rock laden is exceedingly rich and the higher we go there is more bergamot native indigo with its underleaf dark blue and lovely coliacus with the red markings on their upper leaves and crimson linings i as an ick theologist i'm in the wrong paradise what a region this would be for a botanist the country is gloriously lovely if one could only see it for the rain and mist but one only gets dim hints of its beauty when some cold rots of wind come down from the great mountains and seem to push open the mist veil as with spirit hands and then in a minute let it fall together again i do not expect to reach bouya within regulation time but at 1130 my men say we close in and then coming along a forested hill and down a ravine we find ourselves facing a rushing river wherein a squad of black soldiers are washing clothes with the assistance of a squad of black ladies with much uproar and sky larking i too think it best to wash here standing in the river and swishing the mud out of my skirts and then wading across to the other bank i ring out my skirts the ground on the further side of the river is cleared of bush and only bears a heavy crop of balsam a few steps onwards bring me in view of a corrugated iron-roofed plank-sided house in front of which towards the great mountain which now towers up into the mist is a low clearing with a quadrangle of native huts the barracks i receive a most kindly welcome from a fair grey-eyed german gentleman only unfortunately i see my efforts to appear before him clean and tidy have been quite unavailing for he views my appearance with unmixed horror and suggest an instant hot bath i decline men can be trying how in the world is anyone going to take a bath in a house with no doors and only very sketchy wooden window shutters the german officer is building the house quickly as allendorf would say but he has not yet got to such luxuries as doors and so uses army blankets strong across the doorway and he has got up temporary wooden shutters to keep the worst of the rain out and across his own room's window he has a frame covered with greased paper thank goodness he has made a table and a bench and a wash handstand out of planks for his spare room which he kindly places at my disposal and the fatherland is evidently stood him an iron bedstead and a mattress for it but the fatherland is not spoiling or causating this man to an extent that will enervate him in the least the mist clears off in the evening about five and the surrounding scenery is at last visible fronting the house there is a cleared quadrangle facing which on the other three sides are the lines of very dilapidated huts and behind these the ground rises steeply the great southeast face of mungo malobe it looks awfully steep when you know you have got to go up it the station of buhuea is three a thousand feet above sea level which explains the hills we have had to come up the mountain wall when viewed from buhuea is very grand although it lacks snowcap or glacier and the highest summits of mungo are not visible because we are too close under them but its enormous bulk and its isolation make it highly impressive the forest runs up it in a great bend above buhuea then sends up great tongues into the grassbelt above but what may be above this grassbelt i know not yet for our view ends at the top of the wall of the great southeast crater my men say there are devils and gold up beyond but the german authorities do not support this view those germans are so skeptical this station is evidently on a ledge four behind it the ground falls steeply and you get an uninterrupted panoramic view of the cameroon estuary and the great stretches of low swamp lands with the mungo and the bimbia rivers and there are many creeks and channels and far away east the strange abrupt forms of the rhombie mountains her library says you can see cameroon government buildings from here if only the day is clear though they are some 40 miles away this view of them is save a missionary of the basil mission the only white society available at buhuea i hear more details about the death a poor fryher von gravenruth whose fine monument of a seated line i saw in the government house grounds in cameroons the other day bush fighting in these west african forests is dreadfully dangerous work hemmed in by bush in a narrow path along which you must pass slowly in single file you are a target for all and any natives invisibly hidden in the undergrowth and the war hedge of buhuea must have made an additional danger and difficulty here for the attacking party the lieutenant and his small band of black soldiers had after a stiff fight succeeded in forcing the entrance to this when their ammunition gave out and they had to fall back the buhueans regarding this is their victory rallied and a chance shot killed the lieutenant instantly a further expedition was promptly sent up from victoria and it wiped the air out of the buhuean mind and several buhueans with it but it was a very necessary expedition these natives were a constant source of danger to the more peaceful trading tribes whom they would not permit to traverse their territory the buhueans have been dealt with mercifully by the germans for their big villages like sappa are still standing and a continual stream of natives come into the barrack yard selling produce or carrying it on down to victoria markets in a perfectly content and cheerful way i met this morning a big burly chief with his insignia of office a great stick he i am told is the chief or sappa whom here one luck has called to talk some pal of her with down in victoria at last i leave her libert because everything i say to him causes him to hop flying somewhere to show me something and i am sure it is bad for his foot i go and see that my men are safely quartered kefala is laying down the law in a most didactic way to the soldiers here libert has christened him the professor and i adopt the name for him but i fear wind the bag would fit him better at seven thirty a heavy tornado comes rolling down upon us masses of indigo cloud with livid lightning flashing in the van roll out from over the wall of the great crater above then with that malevolence peculiar to the tornado it sees all the soldiers and their wives and children sitting happily in the barrack yard howling in a minor key and bidding their beloved tomtoms so it comes and sits flump down on them with deluges of water and sends its lightning running over the ground and live its dreams of living death oh there are nice things our tornadoes i wonder what they will be like when we are up in their home up at top of that precious wall i had no idea mongol was so steep if i had well i am in for it now end of chapter 17 ascent of the great peak of kameroons read by kende of biotrack.com chapter 18 ascent of the great peak of kameroons continued this is a lipervox recording a lipervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lipervox.org travels in west africa by marriage kingsley chapter 18 ascent of the great peak of kameroons wherein is recounted how the voyager sets out from bué and goes up through the forest belt to the top of the southeast crater of mongo malobe with many dilemmas and disasters that befell on the way september 22nd wake at five fine morning fine view towards kameroon river the broad stretch of forest below and the water-eaten mangrove swamps below that are all a glorious indigo flushed with rose color from the death of the night as kiva used to call the dawn no one's stirring till six when people come out of the huts and stretch themselves and proceed to begin the day in the africans usually perfunctory listless way my crew are worse than the rest i go and hunt cook out he props open one eye with difficulty and yawns a yawn that nearly cuts his head into i wake him up with a shock by saying i mean to go on up today and want my chop and to start one time he goes off and announces my horrible intention to the others kefala soon arrives upon the scene full of argument you know sabbeth is bisonde ma says he in a tone that tells he considers this settles the matter i sabe unconcernedly kefala scratches his head for other argument but he has opened with his heavy artillery which being repulsed throws his rear lines into confusion bum the headman then turns up sound asleep inside but quite ready to come bum i find is always ready to do what he is told but has no more original ideas in his head than there are in a chair leg kefala however by scratching other parts of his anatomy diligently has now another argument ready the two bakwires are sick with abdominal trouble that requires room and rest and one of the other boys has hot foot hare libert now appears upon the scene and says i can have some of his laborers who are now more or less idle because he cannot get about much with his bad food to direct them so i give the bakwires and the two hot foot cases books to take down to her von luck who will pay them off for me and seeing that they have each a good day's rations of rice beef etc eliminate them from the party in addition to the laborers i am to have as a guide sasu a black sergeant who went up the peak with the officers of the hyena and i get my breakfast and then hang about watching my men getting ready very slowly to start off we get about eight and start with all good wishes and grim prophecies from hare libert led by sasu and accompanied by tomorrow a man who has come to beware from some interior unknown district and who speaks no known language and whose business it is to help to cut away through the bush we go down the path we came and cross the river again this river seems to separate the final mass of the mountain from the foothills on the side immediately after crossing it we turn up into the forest on the right hand side and tomorrow cuts through an overgrown track for about half an hour and then leaves us everything is wreaking wet and we switch through thick undergrowth and then enter a darker forest where the earth is rocky and richly decorated with ferns and moss for the first time in my life i see tree ferns growing wild in luxuriant perfusion what glorious creations they are then we get out into the middle of a coco plantation next to sweet potatoes the premier abomination to walk through give me coco's for good all-round dryingness particularly when they are wet as is very much the case now getting through these we meet the war hedge again and after a conscientious struggle with various forms of vegetation in a muddled tangled state sasu says no good path don't get stopped up so we turn and retrace our steps all the way across the river and horrify Herr Leibert by invading his house again we explain the situation grave head shaking between him and sasu about the practicability of any other route because there is no other path i do not like to say so much the better because it would have sounded ungrateful but i knew from my ogo way experiences that a forest that looks from afar a dense black mat is all right underneath and there is a short path recently cut by Herr Leibert that goes straight up towards the forest above us it had been made to go to a clearing where ambitious agricultural operations were being inaugurated when Herr Leibert hurt his foot up this we go it is semi-vertical while it lasts and it ends in a scrubby patch that is to be a plantation this crossed we are in the Orwald and it is more exquisite than words can describe but not good going particularly at one spot where a gigantic tree has fallen across a little rocky ravine and has to be crawled under it occurs to me that this is a highly likely place for snakes and an absolutely sure find for scorpions and when we have passed it three of these latter interesting creatures are observed on the load of blankets which is fastened on to the back of Kefala we inform Kefala of the fact on the spot a volcanic eruption of intrudy advice and admonition results but we still hesitate however the gallant cook tackles them in a sort of tipped cat way with a stick and we proceed into a patch of long grass beyond which there is a reach of amomons the winged amomom i see here in Africa for the first time horrid slippery things amomom sticks to walk on when they are lying on the ground and there is a lot of my old enemy the calamus about on each side are deep forested dales and ravines and rocks show up through the ground in every direction and things in general are slippery and i wonder now and again as i assume with unnecessary violence a recumbent position why i came to Africa but patches of satin-leaved begonias and clumps of lovely tree ferns reconcile me to my lot cook does not feel these forest charms and gives me notice after an hours experience of mountain forest belt work what cook would not as we get higher we have to edge and squeeze every few minutes through the aerial routes of some tremendous kind of tree plentiful hereabouts one of them we passed through i am sure would have run any Indian banyan hard for extent of ground covered if it were measured in the region where these trees are frequent the undergrowth is less dense than it is lower down imagine a vast seemingly limitless cathedral with its countless columns covered nay composed of the most exquisite dark green large fronted moss with here and there a delicate fern embedded in it as an extra decoration the white gauze like mist comes down from the upper mountain towards us creeping twining round and streaming through the moss covered tree columns long bands of it reaching along sinuous but evenly for fifty and sixty feet or more and then ending in a puff like the smoke of a gun soon however all the mist streams coalesce and make the atmosphere all their own wrapping us round in a clammy chill embrace it is not that wool blanket smothering affair that we were wrapped in down by boanna but exquisitely delicate the difference it makes to the beauty of the forest is just the same difference you would get if you put a delicate veil over a pretty woman's face or a sack over her head in fact the mist here was exceedingly becoming to the forest's beauty now and again growls of thunder roll out from and quivering the earth beneath our feet mongo is making a big tornado and is stirring and simmering it softly so as to make it strong i only hope he will not overdo it as he does six times in seven and make it too heavy to get out onto the atlantic where all tornadoes ought to go if he does the thing will go and burst on us in this forest tonight the forest now grows less luxuriant though still close we have left the begonias and the tree ferns and are in another zone the trees now instead of being clothed in rich dark green moss are heavily festooned with long greenish white lichen it pours with rain at last we reach the place where the sergeant says we ought to camp for the night i have been feeling the time for camping was very ripe for the past hour and kefala openly said as much an hour and a half ago but he got such scaling things said to him about civilians legs by the sergeant that i did not air my own opinion we are now right at the very edge of the timber belt my headman and three boys are done to a turn if i had had a bull behind me or mr. fildes in front i might have done another five or seven miles but not more the rain comes down with extra virulence as soon as we set to work to start the fire and open the loads i and peter have great times getting out the military camp bed from its tight bolster-like case while kefala gives advice until being irritated by the bed's behavior i blow up kefala and sent him to chop firewood however we get the thing out and put up after cutting a place clear to set it on owing to the world being on a stiff slant hereabouts it takes time to make it stand straight i get four sticks cut and drive them in at the four corners of the bed and then stretch over it a hair von lux waterproof ground sheet guide the ends out to pegs with string feel profoundly grateful to both hair labbert for the bed and hair von lux for the sheet and place the baggage under the protection of the german government's two belongings then i find that the boys have not got a fire with all their fuss and i have to demonstrate to them the lessons i have learned among the fans regarding fire making we build a firehouse and then all goes well i notice they do not make a fire fan fashion but build it in a circle evidently one of the laborers from buhuea named senya is a good man equally evidently some of my other men are only fit to carry sandwich boards for day and martins blacking i dine luxuriously off tinned fat pork and hot tea and then feeling still hungry go on to tinned herring excellent thing tinned herring but i have to hurry because i know i must go up through the edge of the forest onto the grassland and see how the country is made during the brief period of clearness that almost always comes just before nightfall so leaving my boys comfortably seated round the fire having their evening chop i pass up through the heavily like and tassled fringe of the forest belt into deep jungle grass and up a steep and slippery mound in front the mountain face rises like a wall from behind a set of hillocks similar to the one i am at present on the face of the wall to the right and left has two dark clefts in it the peak itself is not visible from where i am it rises behind and beyond the wall i stay taking compass bearings and look for an easy way up for tomorrow my men by now have missed their ma and are yelling for her dismally and the night comes down with great rapidity for we are in the shadow of the great mountain mass so i go back into camp alas how vain are often our most energetic efforts to remove our fellow creatures from temptation i knew a sunday down among the soldiers would be bad for my men and so came up here and now if you please these men have been at the room because bum the headman has been too done up to do anything but lie in his blanket and feed kafala is laying down the law with great detail and unction cook who has been very low in his mind all day is now weirdly cheerful and sings incoherently the other boys who want to go to sleep threatened to burst him if he no finish it's no good cook carols on and soon succumbing to the irresistible charm of music the other men have to join in the courses the performance goes on for an hour growing woollier and woollier in tone and then dying out in sleep i write by the light of an insect haunted lantern sitting on the bed which is tucked in among the trees some 20 yards away from the boys's fire there is a bird whistling in a deep rich note that i have never heard before september 23 morning gloriously fine route the boys out and started seven with sasa headman senya black boy kafala and to cook the great southeast wall of the mountain in front of us is quite unflaked by cloud and in the forest are thousands of bees we notice that the tongues of forest to go up the mountain in some places a hundred yards or more above the true line of the belt these tongues of forest get more and more heavily hung with lichen and the trees thinner and more stunted towards their ends i think that these tongues are always in places where the wind does not get full play all those near our camping place on this southeast face are so it is evidently not a matter of soil for their example soil on this side above where the trees are and then again on the western side of the mountain the side facing the sea the timber line is far higher up than on this nor again is it a matter of angle that makes the timber line here so low for those forests on the sierra del cristal were growing luxuriously over far steeper grades there is some peculiar local condition just here evidently or the forest would be up to the bottom of the wall of the crater i am not unreasonable enough to expect it to grow on that but its conduct in staying where it does requires explanation we clamber up into the long jungle grass region and go on our way across a series of steep sided rounded grass hillocks each of which is separated from the others by dry rocky water courses the effects produced by the cedar ears of the long grass around us are very beautiful they look a golden brown and each ear and leaf is gemmed with dew drops and those of the grass on the sides of the hillocks at a little distance off show a soft brown pink after half an hour's climb when we are close at the pace of the wall i observe the men ahead halting and coming up with them find monrovia boy down a hole a little deep blowhole in which i am informed water is supposed to be but monrovia soon reports no leave i now find we have not a drop of water either with us or in camp and now this hole has proved dry there is as a sergeant no chance of getting any more water on this side of the mountain save down the river at bouya this means failure unless tackled and it is evidently a trick played on me by the boys who intentionally failed to let me know of this want of water before leaving bouya where it seems they have all learned it i express my opinion of them in four words and send monrovia boy who i know is to be trusted back to bouya with a scribbled note to her library asking him to send me up to demi-johns of water i send cook with him as far as the camp in the forest we have just left with orders to bring up three bottles of soda water i have left there and instruct the men there that as soon as the water arrives from bouya they are to bring it on up to the camp i mean to make at the top of the wall the men are sulky and sasu peter kefala and headmen say they will wait and come on as soon as cook brings the soda water and i go on and presently see senya and black boy are following me we get on to the intervening hillocks and commence to send the face of the wall the angle of this wall is great and its appearance from below is impressive from its enormous breadth and its abrupt rise without a bend or a droop for a good two thousand feet into the air it is covered with a short yellowish grass through which the burnt up scaracious lava rock protrudes in rough masses i got on up the wall which when you are on it is not so perpendicular as it looks from below my desire being to see what sort of country there was on the top of it between it and the final peak sasu had reported to her library that it was a wilderness of rock in which it would be impossible to fix a tent and spoke of a glee of caves here and there on the way up i come to holes similar to the one my men had been down for water i suppose these holes have been caused by gases from an under hot layer of lava bursting up through the upper cool layer as i get higher the grass becomes shorter and more sparse and the rocks more ostentatiously displayed here and there among them are sadly tried bushes bearing a beautiful yellow flower like a large yellow wild rose only scentless it is not a rose at all i may remark the ground where there is any basin made by the rocks grows a great sedum with a grand head of a whitey pink flower also a tall herb with soft downing leaves silver green color and having a very pleasant aromatic scent and here and there patches of good honest parsley bright blue flannily looking flower stud the grass in sheltered places and a very pretty large green orchid is plentiful above us is a bright blue sky with white cloud rushing hurriedly across it to the northeast and a fierce sun when i am about halfway up i think of those boys and wanting rest sit down by an inviting looking rock roto with a patch of the yellow flowered shrub growing on its top inside it grow little ferns and mosses all damp but alas no water pool and very badly i want water by this time below me a belt of white cloud had now formed so that i could see neither the foothillocks nor the forest and presently out of this mist came senia toiling up carrying my black bag where then black boy live said i black boys say him foot be tired too much said senia as he threw himself down in the little shade the rock could give i took a cup full of sour claret out of the bottle in the bag and told senia to come on up as soon as he was rested and meanwhile to yell to the others down below and tell them to come on senia did but sadly observed softly softly still hurts the snail and i left him and went on up the mountain when i had got to the top of the rock under which i had sheltered from the blazing sun the mist opened a little and i saw my men looking like so many little dolls they were still sitting on the hillock where i had left them buwei showed from this elevation well the guardhouse and the mission house like little houses in a picture and the make of the ground in which buwei a station stands came out distinctly as a ledge or terrace extending for miles north northeast and south southwest this ledge is a strange looking piece of country covered with low bush out of which rise great isolated white stemmed cotton trees below and beyond this is a denser bend of high forest and again below this stretches the vast mangrove swamp fringing the estuary of the cameroons mongo and bimbia rivers it is a very noble view giving one an example of the peculiar beauty one of times gets in this west african scenery namely colossal sweeps of color the mangrove swamps look today like a vast damson colored carpet threaded with silver where the waterways ran it reminded me of a scene i saw once near cabinda when on climbing to the top of a hill i suddenly found myself looking down on a sheet of violent pink more than a mile long and a half mile wide this was caused by a climbing plant having taken possession of a valley full of trees whose tops it had reached and then spread and interlaced itself over them to burst into profuse glorious lamburnum shaped bunches of flowers after taking some careful compass bearings for future use regarding the rumby and oman range of mountains which were clearly visible and which looked fascinatingly like my beloved seara del cristal i turned my face to the wall of mongo and continued the ascent the sun which was blazing was reflected back from the rocks in scorching rays but it was more bearable now because its heat was tempered by a bitter wind the slope becoming steeper i gradually made my way towards the left until i came to a great lane as neatly walled with rock as if it had been made with human hands it runs down the mountain face nearly vertically in places and at stiff angles always but it was easier going up this lane than on the outside rough rock because the rocks in it had been smoothed by mountain torrents during thousands of wet seasons and the walls protected one from the biting wind a wind that went through me for i had been stewing for nine months and more in tropic and equatorial swamps up this lane i went to the very top of the mountain wall and then to my surprise found myself facing a great hilloky rock encumbered plain across the other side of which rose the mass of the peak itself not as a single cone but as a wall surmounted by several three being evidently the highest among them i started along the ridge of my wall and went to its highest part that to the southwest intending to see what i could of the view towards the sea and then to choose a place for camping in for the night when i reached the southwest end looking westwards i saw the south atlantic down below like a plane of frosted silver out of it barely 20 miles away rose for an undepot to its 10 190 feet with that majestic grace peculiar to a volcanic island immediately below me some 10 000 feet or so lay victoria with the forested foothills of mongo malobe encircling it as a diadem and ambas bay gemmed with rocky islands lying before it on my left away southeast was the glorious stretch of the cameroon estuary with a line of white cloud lying very neatly along the course of cameroon river in one of the chasms of the mountain wall that i had come up in the one furthest to the north there was a thunderstorm brewing seemingly hanging onto or streaming out of the mountain side a soft billowy mass of dense cream-colored cloud with flashes of golden lightnings playing about in it with soft growls of thunder surely mongo malobe himself of all the thousands the annually turns out never made one more lovely than this soon the white mists rose from the mangrove swamp and grew rose color in the light of the setting sun as they swept upwards over the now purple high forests in the heavens to the north there was a rainbow vivid in color one arch of it going behind the peak the other sinking into the mist sea below and this mist sea rose and rose towards me turning from pale rose color to lavender and where the shadow of mongo lay across it to a dull linden gray it was soon at my feet blocking the underworld out and soon came flowing over the wall top at its lowest parts stretching in great spreading rivers over the crater plain and then these coalescing everything was shut out save the two summits that of kamerun close to me and that of clarence away on fernando po these two stood out alone like great island masses made of iron rising from a formless silken sea the space around seemed boundless and there was in it neither sound nor color nor anything with form saved those two terrific things it was like a vision and it held me spellbound as i stood shivering on the rocks with a white mist around my knees until into my wool gathering mind came the memory of those anything but sublime men of mine and i turned and scuttled off along the rocks like an agitated ant left alone in a dead universe i soon found the place where i'd come up into the crater plain and went down over the wall descending with twice the rapidity but ten times the scratches and grazes of the ascent i picked up the place where i'd left senya but no senya was there nor came there any answer to my bush call for him so on i went down towards the place where hours ago i had left the men the mist was denser down below but to my joy it was warmer than on the summit of the wind-swept wall i had nearly reached the foot of this wall and made my mind up to turn in for the night under a rock when i heard a melancholy croak away in the mist to the left i went towards it and found xenya lost on his own account and distinctly quaint in manner and then i recollected that i had been warned senya is slightly crazy nice situation this a mad man on a mountain in the mist senya i found had no longer got my black bag but in its place a lid of a saucepan and an empty lantern to put it mildly this is not the sort of outfit the rgs hints to travelers would recommend for african exploration senya reported that he gave the bag to black boy who shortly afterwards disappeared and that he had neither seen him nor any of the others since and didn't expect to this side of shaman da zi in a homicidal state of mind i made tracks for the missing ones followed by xenya i thought may have they had grown onto the rocks they had sat upon so long but presently just before it became quite dark we picked up the place we had left them in and found their only an empty soda water bottle xenya poured out a muddled mass of observations to affect that they got frightened too much about them water power i did not linger to raise a monument to them but i said i wished they were in a condition to require one and we went on over our hillocks with more confidence now that we knew we had stuck well to our unmarked track the moving moon went up the sky and nowhere did abide softly she was going up and a star or two beside only she was a young and inefficient moon and although we were below the thickest of the mist band it was dark finding our own particular hole in the forest while was about as easy as finding one particular rabbit hole in an unknown hay field in the dark and the attempt to do so afforded us a great deal of varied exercise i am obliged to be guarded in my language because my feelings now are only down to one degree below boiling point the rain now began to fall thank goodness and i drew the thick ears of grass through my parched lips as i stumbled along over the rugged lumps of rock hidden under the now waste high jungle grass our camp hall was pretty easily distinguishable by daylight for it was on the left hand side of one of the forest tongues the grassland running down like a lane between two tongues here and just over the entrance three conspicuously high trees showed but we could not see these picking up points in the darkness so i had to keep getting senya to strike matches and hold them in his hat while i looked at the compass presently we came full tilt up against the belt of trees which i knew from these compass observations was our tongue of forest belt and i fired a couple of revolver shots into it whereabouts i judged our camp to be this was instantly answered by a yell from human voices in chorus and towards that yell in a slightly amiable a very slightly amiable state of mind i went i will draw a veil over the scene particularly over my observations to those men they did not attempt to deny their desertion but they attempted to explain it each one saying that it was not he but the other boy who got frightened too much i closed the paliver promptly with a brief but lurid sketch of my opinion on the situation and ordered food for not having had a thing save that cup of sour claret since six thirty a.m. and it being now eleven p.m. i felt sinkings then arose another beautiful situation before me it seems when cook and monrovia got back into camp this morning master cook was seized with one of those attacks of a desire to manage things that produced such awful results in the african servant and sent all the beef and rice down to boya to be cooked because there was no water here to cook it therefore the men have got nothing to eat i had a few tins of my own food and so gave them some and they became as happy as kings in a few minutes listening and shouting over the terrible adventures of xenia who is posing as the hero of the great cameroon i get some soda water from two bottles left and some tinned herring and then write out two notes to hair libert asking him to send me three more demi-johns of water and some beef and rice from the store promising faithfully to pay for them on my return i would not prevent those men of mine from going up that peak above me after their touching conduct today oh no not for worlds dear things end of chapter 18 recorded by gehinde of bahtrek.com chapter 19 the great peak of cameroons continued this is a lipervox recording all lipervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lipervox.org travels in west africa by mary h kingsley chapter 19 the great peak of cameroons continued setting forth how the voyager for a second time reaches the southeast crater with some account of the pleasures incidental to camping out in the said crater september 24th lovely morning the gray white mist in the forest makes it like a dream of fairyland each moss green tree stem heavily gemmed with dew drops at five thirty i stir the boys for sasu the sergeant says he must go back to his military duties the men think we are all going back with him as he is our only guide but i sent three of them down with orders to go back to victoria two being of the original set i started with they are surprised and disgusted at being sent home but they have got hot foot and something wrong in the usual seat of african internal disturbances they're tummocks and i'm not thinking of starting a sanatorium for abdominally afflicted africans in that crater plain above black boys the other boy returned i do not want another of his attacks they go and this leaves me in the forest camp with kefalak senya and cook and we start expecting the water sent for by monrovia boy yesterday for noon there are an abominable lot of bees about they do not give one a moment's peace getting beneath the waterproof sheets over the bed the ground bestrew with leaves and dried wood is a mass of large flies rather like our common housefly but both butterflies and beetles seem scarce and i confess i do not feel up to hunting much after yesterday's work and deem it advisable to rest my face and particularly my lips are a misery to me having been blistered all over by yesterday's sun and last night i inadvertently whipped the skin all off one cheek with a blanket and it keeps on bleeding and horror of horrors there is no tea until that water comes i wish i had got the mountaineering spirit for then i could say i'll never come to this sort of place again for you can't get all you want in the alps i have been told this by my mountaineering friends i have never been there and that you can go into all sorts of stupendous things all day and come back in the evening to tablet the hotel at an hotel but i have not got the mountaineering spirit i suppose i shall come fooling into some such place as this as soon as i get the next chance about eight thirty to our delight the gallant monrovia boy comes through the bush with a demigod of water and i get my tea and give the men the only half pound of rice i have and tin of meat and they eat become merry and chat over their absent companions in a scornful scandalous way who cares for hotels now when one is in a delightful place like this one must work so off i go to the north into the forest after giving the rest of the demigod of water into the monrovia boy's charge with strict orders it is not to be opened till my return quantities of beetles a little after two o'clock i returned to camp after having wandered about in the forest and found three very deep holes down which i heaved rocks and in no case heard a splash in one i did not hear the rock strike owing to the great depth i hate holes and especially do i hate these african ones for i am frequently falling more or less into them and they will be my end the other demigods of water have not arrived yet and we are getting anxious again because the men's food has not come up and they have been so exceedingly thirsty that they have drunk most of the water not however since it has been in monrovia's charge but at three fifteen another boy comes through the bush with another demigod of water we receive him gladly and ask him about the chop he knows nothing about it at three forty five another boy comes through the bush with another demigod of water we receive him kindly he does not know anything about the chop at four ten another boy comes through the bush with another demigod of water and knowing nothing about the chop we are civil to him and that's all a terrific tornado which has been lurking growling about then sits down in the forest and bursts wrapping us up in a lively kind of fog with his thunder lightning and rain it was impossible to hear or make one self heard at the distance of even a few paces because of the shrill squeal of the wind the roar of the thunder and the rush of the rain on the trees around us it was not like having a storm burst over you in the least you felt you were in the middle of its engine room when it had broken down badly after half an hour or so the thunder seemed to lift itself off the ground and the lightning came in sheets instead of in great forks that flew like flights of spears among the forest trees the thunder however had not settled things amicably with a mountain it roared its rage at mongo and mongo answered back quivering with a rage as great under our feet one feels here as if one were constantly dropping unasked and unregarded among a painful and violent discussions between the elemental powers of the universe mongo growls and swears in thunder at the sky and sulks in white mist all the morning and then the sky answers back hurling down lightnings and rivers of water with total disregard of mongo's visitors the way the water rushes down from the mountain wall through the water courses in the jungle just above and then at the edge of the forest spreads out into a sheet of water that is an inch deep and that flies on past us in miniature cascades trying the while to put out our fire and so on is quite interesting i exhausted my vocabulary on those boys yesterday as soon as we saw what we were in for we had thrown dry wood on the fire and it blazed just as the rain came down so with our assistance it fought a good fight with its fellow elements spitting and hissing like a wild cat we could have managed the water fairly well but the wind came very nearly putting an end to it by carrying away its protective bow house which settled on professor kefala who burst out in a lecture on the foolishness of mountaineering and the quantity of devils in this region just in the midst of these joys another boy came through the bush with another demi-jan of water we did not receive him even civilly i burst out laughing and the boys went off in a roar and we shouted at him wear them chop he live for come said the boy and we then gave him a hearty welcome and a taut of rum and an hour afterwards two more boys appear one carrying a sack of rice and before the men and the other a box for me from here labored containing a luxurious supply of biscuits candles tinned meats and a bottle of wine and one of beer we are now all happy though exceeding damp and the boys sit around the fire with their big iron pot full of beef and rice busy cooking while they talk wonderful accounts of our prodigies of valor are here given by xenia and terrible accounts of what they have lived through from the others and the men who have brought up the demi-jans in the chop recount the last news from boya james's wife has run away again i have taken possession of two demi-jans of water and the rum demi-jan arranging them around the head of my bed the worst if it is those tyrosin bees as soon as the rain is over come in hundreds after the rum and frighten me continually the worthless wretches get intoxicated on what they can suck from round the cork and then they stagger about on the ground buzzing malevolently when the boys have had the chop in a good smoke we turn to and make up the loads for tomorrow's start of the mountain and then after more hot tea i turn in on my camp bed listening to the soft sweet murmur of the trees and the pleasant laughing chatter of the men september 25th rolled off the bed twice last night into the bush the rain has washed the ground away from under its off legs so that it tilts and there were quantities of large long acorn beetles about during the night the sword with spiny backs they kept on getting themselves hitched onto my blankets and when i wanted civilly to remove them they made a horrid freezing noise and showed fight cocking their horns in a defiant way i wake finally about five a.m. soaked through to the skin the waterproof sheet has had a label sewn to it so it is not waterproof and it has been raining softly but amply for hours about seven we are off again with xenia headman cook monrovia boy and a laborer from buhuea the water carriers having gone home after having had their morning chop we make for the face of the wall by a route to the left of that i took on monday and when we are clambering up at some 600 feet above the hillocks swish comes a terrific rainstorm at us accompanied by a squealing bitter cold wind we can hear the roar of the rain on the forest below and hoping to get above it we keep on hoping however is vain the dens mist that comes with it prevents our seeing more than two yards in front and we get too far to the left i am behind the band today severely bringing up the rear and about one o'clock i hear shouts from the vanguard and when i get up to them i find them sitting on the edge of one of the clefts or scars in the mountain face i do not know how these quarry like chasms have been formed they both look alike from below the mountain wall comes down vertically into them and the bottom of this one slopes forward so that if we had had the misfortune when a little lower down to have gone a little further to the left we should have got on to the bottom of it and should have found ourselves walled in on three sides and had to retrace our steps as it is we have just struck its right hand edge and fortunately the mist thick as it is has not been sufficiently thick to lead the men to walk over it for had they done so they would have got killed as the cliff arches in under so that we look straight into the bottom of the scar some 200 or 300 feet below when there is a split in the mist the sides and bottom are made of and strewn with white moss grown masses of volcanic cinder rock and sparsely shrubbed with gnarled trees which have evidently been under fire one of my boys tells me from the burning of this face of the mountain by the major from Calambar during the previous dry season we keep on up a steep grass covered slope and finally reach the top of the wall the immense old crater floor before us is today the site of a seething storm and the peak itself quite invisible my boys are quite demoralized by the cold i find most of them have sold the blankets i gave them out at buana and those who have not sold them have left them behind at boya from laziness perhaps but more possibly from a confidence in their powers to prevent us getting so far i believe if i had collapsed too the cold tempted me to do so as nothing else can they would have lain down and died in the cold sleety rain i site a clump of gnarled sparsely foliage trees bedraped heavily with lichen growing in a hollow among the rocks thither i urged the men for shelter and they go like storm bewildered sheep my bones are shaking in my skin and my teeth in my head for after the experience i had had of the heat here on monday i dared not close myself heavily the men stand helpless under the trees and i hastily take the load of blankets her library lent us off a boy's back and undo it throwing one blanket around each man and opening my umbrella and spreading it over the other blankets then i give them a taut of rum apiece as they sit huddled in their blankets and tear up a lot of the brittle rotten wood from the trees and shrubs getting horde thorns into my hands the while and set to work getting a fire with it and the driest of the moss from beneath the rocks by the aid of it and xenia who soon revived and a carefully scraped up candle and a box of matches the fire soon blazes xenia holding a blanket to shelter it while i with a cutlass chop stakes to fix the blankets on so as to make a fire tent the other boys now revive and i hustle them about to make more fires no easy work in drenching rain but work that has got to be done we soon get three well alight and then i clutch a blanket a ringing wet blanket but i comfort and wrapping myself round in it issue orders for wood to be gathered and store it around each fire to dry and then stand over cook while he makes the men's already cooked chop hot over our first fire when this is done getting him to make meaty or as it more truly should be called soup for it contains bits of rice and beef and the general taste of their fairies would smoke kefala by this time is in lecturing form again so my mind is relieved about him although he says oh ma it be cold cold too much too much cold kill me black man all same for one is too much son kill you white man oh ma etc i tell him they have only got themselves to blame if they had come up with me on monday we should have been hot enough and missed the storm of rain when the boys have had their chop and are curling themselves off comfortably around their now blazing fires sanya must need start a theory that there is a better place than this to camp in he saw it when he was with an unsuccessful expedition that got as far as this kefala is full enough to go off with him to find this place but they soon returned chilled through again and unsuccessful in their quest i gather that they have been to find caves i wish they had found caves for i am not thinking of taking out a patent for our present campsite the bitter wind and swishing rain keep on we are to a certain extent sheltered from the former but the latter is of that insinuating sort that nothing but a granite wall would keep off just at sundown however as is usual in this country the rain seizes for a while and i take this opportunity to get out my seamen's jersey when i have thought my way into it i turn to survey our position and find i have been carrying on my battle on the brink of an abysmal hole whose mouth is concealed among the rocks and scraggly shrubs just above our camp i heave rocks down it as we in fanland would offer rocks to an um woody and hear them go niggity knock like a pebble in carous brcwell i think i detect a faraway splash but it was an awesome way down this mountain seems set with these mantraps and someday some gentleman's nigger will get killed down one the mist has now cleared away from the peak but lies all over the lower world and i take bearings of the three highest cones or peaks carefully then i go away over the rocky ground southwards and as i stand looking around the mist sea below is cleft in twain for a few minutes by some fierce downed route of wind from the peak and i got a strange clear sudden view right down to ambas bay it is just like looking down from one world into another i think how odin hung and looked down into naffelheim and then of how hot how deliciously hot it was away down there and then the mist closes over it i shiver and go back to camp for night is coming on and i know my men will require intellectual support in the matter of procuring firewood the men are now quite happy over each fire they have made a tent with four sticks with a blanket on a blanket that is too wet to burn though i have to make them brace the blankets to winward for fear of their scorching the wind from the shrubs here is of an aromatic and a resinous nature which sounds nice but it isn't for the volumes of smoke it gives off when burning or suffocating and the boys who sit almost on the fire are every few moments scrambling to their feet and going apart to cough out smoke like so many novices in training for the profession of fire eaters however they soon find that if they roll themselves in their blankets and lie on the ground to winward they escape most of the smoke they have divided up into three parties kevalan xenia who have struck up a great friendship take the lower the most exposed fire headman cook and monrovia boy have the upper fire and the laborer has the middle one he being an outcast for medical reasons they are all steaming away and smoking comfortably i form the noble resolution to keep awake and rouse up any gentleman who may catch on fire during the night and see two wood being put on the fire so elaborately settle myself on my wooden chop box wherein i have got all the luciferous which are not in the soap box owing to there not being a piece of ground the size of a six penny piece level in this place the arrangement of my box camp takes time but at last it is done to my complete satisfaction close to a tree trunk and i think as i wrap myself up in my two wet blankets and lean against my tree what a good thing it is to know how to make oneself comfortable in a place like this the tree stem is perfection just the right angle to be restful to one's back and one can rely all the time on nature hereabouts not to let one get thoroughly a feat from luxurious comfort so i lazily watch and listen to xenia and kefala at their fire hard buy they begin talking to each other on their different tribal societies kefala is a vey xenia a librarian so in the interests of science i give them two heads of tobacco to stimulate their conversation they receive them with tragic grief having no pipe so in the interests of science i undo my blankets and give them two out of my portmanteau then do myself up again and pretend to be asleep i am rewarded by getting some interesting details and form the opinion that both these worthies in their pursuit of their particular jujus have come into contact with white prejudices and are now fugitives from religious persecution i also observe they have both their own ideas of happiness kefala holds it lies in a warm shirt xenia that it abides in warm trousers and every half hour the former takes his shirt off and holds it in the fire smoke and then puts it hastily on and xenia who is the one and only trouser wearer in our bend spends fifty percent of the night on one leg struggling to get the other in or out of these garments when they are either coming off to be warmed or going on after warming there seem but few insects here i have only got two moths tonight one pretty one with white wings with little red spots on like an old-fashioned petticoat such as an early victorian age lady would have worn the other a sweet thing in silver later i.e. to fifteen a.m i've been asleep against that abominable vegetable of a tree it had its trunk covered with a soft cushion of moss and pretended to be a comfort a right angle to lean against and a softly padded protection to the spine from wind and all that sort of thing whereas the whole mortal time it was nothing in this wretched world but a water pipe to conduct an extra supply of water down my back the water has simply streamed down it and formed a nice little pool in a rocky hollow where i keep my feet and i'm chilled to the innermost bone so have to scramble up and drag my box to the side of kefal and xenia's fire feeling sure i have contracted a fatal chill this time i scrape the ashes out of the fire into a heap and put my sodden boots into them and they hiss merrily and i resolve not to go to sleep again five a.m have been to sleep twice and have fallen off my box bottling to the fire in my wet blankets and should for sure have put it out like a bucket of cold water had not xenia and kefala been roused up by the smother occasioned and rescued me or the fire it is not raining now but it is bitter cold and cook is getting my tea i give the boys a lot of hot tea with a big handful of sugar in and they then get their own food hot end of chapter 19 the great peak of kameroons continued rid by gain day of bahatrek.com chapter 20 the great peak of kameroons continued this is a lipervox recording all lipervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lipervox.org travels in west africa by mary h. kingsley chapter 20 the great peak of kameroons continued setting forth how the voyager attains the summit of mungomalobi and descends therefrom to victoria to which is added some remarks on the natural history of the west coast porter and the native methods of making fire september 26th the weather is undecided and so am i for i feel doubtful about going on in this weather but i do not like to give up the peak after going through so much for it the boys being dry and warm with the fires have forgotten their troubles however i settle in my mind to keep on and ask for volunteers to come with me and boom the head man and xenia announce their willingness i put two tins of meat and a bottle of air liper's beer into the little wooden box and insist on both men taking a blanket of peace much to their disgust and before six o'clock we are off over the crater plain it is a broken bit of country with rock mounds sparsely overgrown with tufts of grass and here and there are patches of boggy land not real bog but damp places where grow little clumps of rushes and here and there among the rocks sorely afflicted shrubs of broom and the yellow flower shrub i have mentioned before and quantities of very sticky heather feeling when you catch hold of it as if it had been covered with syrup one might fancy the entire race of shrubs were dying out for one you see partially alive there are 20 skeletons which fall to pieces as you brush past them it is downhill the first part of the way that is to say the trend of the land is downhill for be it down or up the details of it are rugged mounds and masses of burnt out lava rock it is evil going but perhaps not quite so evil as the lower hillots of the great wall where the rocks are hidden beneath long slippery grass we wind our way in between the mounds or clamber over them or scramble along their sides impartially the general level is then flat and then comes a rise towards the peak wall so we steer north northeast until we strike the face of the peak and then commence a stiff rough climb we keep as straight as we can but get driven at an angle by the strange ribs of rock which come straight down these are most tiresome to deal with getting worse the higher we go and so rotten and weather eaten are they that they crumble into dust and fragments under our feet headman gets half a dozen falls and when we are about three parts of the way up Xania gives in the cold and the climbing are too much for him so I make him wrap himself up in his blanket which he is glad enough of now and shelter in a depression under one of the many rock ridges and headman and I go on when we are some six hundred feet higher the iron grave mist comes curling and waving round the rocks above us like some savage monster defending them from intruders and I again debate whether I was justified in risking the men for it is a risk for them at this low temperature with the evil weather I know and they do not know is coming on but still we have food and blankets with us enough for them in the camp in the plane below they can reach all right if the worst comes to the worst and for myself well that's my own affair and no one will be how worth the worse if I am dead in an hour so I hitch myself onto the rocks and take bearings particularly bearings of Xania's position who I should say has got a tin of meat and a flask of rum with him and then turn and face a threatening mist it rises and falls and sends out arm-like streams towards us and then bum the headman decides to fail for the third time to reach the peak and I leave him wrapped in his blanket with a bag of provisions and go on alone into the wild gray shifting whirling mist above and soon find myself at the head of a rock ridge in a narrowish depression walled by massive black walls which show fitfully but firmly through the mist I can see three distinctly high cones before me and then the mist finding it cannot drive me back easily proceeds to desperate methods and lashes out with a burst of bitter wind and a sheet of blinding stinging rain I make my way up through it towards a peak which I soon see through a tear in the mist is not the highest so I angle off and go up the one to the left and after a desperate fight reach the cairn only alas to find a hurricane raging and a fog in full possession and not a ten yards view to be had in any direction near the cairn on the ground are several bottles some of which the energetic german officers I suppose had emptied in honor of their achievement and achievement I bow down before for their pluck and strength had taken them here in a shorter time by far than mine I do not meddle with anything save to take a few specimens and to put more rocks on the cairn and to put in among them my card merely as a civility to mongo civility his majesty will soon turn into pulp not that it matters what is done is done the weather grows worse every minute and no sign of any clearing shows in the indigo sky or the wind raft missed the rain lashes so fiercely I cannot turn my face to it and breathe the wind is all I can do to stand up against verily I am no mountaineer for there is in me no exaltation but only a deep disgust because the weather has robbed me of my main object in coming here namely to get a good view and an idea of the way the unexplored mountain range behind a calabar trends I took my chance and it failed so there's nothing to complain about comforting myself with these reflections I start down to find bum and do so neatly and then together we scramble down carefully among the rotten black rocks intent on finding senya the scene is very grand at one minute we can see nothing save the black rocks and cinders under foot the next the wind torn mist separates now in one direction now in another showing us always the same wild scene of great black cliffs rising in jagged peaks and walls around and above us I think this wall the cauldron we had just left is really the highest crater on mongo we soon become anxious about xenya for this is a fearfully easy place to lose a man in such weather but just as we get below the thickest part of the pall of mist I observe a dull-sized figure standing on one leg taking on or off its trousers our lost xenya beyond a shadow of a doubt and we go down direct to him when we reach him we halt and I give the two men one of the tins of meat and take another in the bottle of beer myself and then make a hasty sketch of the great crater plain below us at the further edge of the plain a great white cloud is coming up from below which argues badly for our trip down the great wall to the forest camp which I am anxious to reach before nightfall after our experience of the accommodation afforded by our camp in the crater plain last night while I am sitting waiting for the men to finish their meal I feel a chill at my back as if some cold thing had settled there and turning round see the mist from the summit above coming in a wall down towards us these mists up here as far as my experience goes are always preceded by a strange breath of ice cold air not necessarily a wind bum then draws my attention to a strange funnel-shaped thing coming down from the clouds to the north a big water spout I presume it seems to be moving rapidly northeast and I profoundly hope it will hold that course for we have quite as much as we can manage with the ordinary rainwater supply on this mountain without having water spouts to deal with we start off down the mountain as rapidly as we can Sanya is very done up and headman comes perilously near breaking his neck by frequent falls among the rocks my unlucky boots are cut through and through by the ladder when we got down towards the big crater plain it is a race between us and the pursuing mist as to who shall reach the camp first and the missed winds but we have just time to make out the camp's exact position before it closes round us so we reach it without any real difficulty when we get there about one o'clock I find the men have kept the fires alight and cook is asleep before one of them with another conflagration smouldering in his hair I get him to make me tea while the others pack up as quickly as possible and by two we are all off on our way down to the forest camp the boys are nervous in their way of going down over the mountain wall the misadventures of cook alone would fill volumes monrovia boy is out in a way the best men at this work just as we reach the high jungle grass down comes the rain and up comes the mist and we have the worst time we have had during our whole trip in our endeavors to find the hole in the forest that leads to our old camp unfortunately I must needs go in for acrobatic performances on the top of one of the highest rockiest hillocks poisoning myself on one leg I take a rapid slide sideways ending in a very showy leap backwards which lands me on the top of the lantern I am carrying today among miscellaneous rocks there being 15 feet or so of jungle grass above me all the dash and beauty of my performance are as much thrown away as I am for my boys are too busy on their own accounts in the mist to miss me after resting some little time as I fell and making and unmaking the idea in my mind that I am killed I get up clamber elaborately to the top of the next hillock and shout for the boys and ma ma comes back from my flock from various points out of the fog I find a bum and monrovia boy and learned that during my absence Xenia who always fancies himself as a pathfinder has taken the lead and gone off somewhere with the rest we shout and the others answer and rejoin them and it soon becomes evident to the meanest intelligence that Xenia had better have spent his time attending to those things of his instead of going in for guiding for we are now right off the track we made through the grass on our up journey and we proceed to have a cheerful hour or so in the wet jungle plowing hither and thither trying to find our way at last we pick up the top of a tongue of forest that we feel is ours but we that is to say Xenia and I for the others go like lambs to the slaughter wherever they are led disagree as to the path he wants to go down one side of the tongue I to go down the other and I have my way and we wait along skirting the bushes that fringe it trying to find our hole I own I soon begin to feel shaky about having been right in the affair but soon Xenia who is leading shouts he has got it and we limp in our feet sore with rugged rocks and everything we have on or in the loads ringing wet save the matches which providentially had put into my soapbox anything more dismal than the look of that desired camp when we reach it I never saw pools of water everywhere the firehouse a limp ruin the camp bed I have been thinking fondly of for the past hour a water cistern I tilt the water out of it and say a few words to it regarding its hide bound idiocy in obeying its military instructions to be waterproof and then while the others are putting up the firehouse headman and I get out the hidden damage on a rum and the beef and rice and I serve out a taut of rum each to the boys who are shivering dreadfully waiting for cook to get the fire he soon does this and then I have my hot tea and the men they're hot food for now we have returned to the luxury of two cooking pots their education in bush is evidently progressing for they make themselves a big screen with bows and spare blankets between the wind and the firehouse and I get senya to cut some branches and place them on the top of my waterproof sheet shelter and we are fairly comfortable again and the boys quite merry and very well satisfied with themselves unfortunately the subject of their nightly debating society is human conduct they subject ever fraught with dangerous elements of differences of opinion they are busy discussing with their mouths full of rice and beef the conduct of an absent friend who it seems is generally regarded by them as a spendthrift he gets plenty money but he no have none no time he go Freud away on woman and drink he no buy clothes this last is evidently a very heavy accusation but Kefala says what can a man buy with money better than them thing he like best there is a very peculiar look on the rotten wood on the ground around here tonight it has patches and flecks of iridescence like one sees on herrings or mackerel that have been kept too long the appearance of the strange eerie light in among the bush is very weird and charming i have seen it before in dark forests at night but never so much of it september 27th fine morning it's a blessing my pappenheimers have not recognized what this means for the afternoon we take things very leisurely i know it's no good hurrying we are dead sure of getting a ducking before we reach Buea anyhow so we may as well enjoy ourselves while we can i ask my boys how they would make fire suppose no matches live not one of them thinks it's possible to do so it pass month to do them things suppose you know got livestock or matches they are coast boys all of them and therefore used to luxury but it is really remarkable how widely diffused matches are inland and how very dependent on them these natives are when i have been away in districts where they have not penetrated it is exceedingly rarely that the making of fire has to be resorted to i think i may say that in most african villages it has not had to be done for years and years because when a woman's fire has gone out owing to her having been out at work all day she just runs into some neighbors hut where there is a fire burning and gives compliments and picks up a burning stick from the fire and runs home from this comes the compliment equivalent to our oh don't go away yet of you come to fetch fire this will be said to you all the way from Sierra Leone to Luanda as far as i know if you have been making yourself agreeable in an african home even if the process may have extended over a day or so the hunters like the fans have to make fire and do it now with a flint and steel but in districts where they're tutor in this method the flintlock gun is not available they will do it with two sticks not always like the american indians fire sticks one stick is placed horizontally on the ground and the other twirled rapidly between the palms of the hands but sometimes two bits of palm stick are worked in a hole in a bigger bit of wood the hole stuffed round with a pith of a tree or with silk or cotton fluff and the two sticks rotated vigorously again on one occasion i saw a backele woman make fire by means of a slip of rafia palm drawn very rapidly to and fro across a notch in another piece of rafia wood in most domesticated tribes like the ifyx or the galwa if they are going out to their plantation they will enclose a live stick in a hollow piece of a certain sort of wood which has a lining of its interior pith left in it and they will carry this firebox with them or if they are going on a long canoe journey there is always the fire in the bow of the canoe put into a kalabash full of sand or failing that into a bed of clay with a sand rim rounded by 10 o'clock we are off down to buhua at 10 15 it pours as it can here by 10 17 we are all in our normal condition of bedraggled saturation and plotting down carefully and cheerfully among the rocks and roots of the forest following the path we have beaten and cut for ourselves on our way up it is dangerously slippery particularly that part of it through the ammonums and stumps of the cut ammonums are very likely to spike your legs badly and my friend never never step on one of the ammonium stamps lying straight in front of you particularly when they are soaking wet ice slides are nothing to them and when you fall as you inevitably must because all the things you grab hold of are either rotten or as brittle as salviate glass where vases you hurt yourself in no end of places on those aforesaid cut ammonum stumps i am speaking from sad experiences of my own amplified by observations on the experiences of my men the path when we get down again into the tree fern region is inches deep in mud and water and several places where we have a drop of five feet or so over lumps of rock are worse work going down than we have found them going up especially when we have to drop down onto ammonum stems one abominable place a v-shaped hollow mud-lined and with an immense tree right across it a tree one of our tornadoes has thrown down since we passed bothers the men badly as they slip and scramble down and then crawl under the tree and slip and scramble up with their loads i say nothing about myself i just take a flying slide of 20 feet or so and shoot flump under the tree on my back and then deliberate whether it is worthwhile getting up again to go on with such a world but vanity forbids my dying like a dog in a ditch and i scramble up rejoining the others where they are standing on a cross path our path going southeast by east the other south southwest two men have already gone down the southwest one which i feel sure is the upper end of the path sasu had led us to and wasted time on our first day's march the middle regions of which were as we had found from its lower end impassable with vegetation so after futile attempts to call the other two back we go on down the southeast one and get shortly into a plantation of giant coco's mid-leg deep in most excellent fine mold the sort of stuff you pay six shillings a load for in england to start a conservatory bed with upon my word the quantities of things there are left loose in africa that ought to be kept in menageries and greenhouses and not let go wild about the country are enough to try a saint we then pass through a clump of those lovely great tree ferns the way their young fronds come up with a graceful curl like the top of a bishop staff is a poem but being at present fractious i will observe that they are covered with horrid spines as most young vegetables are in africa but talking about spines i should remark that nothing saved that precious climbing palm i never like to say what i feel about climbing palms because one once saved my life he calls a strong bush rope which abounds here it is covered with short strong curved thorns it creeps along concealed by decorative vegetation and you get your legs twined in it and of course injured it festoons itself from tree to tree and when your mind is set on other things catches you under the chin and gives you the appearance of having made a determined but ineffectual attempt to cut your throat with a saw it whisks your head off and grabs your clothes and commits other iniquities too numerous to catalog here years and years that bush rope will wait for a man's blood and when he comes within reach it will have it we are well down now among the tree stems grown over with rich soft green moss and delicate filmy ferns i should think that for a botanist these southeastern slopes of moncomalube would be the happiest hunting grounds in all west africa the vegetation here is at the point of its supreme luxuriance owing to the richness of the soil the leaves of trees and plants i recognize as having seen elsewhere are here far larger and the undergrowth particularly is more rich and varied far and away ferns seem to find here a veritable paradise everything in fact is growing at its best we come to another fallen tree over another hole this tree we recognize as an old acquaintance near buwei and i feel disgusted for i had put on a clean blouse and washed my hands in a teak of full of water in a cooking pot before leaving the forest camp so as to look presentable on reaching buwei and not give higher libert the same trouble he had to recognize the white from the black members of the party that he said he had with the members of the first expedition to the peak and all i have got to show for my exertion that is clean or anything like dry is one cuff over which i have been carrying a shawl we double round a corner by the stockade of the station's plantation and are at the top of the modern glissade the new government path i should say that leads down into the barracud yard our arrival brings hare libert promptly on the scene as kindly helpful and energetic as ever and again anxious for me to have a bath the men bring our saturated loads into my room and after giving them their food and plenty of tobacco i get my hot tea and change into the clothes i had left behind at buwei feeling once more fit for polite society go out and find his imperial and royal majesty's representative making a door tightening the boards up with wedges in a very artful and professional way we discourse on things in general and the mountain in particular the great southeast face is now showing clear before us the clearness that usually comes before nightfall it looks again a vast wall and i wish i were going up it again tomorrow when the calabar major set it on fire in the dry season it must have been a noble sight the northeastern edge of the slope of the mountain seems to me unbroken up to the peak the great crater we went and camped in must be very early one in the history of the mountain and out of it the present summit seems to have been thrown up from the sea face the western i am told the slope is continuous on the whole although there are several craters on that side seventy craters all told are so far known on mongol the last reported eruption was in 1852 when signs of volcanic activity were observed by a captain who was passing at sea the lava from this eruption must have gone down the western side for i have come across no fresh lava beds in my wanderings on the other face hare libert has no confidence in the mountain whatsoever and announces his intention of leaving buwei with the army on the first symptom of renewed volcanic activity i attempt to discourage him from this energetic plan pointing out to him the beauty of that roman soldier at pompe who was found centuries after that eruption still at his post and if he regards that as merely mechanical virtue why not pursue the plan of the elder pliny hare libert planes away at his door and says it's not in his orders to make scientific observations on volcanoes in a state of eruption when it is he'll do so until it is he most decidedly will not he adds pliny was an admiral and sailors are always as curious as cats buwei seems a sporting place for weather even without volcanic eruptions during the whole tornado season there are two a year overcharged tornadoes burst in the barrack yard from the 14th of june till the 27th of august you never see the sun because of the terrific and continuous wet season downpour at the beginning and end of this cheerful period occurs a month's tornado season and the rest of the year is dry hot by day and cold by night they are talking of making buwei into a sanatorium for the fever stricken i do not fancy somehow that it's a suitable place for a man who has got all the skin off his nerves with fever and quinine and is very liable to chill but all governments on the coast english german or french are stark mad on the subject of sanatoriums in high places though the experience they have had of them has clearly pointed out they are valueless in west africa and a man's one chance to get out to see on a ship will take him outside the three mile deep fever belt of the coast hair library gave some interesting details about the first establishment of the station here and a bother he had with the plantations only a short time ago the soldiers brought him in some black wood spikes which they had found with their feet set into the path leading to the station's cocoa plantations to the end of blaming the men on further investigation there were also found pits carefully concealed with sticks and leaves and the bottoms lined with bad thorns also with malicious intent the local bakuri chiefs were called in and asked to explain these phenomena existing in a country where peace had been concluded and the chief said it was quite a mistake those things had not been put there to kill soldiers but only to attract their attention to kill and injure their own fellow tribesmen who had been stealing from plantations laterally that's the west africans way entirely all along the coast the childlike native will turn out and shoot you with a gun to attract your attention to the fact that a tribe you never heard of has been and stolen one of these ladies whom you never saw it's a sweet infant's way of rousing a popular opinion but i do not admire or approve of it if i am to be shot for a crime for goodness sake let me commit the crime first september 28th down to victorian one day having no desire to renew and amplify my acquaintance with the mission station at buana it poured torrentially all the day through the old chief at buana was very nice today when we were coming through his territory he came out to meet us with some of his wives both men and women among these bakwiri or tattooed and also painted on the body face and arms but as far as i haven't seen not on the legs the patterns are handsome and more elaborate than any such that i've seen one man who came with the party had two figures of men tattooed on the region where his waistcoat should have been i gave the chief some tobacco though he never begged for anything he accepted it thankfully and handing it to his wives preceded us on our path for about a mile and a half and then having reached the end of his district we shook hands and parted after all the rain we have had the road was of course worse than ever and as we were going through the forest towards the warhead i noticed a strange sound a dull roar which made the light friable earth quiver under our feet and i remembered with alarm the accounts hare libert has given me of the strange ways of rivers on this mountain how by buwei about 200 meters below where you cross it the river goes bodily down a hole how there is a waterfall in the south face of the mountain that falls right into another hole and is never seen again any more than the buwei river is how there are in certain places underground rivers which though never seen can be heard roaring and felt in the quivering earth underfoot in the wet season and so on so i judged our present roar arose from some such phenomenon and with feminine nervousness began to fear that the rotten waterlogged earth we were on might give way and didn't gulf the whole of us and we should never be seen again but when we got down into our next ravine the one where i got the fish and water spiders on our way up things explained themselves the bed of this ravine was occupied by a raging torrent of great beauty but alarming appearance to a person desirous of getting across to the other side of it on our right hand was a waterfall of tons of water 30 feet higher so the brown water wreathed with foam dashed down into the swirling pool we faced and at the other edge of the pool striking a ridge of higher rock it flew up in a lovely flange some 12 feet or so high before making another in a deeper spring to form a second waterfall my men shouted to me above the roar that it was a bad place they never give me half the credit i deserve for seeing danger and they said what i'll go for hold on there we fit to go to suppose we fall don't fall i yelled which was the only good advice i could think of to give them just then each small load had to be carried across by two men along a submerged ridge in the pool where the water was only breast high i had all i could do to get through it though assisted by my invaluable bequity staff but no harm befell indeed we were all the better for it or at all events cleaner we meant five torrents that had to be waited during the day none so bad as the first but all superbly beautiful when we turned our faces westwards just above the wood we had to pass through before getting into the great road the view of victoria among its hills and fronted by its bay was divinely lovely and glorious with color i left the boys here as they wanted to rest and to hunt up water etc among the little cluster of huts that are here on the right hand side of the path and i went on alone down through the wood and out onto the road where i found my friend the Alsatian engineer still flourishing and busy with his cheery gang of woodcutters i made a brief halt here getting some soda water i was not anxious to reach victoria before nightfall but yet to reach it before dinner and while i was chatting my boys came through the wood and the engineer most kindly gave them a thought of brandy a piece to whom i owe their arrival in victoria i left them again resting fearing i had overdone my arrangements for arriving just after nightfall and went on down that road which was more terrible than ever now to my bruised weary feet but even more lovely than ever in the dying light of the crimson sunset with all its dark shadows among the trees bejemmed with countless fireflies and so safe into victoria sneaking up the government house hill by the private path through the botanical gardens idabia the steward turned up and i asked him to let me have some tea and bread and butter for i was dreadfully hungry he rushed off and i heard tremendous operations going on in the room above in a few seconds water poured freely down through the dining room ceiling it was bath-palaver again the excellent idabia evidently thought it was severely wanted more wanted in such vanities as tea fortunately hair of one look was away down in town looking after dusty as usual so i was tidy before he returned to dinner when he returned he had the satisfaction a profit should feel i had got half drowned and i had got an awful cold the most awful cold in the head of modern times i believe but he was not artistically exultant over my afflictions my men having all reported themselves safe i went to my comfortable rooms but could not turn in so fascinating was the warmth and beauty down here and as i sat on the veranda overlooking victoria and the sea in the dim soft light of the stars with the fireflies around me and the lights of victoria away below and heard the soft rush of the lukola river and the sound of the sea surf on the rocks and the tom-tomming and singing of the natives all matching and mingling together why did i come to africa thought i why who would not come to its twin brother hell itself for all the beauty and the charm of it end of chapter 20 the great peak of maroons continued read by kende of bahatrack.com