They entered the tent and impudently took whatever they inclined to, rum

and tobacco, pork and white rice. We had set apart a breaker of pure

water; they pushed in and helped themselves _ad libitum_. The savage

instinct readily returns upon this race. I have heard old man-of-war’s

Krumen tell their Captain that in the bush all men are equal. They

contributed not a little to the failure of the Niger expedition in 1857.

The members, supersaturated with Exeter Hall influences, treated their

forty-seven negroes like rational beings. A little ‘prigging’ began;

first a few leaves of tobacco, then a mirror, a knife, a matchet: after

a few weeks the supercargo found that he had lost goods to the extent of

240_l._

My resolution was taken during that cool pleasant night, which was

succeeded by a delightful morning, the mercury showing 64° Fah. at 5

A.M., and the small birds singing with all their throats. At the break

of day we arose, banished the thoughts of the sand-flies with strong

green tea, and saw our breath—What a pleasure to the Englishman in the

tropics! My companions were persuaded to place the Kruman party under my

charge, and I made them over to Selim Aga with an order that no man

should enter the tent or touch the rations without leave. The fellows

listened with a smile, and instantly disobeyed, a proceeding as readily

noticed by the soundest external application. ‘He be debbil man,’ was

the remark with which my ears were gratified. This, however, was the

beginning of amendment; the fustigations were afterwards more

ceremoniously conducted, and at the end of a fortnight my rascals were

in fair working order, sighing for ‘Nanny Po,’ which at other places

they regard with horror.

The 20th December was a Friday, and a halt. Mr. Johnson and Money, whose

services were no longer required, returned to Victoria, and seven Krumen

under Selim Aga accompanied them, with orders to bring a fresh relay of

provisions. We had ample time to cast a look around Mapanya and at its

population.

The clearing lies W.N.W. of Victoria, and N.N.W. of Bosumbo. It is

distant from the sea about 7½ miles,[54] and the altitude was laid down

at 2650 feet. The site is a dwarf platform, and the enclosure is 1100

feet across. Curious to say, in this land of chronic skirmish there are

no stockades, the use of which is so well known to Africans. As early as

1562 Sir John Hawkins had 6 men killed and 40 wounded, out of a total of

150 men, before one of these ‘Pahs’ near Elmina. It is surrounded by a

dense bush, in which the saccharum grows ten to eleven feet high, and

the plantain, the cork-tree, and that locally called gamboge

(_Psorospermum alternifolium_), forming a background. A little below the

entrance is the last Elæis, that typical tropical type, here stunted to

about thirty feet. The natives, I have said, cannot live without this

tree: they tap it for their drink every morning, leaving an empty

calabash for the next day’s draughts, and during the operation they make

the peculiar laughing, crowing cry, which, echoed by the hills, sounds

weird and strange in the wild. They prepare a modicum of oil for

household use, and carry to market the fresh nuts removed from the

spike. Where the wood opens there is a lovely view. Thousands of feet

above us, bearing N. ¼ W., and emerging from the shaggy folds of the

mountain, are three ‘nicks,’ as they are called in the North Country,

one wooded, the two upper bare. M. Mann informed us that we should find

water behind the highest and boldest Cone, which can be seen from

Fernando Po, and we named them the ‘Three Sisters.’ The background,

dense with eternal forest, which shuts in the higher cones, is clear and

sharp between 8 and 9·30 A.M., and again an hour before sunset: during

day, however, it is hid at this season by a veil of muslin-like vapour.

Below us we sight, as though through the small end of a telescope, the

blue and misty ocean, with its edge, not rising in the lowlands like a

wall on the horizon, but ill defined and melting into sky; and by

walking a few paces we see a bird’s-eye view of Mondori Island, the

Bimbia Hills, hung in middle space between firmament and ocean, and the

Camaroons River, winding, like a dull white thread, through an abyss of

brownish blue.

The settlement consists of two parallel lines of huts, four on one side

facing three on the other, as near the Camaroons and Gaboon Rivers,

forming the nucleus of a single street, which runs into a steep grass-

lined by-path, leading up the mountain. There are also little tracks and

passages through the bush to the adjoining villages. The only objects of

remark are a few large grindstones, the dwarf trellises for gourds

growing at the entrance, and in the centre, propped by other stones, a

small basaltic block, hollowed out like a shallow mortar. Before our

arrival M. Mann had seen the principal men busy in ‘making Fetish’ to

ward off bad luck and to keep the peace. They poured water from a dipper

over a small broom placed upon this embryo altar, and offered similar

libations on all the roads leading out of the villages. It is a race

‘Whose primitive religion reaches

As far as Adam’s first green breeches;’

but this time their Fetish was not ‘strong.’

The huts are oblongs, with pent-roofs of palm-thatch, and the walls are

wattled posts of the strong and fibrous tree-fern, covered with sheets

of bark to keep out the wind. Near the outside lie stones and logs, used

as chairs, and the experienced eye notices the ominous drum. It is

shaped like a large keg, with two parallel slits in one of the long

ends, leaving between them a solid bar for handle;[55] the reverse side,

upon which it stands, is flattened, and the sticks are a pair of little

cudgels. The huts have a single door, but neither window nor chimney.

The interior is divided into three: at one end is a dark chamber,

serving, I presume, for the father and mother that make the family; the

centre is the hall, &c.; and the other extremity may be called the

kitchen, containing a rough hearth and an upper platform, below which

meat is smoked in a hanging tray, and above which fuel is stored.

Furniture there is none; the beds are coarse hatchet hewed planks four

feet long, and placed upon cross-blocks. Cleanliness is the last thing

thought of; the ceiling looks as if painted with coal-tar, the air reeks

with smoke, and the floors show that sheep, goats, and poultry pass the

night with their owners.

Under such circumstances life is necessarily simple. These gymnosophists

have no want but food and drink, fuel and tobacco. Of course they will

not labour, and, if they did, they would be fools. A few hours’ work in

the year enables them to burn some square yards in the bush and to plant

their banana-stems, after which climate does the rest. The Bakwiri rise

with the dawn, and shiver till the fire is lit. The men then hasten to

their palm-trees, and to assist them in their ascent, carry a hoop made

of many kinds of creepers. It is an oval, of three feet conjugate; the

part intended for behind the back is broad, that which touches the tree

is twisted, and the ends are hooked and knotted together.[56] In the

rainy season it is necessary to cut little steps in the trunk. The

women, shouldering their panniers, go forth for food and water. About

the latter article there is a mystery. When we ask where they find it,

the reply is, ‘too far off;’ they refuse to show it. We observe that the

people grease themselves with palm-oil instead of washing—imagine the

consequences!—and that the animals are not allowed to drink. They return

after some time from various directions, bearing calabashes corked with

leaves, and the contents are turbid or green. We conclude, therefore,

that their wells are probably stagnant pools, soon exhausted, and that

they are then reduced to squeezing ferns, grasses, and dewy plants for

their beverage. Presently the little flocks, which have kept up a

concert of cries, are driven out by the boys to graze. The goats, like

the Camaroons ‘Egbo,’ are superior to those of the coast; the sheep are

of the lanky, hairy, thin-tailed kind, resembling dogs rather than

Southdowns. These animals are greatly valued by the people, who will not

sell them except for exorbitant sums; they are better treated than the

children, and are used chiefly to pay ransoms, to settle palavers, or to

serve as stock when ‘trust’ fails. They are never milked, and when we

applied for a little of the article the answer was, ‘King he no will!’

The poultry is plentiful and good, but hardly to be bought. I saw

amongst them the short-shanked African variety, black and yellow game-

birds like those of Tenerife, and a breed of hens with spurs like cocks.

Each village contains half a dozen long-legged pigs, somewhat like the

black hogs of China, which are as familiar to the hut and as foul to the

street as the Irishman’s best friend. A few prick-eared curs are also

bred for the table and for hunting purposes. The children are numerous,

and the high birth-rate amongst savages is the best test of prosperity,

as increased infant mortality is the surest sign of civilization.

At 8 A.M. the villagers break their fast. The food is ‘fufu’ of

plantain, pounded and made into paste with water; it is eaten with a

kind of ‘palaver sauce,’ palm-oil, yam, hibiscus (_Corchorus olitorius_,

the Egyptian mulukhiyah), and, when they can get it, ‘bush-meat.’ The

women work through the day; the men pass their time chatting, smoking,

and taking snuff, sleeping, brawling, and drinking—when rum is not to be

had—palm-wine, which is boiled for greater strength. At 3 P.M. the

flocks are folded, and at 4 there is a dinner like the breakfast. Wood

and water are again brought in, and at 8 P.M. the village is as silent

as the grave. Thus—

‘Les jours qui viennent et vont

Se refont.’

‘What a wretched existence!’ the European reader will exclaim.

I vehemently doubt this. The so-called reflecting part of Creation will

measure every other individual’s happiness or misery by its own;

consequently it is hoodwinked in its judgment. Considering the wisdom

displayed in the distribution and adaptation of mankind, I venture to

opine that all are equally blessed and cursed: both sexes and every age,

the great and lowly, the rich and poor, the robust and the confirmed

invalid. Some temperaments enjoy more acutely, and suffer in proportion;

others are less sensitive; both, however, it appears to me, have the

same sum total of felicity. The Lawgiver of the Hebrews must have so

believed when he made this world the sole scene of human existence,

requiring no future life to restore the fancied unevenness of the

balance. ‘If it were not for the assistance of artificial madness, false

lights, refracted angles, varnish, and tinsel, there would be a mighty

level in the enjoyments of mortal man,’ said one of the wisest of our

modern humourists. The Anatomist of Melancholy somewhere remarks that

the two greatest enjoyments are meeting the ‘object of one’s affections’

and the intermission of severe sickness: thus explaining why those hug

life who live in what the healthy deem tortures. I am convinced that my

dull and half-fossilized Bakwiri are not a whit less happy or less

miserable than any prince, millionaire, or philosopher in Europe.

The chief Botani had shown himself most eager for his ‘hansel,’ and we

persuaded him with difficulty to wait till 11 A.M. He then appeared in

great hurry, armed with what the Chinese call the ‘divine utensil,’ his

symbol of chieftainship, his throne—a stool. We presented him in due

form with his ‘dash,’—one mirror, two knives, two cutlasses, two heads

of tobacco, one cotton kerchief, one silk bandanna, and a 10-lb. keg of

powder, the latter here worth as many shillings. Though accompanied by

his confidant, whose eyes expressed infinite greed, he appeared

satisfied, emitted sundry ‘meditative grunts of much content,’ and in

sovereign self-satisfaction retired with his easily-won, ill-gotten

gains to speechify about his grandeur as protector of all the whites,

and to get tipsy.

The consequence was a lively scene. Botani had been ‘fresh’ in the

morning, and unpleasantly civil. In the _bonhomie_ of his early drink,

not having the fear of Allah before his eyes, but being moved thereto

and seduced by the instigation of the Shaytan, he had offered me—not _en

tout bien et tout honneur_—his daughter, a small yellow child, about

twelve years old, and seemed thunderstruck by my refusal. Continence,

everywhere a rare and difficult virtue, is regarded by

barbarians—despite what Dr. Livingstone asserts—rather with contempt

than with respect. He had been treated like a great Mogul, and with a

few glasses of rum he became a Great Mogul. About 2 P.M. he rushed out

of his hut, with drawn dagger, and began the war-dance. After a long

brawl he laid forcible hands upon the small interpreter ‘Poor Fellow,’

and swore that he would seize him for Money’s debts. When in this state,

and only then, these negroes, losing their sense of fear, become

dangerous; at other times they are not more formidable than hyænas. M.

Mann, though unarmed, pluckily enough pulled away the boy and drew him

into a hut. Botani then rushed to the war-drum, and commenced a frantic

_pas de charge_; the women—ominous sign!—slunk into the bush, and the

men provided themselves with knives and muskets. Mr. Saker and I had

taken up quarters for the day in a hut opposite that occupied by our

companions. He began to harangue the people in Isubu, a language which

the Bakwiri, who intermarry with the Bimbias, understand, and the rest

of us had recourse to our revolvers. Presently a diversion in our favour

arose. An old hunter, who had led the botanist up the mountain—we called

him ‘Balmat’—came forth, armed like the rest, and addressed furious

reproaches to his chief, who was running to and fro like a vicious

madman, hoping that we might bolt, but fearing to begin the fray. After

much of this display, Botani’s brother, _i.e._ confidant, addressed us

civilly, and, after a long speech, split a plantain-leaf into three

pieces, which he severally deposited in ‘Poor Fellow’s’ hand,—a kind of

memorandum of how much ‘trust’ was owing to the village. Botani then

pressed palms with all around, once, twice, and thrice, as men about to

be hanged are wont to do; the strangers, who had flocked from the

neighbouring settlements at the sound of the war-drum, departed, and the

women reappeared. Our doughty chief then retired to sleep off his rum.

When all was over, we pulled out our revolvers from our breeches-

pockets, and made signs that next time their use should be made

manifest.

Liquor was the primal cause of this trouble; there were, however,

others. The Judge, wild with delight at escaping Fernando Po, had been a

little overintimate with the people, dancing with them, and making them

laugh, under the erroneous impression that it would win their good

graces. Familiarity breeds contempt in Africa as well as in Europe, and

the fun ended in horseplay, chiefly beard-pulling. It was a misfortune,

but inevitable, that we had a child for our interpreter. But it was a

great mistake to encamp in a central village; we should have followed

the East African plan, and either have bivouacked outside, or at any

rate at the further end of the enclosure.

A profound calm succeeded this tempest. We passed a pleasant night

listening to the bush-dog calling for ‘fire ’tick,’[57] the murmurs of

the wind, the growling of thunder down south, and the rustling of the

tattered plantain-leaves, which sounded like raindrops. ‘Poor Fellow’

spent the time in fear and trembling, whilst the Krumen armed themselves

with matchets, and begged for candles, which we refused; they retired

doggedly, and probably spent hours in calculating whether in case of

desertion they could steal a boat and make some ship, where they would

have been thankfully received.

At 10·15 A.M., on the morning of the 21st December, Selim Aga returned

with his small command from Victoria. Unhappily he was accompanied by

the chief Myombi, who had behaved badly to M. Mann, and that chief was

moreover ‘sprung.’ He began by demanding a glass of bilám—rum—and when

refused he retired in dudgeon to some hut, where he apparently found it.

The beery Botani was this morning as tame as one when liquor is dying

within him; he was sitting upon the stool of repentance with a very

hangdog look. Shortly after our breakfast a gathering of the clan took

place upon the logs and stones outside the tent, at whose door he was

squatting. Something evidently was in the wind. Presently ‘Poor Fellow’

was sent for, and ordered to ask us our intentions on the morrow.

Our reply was brief, but explicit. On the morrow we were to ascend the

mountain with nine or ten guides, whom we offered to fee, and we

expected in return for our ‘dashes’—which had not provoked any

retaliation—kindness and civility.

Botani, the dipsomaniac, was then put forward by Myombi, who sat

ostentatiously in the background. After a long consultation, ‘Poor

Fellow’ was directed to inform us that the price of ascending the

mountain was 500 ‘big tings,’ _i.e._ 500_l._, otherwise that we might

return whence we came. Yesterday Botani had shown the normal African

dread of our leaving his village whilst we had cloth and food, and now

he was urged to desperation by the villain Myombi. The demand provoked a

shout of laughter, and we asked them if they could not take something

less. In another half-hour they brought it down to 300_l._ But we had

now seventeen Krumen besides our five selves—a force too strong for the

Bakwiri: ‘ultimate sovereignty resides in the right arm of man;’ the

_mollia tempora fundi_ had passed by; ‘defiance not defence’ became our

motto. Despite the excited remonstrances of M. Mann, who, desiring to

make a depôt at Mapanya, urged the _suaviter in modo_, which infallibly

would have led to other and greater troubles, I resolved by Mr. Saker’s

advice to try the _fortiter in re_. ‘Poor Fellow’ was told to say that

we were tired of this ‘fool talk,’ that we would not pay another

farthing, but advance by foul, if not by fair means. The reply was, that

we should not have carriers nor guides. We rejoined that ‘it was nothing

to Bacchus,’ that we would go alone; and pointing to Myombi, who

frequents the market at Victoria, we made him understand that he should

answer for this ‘palaver.’

Whilst Mr. Saker spoke to the people, I was pleased to find how much

could be done by one wholly ignorant of the language, with the

assistance of signs learned amongst the North American aborigines.

Gestures have been well defined as the hieroglyphics of speech. If fate

ever lead me back to Europe, and lend me leisure, I hope to make a

further study of the subject in surdo-mute establishments, and to

produce a system which may prove generally useful, especially to those

beginning a foreign tongue. A hundred words easily learned in a week,

200 signs, and a little facility in sketching, would enable, I believe,

a traveller to make his way through any country, even China, a few days

after arrival.

But as neither eloquence nor gestures appeared to produce the least

effect upon the mule-like Bakwiri, we suited the deed to the word,

arose, and prepared for departure. It was now a treat to see the avidity

of the savages as they peered over our shoulders into bag and box.[58]

Botani and Myombi had many confabs.; many too were the confabs. of their

followers. The great men at last retired under a plantain clump at the

side of the village, and, eyeing our proceedings with the superiority of

sarcasm, declared that we should never find the way, and that if we did

our valuables must be abandoned. Our loads were for twenty-five men, of

whom we had only fourteen. Presently all departed, leaving only the

women, children, and four-footed animals in the village. Their conduct

was eminently childish—African. They knew, poor worshippers of St.

Belly, that they gained, and greatly gained, by being in our good

graces; but they wanted more—in fact all—and not being able to get all,

they would take nothing. We debated upon the propriety of recovering our

‘dashes;’ presently we resolved to leave them no ground for complaint.

But before Europeans can travel about this country, the people must be

taught to expect pay for service only, and be severely punished if they

attempt their avanies.

A little after midday we sent forward up the Hill of Difficulty our

first detachment under Messrs. Calvo and Saker, ordering the Krumen to

return after finding a camping-place in the bush. The rest of us waited

below with the remnant, doing watch and ward, and straining our eyes for

the reappearance of the carriers. The distance was little more than a

mile.[59] Yet 2 P.M. passed—then three—then four—we were beginning to

fear some accident, and to dread the delay of a day; Dante himself could

not walk in the Cimmerian night of an African _selva oscura_—when at 5

P.M. our truants heralded their approach with the Swiss-like Kru-cry

‘Ohyo! Ohyo! Hyo! Hyo-o-o!’ and presently appeared with flourishing

matchets, skipping down the hill-path. They had lost the road when

ascending, and had had a weary time.

Twenty minutes were consumed during the second loading; it reminded me

of bygone hair-whitenings in East Africa. Only nine Krumen had returned,

five having shirked duty. The strongest insisted upon loading most

heavily the weakest: we reduced all the weight we could, still two loads

lay hopelessly upon the ground. At that time, however, some of the

humbler sort of villagers began to show, and amongst them ‘Balmat.’ The

Grison professed inability to carry; he found for us, however, two

youths, who, after the usual futilities—retiring to consult friends,

demanding ‘ready-money’—and ‘cabbaging’ a finger’s length in the

measurement—consented to accompany us, _moyennant_ two fathoms of satin

stripe. One did his work manfully, and was rewarded with rum and extra

pay; the other, who had prudently left his hire in his tent, resolutely

refused after a few hundred yards to advance, nor did the muzzle of a

gun thrust against his breast induce him to ‘budge an inch.’

‘Man,’ says the Arab proverb, ‘eats you; the desert does not.’ With a

light heart, although the sun was casting shadows of portentous length,

we stepped out of Botany Bay; ascended the grassy slope; passed sundry

outlying huts, the highest human habitations on this part of the

mountain; and crossing a tall stile found ourselves once more in the

bush. The road was a copy of that leading to Mapanya; steep pitches,

ladders of root and rock, ridges, hollows, and scrambling places, girt

by tall grasses, and with a slippery moss-grown surface, where biting

ants attacked us, and held on even after decapitation. The plantain-

clearings presently ceased, and we saw the succulent tree no more. The

nettles, so troublesome on Fernando Po Mountain, began in real earnest.

There was one vegetable wonder, a giant of the forest, raised high above

the earth upon aërial roots, like the conical spindles of the red

mangrove. Several trees, the African cork for instance, affect a similar

formation; but this surpasses them all in stature and exaggeration. The

road was like Jordan, ‘a hard one to travel.’ As darkness was imminent,

we saw a real light after having often been mocked by the fire-flies; we

heard shouts above us, and presently the rested came down to assist the

weary. I arrived at 6 P.M. Selim Aga and M. Mann put in an appearance

shortly afterwards. Only one bag of rice had been left behind, and old

‘Balmat’ had promised to forward it on the morrow.

The camp was pitched with a refreshing ignorance of encamping. Its site

was a steep, narrow ridge, with a slope of 15° and a chasm on both

sides. Some twenty-four human beings were huddled together on a few

square feet. The fire was built to leeward, and, as the cool night set

in, fuel became scarce. It was too late to re-form. My attention was

confined to the water-breaker; we had but one; the inhospitable

villagers had refused to fill our others; and the nearest, indeed the

only known spring, could not be reached before the evening of the

morrow, if then. During the evening I made a chair of the precious

breaker, and at night a pillow, determined that on such a vital occasion

as this there should be no pilfering. Krumen, inhabitants of a maritime

country where water abounds, are uncommonly impatient of thirst; some of

them actually preferred a drink of the element to a dram, but these had

probably been making free with our rum. They did not, however, neglect

to ‘play’ in their usual style. An individual dances and addresses, in

black man’s English, French, and Spanish, the circle of squatters, who

reply in roaring chorus ‘Bateo’—‘Give way!’—and ‘O-e! O-e!’ These people

suffer much from nostalgia; a drum and a horn should always accompany

them on expeditions. Often when they are unable to perform a heavy task,

one of their number dancing before them and singing a home ditty has

surprised them into renewed exertion. The snorting and snoring of the

Krumen, a ripping and rag-tearing noise, which awoke with awful echoes

the stillness of the night, combined with a cup of strong green tea,

whose pleasant intoxication is as exciting as that of ague and fever,

caused me a sleepless night that told heavily upon the next day’s hard

march.

Before dawn on the 22nd December we arose and addressed ourselves to our

tasks. The Krumen received a ration of pork and biscuit and a mouthful

of water each; they were unable to boil their rice, without which they

rarely do a good day’s work. Hands being short, we determined to place

some loads in deposit. The first detachment set out at 7·15 A.M., and

soon returned to fetch the packs still lying in camp. After a quarter of

an hour’s walk we deposited them in a hollow, marked by two dwarf

parallel palisades of sticks with a heap of stones between, showing that

large game had been killed there, a practice also common amongst the

Fernandian Bube. We left behind two breakers, four heavy bags of rice, a

case of liquor and coffee, and sundry tin specimen-boxes containing

sundries. Such a _câche_ would not have baffled a Sioux for five

minutes; here, however, we found it answer, and when safely encamped on

the mountain we recovered all by sending down detachments of Krumen.

The march began at 8 A.M., up a rugged rise, wooded, with forest rather

than with bush, and presently we debouched upon the fern region. It was

fern, fern, everywhere. The valleys were filled with cyatheas, tree-

ferns like palms, from ten to thirty feet high, surpassingly graceful

and beautiful, especially when their delicate tracery was viewed from

above, picked out by the golden rays of the sun. Others were little

epiphytes (Trichomanes and _Dicksonia Selinifolia_) springing like moss

upon the stems—miniature things hardly a foot long. There were beds of

ferns resembling the common English variety, and others running creeper-

like up the trunks, contrasting with the broad-leaved orchids based upon

the boughs. Never has ‘rambler in search of ferns’ seen a more beautiful

fernery, set off as it was by the grand tropical growth around. My

companions were less struck; they had familiarized themselves with the

spectacle at Fernando Po; moreover, on Camaroons Mountain the best sites

are occupied by clearings and plantations, which is not the case with

the Sister Peak. At this season, however, the asparagus of the Himalayas

was too old for eating. The view was charming—

‘Summer winds about us blowing

Made a murmur in the land’—

but the path was vile, wet and muddy. After a good hour’s march we

passed under an archway formed by cross trees, supported by others still

standing. It was at once called Fern Gate. And beyond it we fell into a

new country.

The bush and forest suddenly disappeared, as though by the work of

woodmen, and, O joy! we emerged from the region of the clammy, dewy

grasses that imprisoned us. The eye revelled over a broad field of

lovely green, a dense mass of small moss and thick fern of a single

species, _T. nephrolapis_, so called from its fructification. The base

was a bed of old and degraded lava, much more modern, however, than any

in Madeira, or even in the valley of Orotava. We were destined to trace

this stream to its source, and it was palpably the oldest formation of

the kind. We called it Lava Bed No. 1. The direction is from north to

south, gradually bending at the end towards the E.S.E.; in fact, nearly

fronting the north-east wind, which appears to be that prevalent upon

the mountain. I conjectured that by following this bearing we could

hardly fail to make the main source by the nearest line, and was not

disappointed by my rude analogy. The breadth where we struck the outflow

might be half a mile; below that point, however, the discharge, finding

scantier slope, thinned out, spread, and possibly ceased to flow; at

least we guessed so, from its ending in a forest which conceals from

sight the sea, to which it extends. It is girt on both sides by a dense

belt of trees, springing from a stiff yellow clay, the portions of the

slope which the lava did not overflow. A B. P. observation gave us an

altitude of 4535 feet, about 1000 feet above Snowdon and the Reeks of

Kerry, and 800 feet higher than Vesuvius.

A hunter’s path was easily found; but careful stepping was required. Off

the ‘spoor’ it was easy to sink up to the thighs. At 8·45 A.M. we had

crossed the bed from S.S.E. to N.N.W., and we sat down under the farther

skirting of wood. There we saw for the first time a blackberry, common

at Fernando Po. This _Rubus apetalus_ is enumerated among the plants

common to Abyssinia, the Mauritius, Bourbon, and Madagascar. Its fruit

remarkably resembled the common English hedge growth.[60] Salvia scented

the air; and the green surface was thinly spangled with blossoms; two

species of fair white gnaphalium, and a shrub with scarlet brackets,

unknown to our ‘botaniker.’ There was also heath, but rather of Madeiran

than of Scottish dimensions; an ericanella, 15 feet high, thin and

rugged as the tamarisk of Sindh. The lava, where very old, was thinly

clad with a cryptogam, which we afterwards found extending to the very

base of the grand peak.

The bees already began to make themselves felt. They are as abundant as

in the upper regions of Fernando Po. Already, at Mapanya, we had seen in

the hands of the villagers a dark and dirty comb: the savages ignore

hives, even to the extent of the East African log. In the upper regions,

where clover abounds, like the Retama (_C. nubigenes_) of Tenerife, to

which the hives are yearly removed, the honey is excellent. The animals

build in hollow trees, producing, after four days’ labour it is said, a

delicious white honey, which is easily taken from them, even in the

daytime. Our camp was infested by them: they seek moisture, and

disappear in swarms before cold or wind, mist or night. The busy insect

appears here, as at Fernando Po, unusually amiable, sociable, and

stupid; and its rare stings were little more painful than those of the

horse-fly. It is different in the plains of Africa. Mungo Park, in his

last expedition, twice saw his caravan dispersed by swarms, and seven

beasts killed. In the Eastern Regions I lost in one day three asses, and

witnessed the capture of a village, by bees.

After a little food, of biscuit and ‘Europe mutton,’ the Band of Hope

resumed its march at 9·50 A.M., under a sun becoming painfully hot. The

fern presently waxed rare, and the surface became a mass of detached

boulders, between whose treacherous sides leg and ankle easily came to

grief, and lava-blocks thinly sprinkled with lichens, and dry grass. The

path zigzagged across the old fire-stream, which was disposed in

prismatic striated dykes, some a quarter of a mile, others a few yards,

long, running parallel to the course; bluff towards the north, and

tailing off southward. Many of these long, narrow axial ridges were

sharp tipped, hardly a foot broad; and the highest might be 15 feet

above the general level of the matrix. The appearance of these

longitudinal markings suggested unequal cooling of the molten matter.

The outer coating, exposed to the air, would naturally lose caloric,

whilst the melted matter gravitates down the pipe or tunnel below. The

roughness and angularity must also be the work of water and wearing

down, the smoothing and rounding off of ice action being wholly wanting.

Expecting to find at the edge of the stream a smoother path, made by the

washings of the clay banks, I was disappointed: in that direction it was

almost impassable. As we advanced we exchanged the miry boulders for

bare and naked rock, which hardly showed the hunter’s trail; and the

labour was greatly increased by repeatedly ascending and descending the

ridges. The direction began towards the N.W., gradually winding to N.E.

The wind was easterly; and as the great puffy clouds, half nimbus, half

fog, and apparently pregnant with rain, sailed up from the S.W., where

the horizon was obscured by inky cumulus, only the ragged ends passed

over our heads, diffusing brief coolness, and shedding the priceless

fluid in stingy drops, which one might have counted. Mr. Saker, who had

taken charge of the water-breaker, prudently refused all applications.

The Krumen, whose feet were scorched by the midday sun, began to lag

behind: they had been provided with ammunition-boots, but, not having

become by habit solidungulate, they could not use them without risking

broken legs. Selim Aga remained to bring up the rear; and the party in

advance now consisted of four Europeans and two bearers. There was no

evidence of animals at this time, save man. A loud clamour in the nearer

woods, followed by what seemed to be the tramping of men, caused me to

draw my revolver and to make ready. After yesterday’s scene we certainly

should have had an attack in East Africa. My companion’s posed look told

me that it was a false alarm. It proved to be the chattering of monkeys,

and their retreat among the tree-branches. I presently mistook some gaps

in the vegetation for snow; and Mr. Saker once complained of a complete

deafness. The fiery reflected heat was robbing us of our senses. Perhaps

it was aided by the rarefied air. We were not, however, astonished

throughout the exploration that we suffered so little from the

inconvenience of which most travellers complain on Mont Blanc and the

Rocky Mountains. Some would explain our immunity from mountain-sickness,

or ‘puna,’ upon the Great Peak, only by the constant blowing of the

violent east wind, which supplied our lungs with the requisite quantity

of oxygen as fast as they could consume it.[61] I believe, however, the

disease to be, like sea-sickness, merely the effect of disordered liver

or stomach, often aggravated by stimulants, and by sudden and violent

exertion.

Gradually we had edged towards the eastern side of the lava river, where

in the high thick vegetation of the banks large black mossy stones

appeared. Persuaded by the presence of a small bird—like the monkeys,

they require drink—that the element must be near, I sent two Krumen to

scrape the ground. It was wet immediately below the surface; and during

the rains there must be a full gutter on each side of the lava-bed. The

slope, however, is steep, and the drainage rapid. ‘No find water?’ we

cried: the answer was, ‘Yes, sa!’—‘Yes,’ in Kruman’s English, being an

affirmative confirming your negative, when the Englishman would say

‘No.’ Although our botanist had despaired of finding aught potable in

the absence of succulent plants, Selim Aga, wiser by experience,

squeezed from the moss half a gallon of dew, sufficient to boil water

for the boys during the night.

After midday the march became, in the glaring, scorching, solar rays, a

mere stumbling; we halted at least as much as we walked, and the

alpenstock had a heavy burden to bear. In vain we shouted to the Krumen

behind; not a sound was heard. The party was ‘hopelessly disintegrated.’

The seething heat seemed to wax more and more terrible; shoes showed

signs of giving in,[62] and so did the wearers. At 2 P.M. we halted for

a little refreshment—a crust of bread and a cup of water—what

quintessence of nectar it was! We then resumed our way, which became

even more rugged and precipitous as we neared the crater: it almost irks

me to write about it. A mural precipice seemed ever to stand before us,

and the figures in the van regularly disappeared as they topped the

heights. The last third is rather a field than a bed; it was probably

the latest gush, that had not power to flow on, but remained to cool and

be weathered and degraded in jagged blocks, all realism and ugliness.

The sleepless night had told upon me. I found it impossible to keep my

eyes open; something feverish and fiery ran through my veins. A sound

sleep upon a lava-block till 4 P.M. relieved this sensation. On awaking,

the prospect was not pleasant; not a soul was in sight. I had lost the

trail, and nothing appeared around me but a tumbled sea of lava rising

in front like a mountain wave. A bivouac seemed imminent. There were

green spots under natural dry walls, where the gathering of water had

produced a scanty growth of herbage. But without fire such a night would

have ended in a very disagreeable morrow, which might have been called

by the ‘cold name of accident.’

Fortunately, the surgeon of H.M.S. ‘Bloodhound’ had given me a ‘snake

mixture,’ labelled ‘forty drops to be taken in water.’ Even without the

element they enabled me to pass over the tangled surface of the stone-

billows forming the ominous frontal wave of the stream, and to surmount

the final overfall—a high abrupt transverse sea surging in massive

rollers, and shutting out the view beyond. Looking from above, not

usually a good _point de vue_ in hill countries, I could see the torrent

of once fiery stone meandering down the hill between its banks of green,

with here and there a step or ridge, transverse features in the

longitudinal arrangement, as if the viscid mass had gathered at, before

overflowing, some obstacle of ground. Of such places we counted in the

ascent six. Beyond the seventh and last consecutive wrinkling of the

lava deluge, distant about half a mile, and at the foot of a dwarf bowl,

which, from its peculiar colour, we presently named Black Crater, stood

my friends. They called to me—the voice travels far in these

regions—that water was still distant an hour’s march, and they were

requested to _passer en avant_. Presently M. Mann, accompanied by a

Kruman bearing a breaker, disappeared behind the hills, and Mr. Saker

disposed himself upon the ground. Their desire to advance under such

circumstances appeared simple madness. They might have reached the

water, but they would have left behind them Krumen and rations, tent and

bedding, and slept in a wood more than 7000 feet above sea-level. M.

Mann, acclimatized, and now accustomed to ascending West African

mountains, had outwalked the whole party. He subsequently suffered

severely for this evidence of superior vigour.

Beyond the last horrid lava-ridge of broken blocks, bristling up in all

directions, the aspect of the land suddenly changes. Boulders and striæ

disappear; the surface is a bed of scoriæ comminuted by the fierce

action of the elements, and overgrown with moss and tussocks of dwarf

grass, which showed signs of a late firing. After the continuous ascent

since 8 A.M. a stretch over the smooth hollow was refreshing. I sketched

on the way the Black Crater, whose outfall had caused us so much

trouble. It is a truncated cone of considerable antiquity, not unlike

the Montañeta do Frayle, near the town of Orotava, opening towards the

south where the wall was broken. The altitude of the western or highest

lip is 200 feet, or 356 along the slope. The circumference of the base

is 600 yards, and the diametér of the bowl about 100. The outer surface

is fine cinder, here bare, there dotted with tufts of grass and wilted

shrubs; from a distance it looks exceptionally dark, from which

circumstance it obtained a name. The interior contains a sparse green

growth, and the internal northern wall shows scaurs of reddish rock. In

places the lava appeared magnetic. Mr. Saker, who carried his ship’s

compass in hand, remarked that on one occasion, when placed between the

rocks, the north pole of the needle pointed to the south, and I noticed,

besides a decided dip to the north, curious deflections in my own

pocket-instrument. Our ascent of the lava had lasted from 10 A.M. to

4·30 P.M., 6 h. 30 m., of which half were spent in rest, and the

distance little exceeded two miles,[63] which, however, we set down as,

at the lowest estimate, five. The road was infamous, and worse for

descent than for ascent; yet nothing could be easier than to make a

highway as practicable as any street in Madeira. All the material is

there, and a little zigzagging would render the slope easy. The height

of our camp was found to be some 7000 feet, about that of Ootacamund, in

the Neilgherry Hills.

We had pitched, however, again in a vile place, a dwarf plateau, brown

and mossy, a few yards broad, and S.W. of Black Crater. Between the

latter and a grassy neighbour on our north was a narrow gorge, that

acted as conductor to the fierce north-east wind. The place was open to

the west, where lightning flashed, and was exposed to all ‘skyey

influences.’ By slow degrees the wearied Krumen began to drop in,

bringing tent, bedding, and cooking-gear. Selim Aga, however, remained

in charge of five lag-behinds, who had been too heavily loaded.[64]

During twilight—it is longer here than in the plains, and the sun seems

to set (a common mountain phenomenon) at a point 20° higher than one

expects—M. Mann returned with a full breaker, which restored jollity to

the camp. We ate the traveller’s supper, but we did not sleep the

traveller’s sleep. At 5·45 P.M. the thermometer fell to 60° (Fah.),

ruddying nose and hand. At 6·15 P.M. it showed 50°, and during the night

it sank to 40°,—a severe trial to the constitution after 76° to 78° in

the lowlands. It was a hard, dry, piercing cold, that seemed to mock at

clothing. The bitter north-east gusts coursing restlessly down the

‘wind-loved’ gully caused cramps and shivering; the stony ground, sharp

and sloping, made hip-bones ache. The fires were of course allowed to

die out during the smaller hours, and the dew filtered into the

waterproofs. There were points, however, in favour of the place; the air

was pure, the water was deliciously cool, and the sand-flies, no longer

measling our hands and faces, had remained below.

A lovely morning, the ‘Smile of God,’ when the wondrous disc of light

‘Retinged the dark and livid air with bloom,’

made ample amends for the deficiencies of the night. Before us, bearing

S.W. ½ W., beyond a grassy hollow, about one mile broad, sinking with

graceful slope into the lower forest, and then rising nearly to our

level, the awful form of Little Camaroons rose to a point, without rival

or neighbour. From this distance we could distinguish the platform which

divides its height. The atmosphere around us was sweet and pure; we felt

that we were breathing a purer æther, a diviner air. As the upper limb

of the red light of day, apparently so large, flashed leaping up over

the cinder-coloured head of Black Crater, it painted with every variety

of its own hue, pink and red, orange and yellow, the pure fleecy clouds,

whose huge volumes, at first white as cotton, and infinitely subdivided,

soared up from the west. Most comfortable was their warmth as the rays

bathed us. At 6 A.M. the thermometer had shown 48°, which is felt

severely in these elevated tropical regions. Presently the globular

balls of ‘woolpack’ began to surge up from the base of the blue giant in

front of us, and twist like the smoke of a conflagration puffed up from

the south-west, till all became broad plains of barren cloud. Around,

everything was calm, serene, heavenly, except where three white men were

sitting, journal in hand, and the shuddering Kruboys were bringing fuel

from the lately charred trees. Again we sent forward the empty breaker

to the spring, and received it full at 7·20 A.M.

[Illustration: LITTLE CAMAROONS, FROM BLACK CRATER.

Page 128.]

Whilst awaiting the estrays, we walked over the grassy hollow, and

mentally surveyed the future Sanitarium. This would be the best locality

for the highest part of the establishment. As has been seen, the road

could easily be made practicable for mules and asses. The place itself

is well sheltered from the wind, water is not distant, and timber begins

a few yards below it. Comfortable quarters would of course be necessary

during the raw and cold wet season that lasts from 1st May to the

beginning of November: as will be presently seen the rains cannot be

heavy, and I doubt not, indeed, that they are lighter than those of the

Himalayas and Neilgherry Hills. From this height to nearly the base of

the summit-cone all is clear and grassy, without gashes or ravines,

except in the lava-beds, and a few hill-paths, as in the Neilgherry

Hills, would make riding easy. The Camaroons Mountain has thus a grand

advantage over the Fernando Po Peak, whose thick and tangled vegetation

extends almost to the topmost crater. Clover also growing wild here, as

at Fernando Po, where there are two species, cattle might be bred in

abundance; and I have no doubt that most European vegetables, cereals,

and fruits—apples, for instance, which grow 3000 feet above sea-level in

San Thomé—could be made to flourish. The land is rich with its annual

dressing of fallen leaves or decayed grass, and where the soil is a foot

deep it is of the most fertile description.

As Selim Aga did not appear at 2 P.M., we left water and a Kruman guide,

and proceeded towards our proposed camp. The path was a mere rut; the

walk was pretty round the grassy shoulders and folds of various hills:

above all was grass and rocks, below us a dense dark wood. We passed on

our right a high broken crater, whose double effusion of lava from the

N.N.E. to the S.S.W. converging at the base, enclosed a clump of emerald

trees. In many places patches of a livelier green showed where water

sinks during the rains. A few birds were seen, a kite sailing high in

the air, and two butterflies, one white, the other yellow—it is

astonishing the power of flight, in height as well as distance, which

these frail creatures seem to possess. There was unmistakeable ‘sign’ of

hyænas, which must be numerous. And here we saw for the first time the

earths and hills of a rat (_Euryotis irrorata_, sp. nov.[65]), which

cover the upper heights almost to the summit of the Great Cone. These

animals dig long galleries, which appear to have two entrances. They

were afterwards easily caught with the usual ingenious trap of the

Krumen—like the Fernandians they show judgment in choosing the best

positions—a flexible branch, bent to the ground by a cord with a

terminal noose, well covered by leaves, and a trigger which is started

by the tread when the animal steps inside to eat the grass or grain

within the noose. The bodies are sometimes found suspended in the air

and clenched so tightly round the middle that extravasated blood appears

beneath the skin when stripped.

After forty-five minutes the path plunged into a wooded dell, a glade

2000 feet long, not unlike those about the Buenos Ayres ridge at

Fernando Po, where we enjoyed cool shade, and an air perfumed by a

garden of blue labiates and clematites hanging from lofty trees at the

extreme end of large vegetation. Another quarter of an hour brought us,

after a total march of 1⅔ miles,[66] to ‘Mann’s Spring,’ and we felt

grateful for the happy discovery: without this supply all our water must

have been carried from below. Doubtless there are many similar

formations, but the difficulty would be to find them. It is a pure cool

runnel issuing from peaty earth at the foot of a small rock, and sinking

into the dark brown humus beyond. It is embowered in flowering shrubs

and nettles, with foliage narrower than the English species, that will

supply us with a Scottish spinach.

A few yards of ascent beyond the water led to our camp, where the Krumen

had cleared a slope for us, and had built for themselves leafy

tabernacles. Shortly after our arrival we heard shouts and shots, and

had the satisfaction of receiving Selim and his five ‘slow coaches’ safe

and sound. The evening sped pleasantly at this altitude, about 7300 feet

above the sea, and the night was comfortable. I had expected a heavy

dew, and to my surprise a newspaper left out in the air showed in the

morning no traces of damp. The atmosphere was cold, clear, and still,

except after midnight, when furious gusts from the N., the N.E., and the

N.W. swept round the cone (we called it Earthwork Crater), at whose base

we were encamped, and after a turmoil of five minutes overhead,

departed, leaving all as still as the grave.

[Footnote 38: It produces two crops per annum, each of twelve bunches,

and every bunch fifteen nuts—a total of three hundred and sixty: so in

India it is said the cocoa produces one nut a day. To show the value of

the tree, each nut being worth five cents, it produces 18 dolls. = 3_l._

6_s._ per annum.]

[Footnote 39: It extends about 700 feet above sea-level, and has many

uses, being employed especially in building.]

[Footnote 40: Letter from M. Mann, in ‘Journal of the Proceedings of the

Linnæan Society,’ above alluded to.

The brief notices of the flora of this interesting region are, I repeat,

either borrowed from the paper above cited or collected in conversation

with M. Mann. The extremely interesting nature of the subject must be my

excuse for introducing so many ‘crackjaw names.’]

[Footnote 41: It is to be hoped, however, that future colonists will

not, after a usual fashion, alter the place by wanton felling and

burning from a forest dense to the other extreme—a bare and barren

waste.]

[Footnote 42: So San Thomé, where servitude will expire after twelve

years, expects nothing but ruination.]

[Footnote 43: It is a local habit to plunge the seed into boiling water.

I bought a sack when ignorant of the practice, and was astonished to

find it rotting in the ground. Curious to say, it is not to be had from

the seedsmen in London.]

[Footnote 44: At present the plantain is almost as bad as the potato,

formerly of so many uses; it supplies the people with food and drink,

wine and water, cloth, thatch, rope, fuel, fodder, and perfume; and it

can supply them with writing materials. I republish from the ‘Cavalla

Messenger,’ the Missionary paper printed at Cape Palmas, an excellent

description of plantain-planting:—

‘MR. EDITOR,—I take the liberty, in the following communication, to call

the attention of your readers to the growth of the plantain for its

fibre.

‘In the first place I would remark that it is easily cultivated. In

preparing the ground for a crop in this country, we meet with one grand

difficulty—the want of the plough and team. Yet this is less felt than

in many parts of the world. The constant fall of rain in the growing

seasons softens the ground, and conveys to the roots of plants the

soluble parts of the decaying vegetable and mineral matter composing the

soil as perfectly and thoroughly as if ploughed and otherwise cultivated

by a team. But in the growth of the plantain we are less dependent on

plough and oxen for success than in the management of most other crops.

This is a fact very strongly recommending it to the attention of the

farmer.

‘To put out a field of plantains the ground should be prepared much as

it is for cassada-roots. The ground then should be laid out in rows

about twelve or eighteen feet apart each way.

‘At the point crossed by these rows the soil should be thoroughly dug

up, and a healthy root set in the centre. The plant usually does best

when laid down so as to sprout from the side. This will give from three

to four hundred plants to the acre.

‘For the first year or two, cassada, cotton, pepper, ginger, corn,

arrowroot, sugar-cane, or some other crop, should be grown with it.

‘The third year will give seven suckers to each plant, which will make

2400 to 2800 stalks, with as many bunches of delicious, healthy,

nutritious fruit. This gathered when fully ripe may be easily preserved

for food or export. In England it takes the place of dried apple, and

commands a price that will richly pay the farmer all the labour of

cultivation and curing for market.

‘The process of drying is simple. The ripe fruit is laid in the hot sun

on mats elevated from the ground. After it becomes wilted it is taken

from the skin and replaced upon the mats till dry, when it is coated

with sugar, like figs. This process might be shortened by kiln-drying.

‘The fruit when full grown, before the process of ripening commences, is

very rich in starch, and when dried and ground makes an excellent meal.

To make plantain-meal the plantain must be gathered when full grown. The

skins must be removed with a bamboo-knife, so as not to discolour the

fruit. Then cut in thin slices and dry in the sun, or on a kiln, which

is better. When brittle grind into meal.

‘The fact that the fruit for home consumption or the foreign market will

richly pay for cultivation is an item of importance. For this purpose is

the plantain chiefly raised. The stalk is by many regarded valueless.

Yet it is by the addition of a little labour worth 3_d._ a stalk.

‘An acre of well-matured thrifty plants will produce 6000 lbs. of fibre,

at a cost in labour of 3_l._ per ton; and with an additional cost of

7_l._ per ton may be placed in an English market.

‘Plantain-fibre, after patient, varied, and repeated experiment, has

been proved to be equal to hemp for all the purposes of cordage, and now

commands the same price as good hemp, say from 30_l._ to 35_l._ per ton,

giving a clear profit to the grower of more than 20_l._ the ton.

‘To convert the stalk into fibre, it is cut into lengths of three feet

long and quartered. This should be done as quick as may be, so as not to

black the fibre with the iron instrument used in cutting.

‘Furnished with a mill like a horizontal sugar-mill, having wood rollers

four feet long and one foot in diameter, turned by horse-power, the

quartered stalks are passed between the rollers longitudinally so as not

to stain the fibre. Then the crushed stalks are washed thoroughly (which

process separates the fibre from the pulpy matter of the stalks), and

the fibre is hung on poles under a shade to dry. The sun discolours it.

‘When dry, it is combed or hackled, as flax or hemp, when it is fit for

the market.

‘The tow or waste from the combing is beaten and prepared as half-stuff

for paper at a cost of about 8_l._ per ton, and is worth as much as

linen rags for paper, say from 16_l._ to 20_l._ per ton.’]

[Footnote 45: In Fernandian ‘Bube’ means a man, and ‘E Bube!’ is an

address as favourite as the Spanish Hombre. Hence strangers undeservedly

called the race ‘Booby.’]

[Footnote 46: The Dictionary of the Isubu language informs us that these

charms, of which there are many with distinct names, are worn ‘to keep

off evil spirits.’ As I have repeatedly explained, they are worn to keep

them in, and they hinder them from wandering about doing harm, as the

seal of Suleyman prevented the Jinn from leaving his prison-pit.]

[Footnote 47: So Garcie du Jardin says that certain American Indians

placed snuff and pills of lime ‘_entre la lèvre de dessous et les

dents_;’ in fact, where it most excites the salivary glands. Like the

coffee-balls eaten by the Gallas of South Abyssinia, it prevents thirst

and fatigue. These people have none of the succedanea for tobacco used

by different wild races—potato-leaves, datura, solanum, hyoscyamus,

belladonna, &c.]

[Footnote 48: More correctly 23,420 feet: the distances were taped on my

return. In Appendix VI. I have given the elements of our observations

for each altitude, which were calculated by Mr. George, of the Royal

Geographical Society.]

[Footnote 49: This must not be confounded with Abo at the head of the

Nigerian Delta. It is described as a congeries of townlets, like

Abeokuta, under a powerful king, containing some 25,000 inhabitants, and

having a radius of 4 miles: its direct distance from this point might be

45 miles. It is most easily reached by the ‘Yabiang’ water, a western

influent of the Madiba ma Dualla or Camaroons Creek, and from the

highest factory in the river it is distant 29 miles, including 4 of

walking. In 1841 Captain Allen attempted to visit it, but failed. In

1849 Messrs. Saker and Pinnock succeeded; they were robbed, however, by

the Yabiangs, at the instance of the Camaroons people, and escaped only

with their lives.]

[Footnote 50: There is another settlement of the same name behind Mount

Henry. I was unable to discover the exact meanings of this and other

terms, but conjectured from analogy with other wild parts of Africa that

they are the names of districts, not of chiefs, tribes, or villages.]

[Footnote 51: The head of tobacco, here worth about 6_d._, contains from

ten to twelve leaves.]

[Footnote 52: The Galium aparine, a small rubiaceous plant, will vex us

in high altitudes.]

[Footnote 53: ‘Little things’ here means matchets and mirrors, kerchiefs

and blue baft, rum and tobacco. The fathom of cloth is also equal to

1_s._ At Fernando Po the musket costs 15_s._]

[Footnote 54: 40,720 feet along the very winding path.]

[Footnote 55: The shape was unknown to me; I found it, however, figured

and described in the Muata Cazmbe of Captain Gamitto.]

[Footnote 56: This hoop shows the connection of the Fernandian ‘Bube’

with the coast tribes opposite. Other races, like the Krumen, ignore

such means of ascent, and fell the tree.]

[Footnote 57: The bush-dog is I believe a small hyæna. The Krumen have a

tradition that he and the house-dog are brothers. The latter preferred

to the forest the society of man and the comforts of the hut, whilst the

former, ever wandering over the hills, calls plaintively upon his

relation to supply him with fire.]

[Footnote 58: Boxes are always bad, but botanists cannot do without

them. M. Mann had seven tin cases, 20 inches long by 17 broad and 15

deep—about one-third less would have been better—and they were very

heavy, containing wire-frames for India, packing-paper, and stout brown

paper for drying specimens.]

[Footnote 59: Measured by tape along the road 6200 feet.]

[Footnote 60: When returning I observed that all the fruit had

disappeared.]

[Footnote 61: According to Dr. James Hunt (‘Acclimatization of Man’) the

European cannot live at a great elevation for any length of time in the

Northern hemisphere; the natives of the Southern can. The highest

inhabited spot in Europe is the Théodule Pass, between Wallis and

Piedmont: it is temporary, and only 10,000 feet high; whereas Peruvians

thrive permanently at 7000 to 12,000 feet of altitude. ‘This difference

between the North and South hemispheres is caused perhaps by the

difference in attraction at the North pole. In the Northern hemisphere

the ascent of a high mountain causes a rush of blood to the head, and in

the Southern there is an attraction of blood to the feet: hence the

cause of the sickness felt on ascending a mountain in that hemisphere.’]

[Footnote 62: For this lava-walking the boots should have wooden soles.

Mr. Mann completely destroyed two pair in as many days. For grass-

walking on the upper heights, the Pyrenean spartelle, or the Spanish

soldiers’ alpargetas, would be best.]

[Footnote 63: Measured it proved 11,570 feet. The total distance from

Mapanya to the Black Crater was 20,080 feet, under 4 miles, and from

Black Crater to Victoria 60,800 feet, under 10 miles.]

[Footnote 64: In such places 30 lbs. should be the maximum for fast

walking, whereas many of the men carried 40 lbs.]

[Footnote 65: A specimen of it was sent to the British Museum, and

described by Dr. Gray, Appendix IV.]

[Footnote 66: 9594 feet.]

CHAPTER III.

FIRST ASCENT OF PICO GRANDE.

Before dawn on the next day, which was ‘Noche Buena,’ we were up and

anxious to be doing; we had agreed to visit the cone, which had the

temporary honour of being held the highest of Camaroons. Setting out at

6 A.M., after a scanty breakfast—what execrable stuff that essence of

coffee is!—we retraced our steps through the wooded gorge, and passed

out of the sweet forest into the open, where grass occupied the surface

between bits of degraded lava. The ascent began eastward, up a black

slope garnished with thin tussocks and rat-holes; here we first saw the

beautifully green leaves of the Hypericum, whose colour would be a

fortune to a dyer, and its rich blossoms, which at a distance resemble

yellow dog-roses.[67] The appearance of the hills and craters all

changed so much that M. Mann, who already showed signs of indisposition,

asked his Kruboys ‘where dem glass ting (_i.e._ the thermometers) lib?’

and a ‘no sabby’ was the only reply. We saw kites, a few violets, and

large footprints, apparently of kudu, dating from the last rains: during

the ‘dries’ the beasts are driven by thirst into the lower forests. But

one deer was seen in this region; huntsmen are common; there are remains

of huts near our camp, and about three quarters of a mile to the north-

west are caverns where freshly plucked leaves show the presence of man.

We crossed sundry Devil’s Backbones, and a path spanning the mountains

from north-east to west. From the depth to which the path was worn, it

was probably a regular line of communication for the people.

At 8 A.M. we reached the foot of a tall sugarloaf, conspicuous in this

direction—not from the north—by the symmetry of its conformation,

perfect amongst the tossed and truncated forms around. After halting for

a few minutes in a tree-grown cavity at the base, where water sinks, and

where we found a souvenir in the ‘forget-me-not’—the myosotis, which the

French prettily call _plus je te vois, plus je t’aime_,—and a fine

leucothoë, we began the ascent with long elbows to the north-east and

the north-west. On the occidental slope, defended from the wind, were a

few wilted inclined trees, so aligned that they presented a sharp edge

to the gales. The surface was the usual dark vegetable mould, which

varies from a few inches to a foot in thickness, bearing grass already

withered to a reddish yellow. Two spots showed curious charrings,

apparently natural, and overgrown with slippery lichens, amongst which

were found some deserted birds’ nests. The whole aspect was rather that

of St. Isabel Peak on Fernando Po than anything on the Camaroons.

M. Mann, despite his sufferings, preceded us. Mr. Saker, the Judge, and

I formed line and ascended together. Thick mists began to veil the

mighty form of Little Camaroons. We stood now about mid-way between it

and the summit,[68] and we hurried on, breathing quickly in the morning

air, lest even at this early hour the Mongo might begin to ‘smoke his

pipe.’ The furious north-easter almost took away our breath, and gave

our hands a wintry look. After an hour, frequent halts included, we

passed rapidly along a narrow chine winding with gentle ascent over

ground flattening out to the summit; looked northwards, and stood

enchanted with the grandeur and the novelty of the view.

A wondrous confusion reigned around; a volcanic perspective of _Pays

brûlé_ which forced back thought through myriads of years, to the time

when all was a desolating flood and a sheet of ‘whirling, roaring,

bursting, blasting, thundering flames.’ One glance at the immediate van-

ground, a long grassy shelf, ribbed with black, and further still where

an immense circle of volumed white cloud, iridized by the sun, formed a

setting of opal for the tumbled mass of ‘parasitic’ cones; and on the

left hand, vast spillings of black lava, a burned ridge, streaked and

bordered by the liveliest green. Then every eye turned northwards, where

clear and distinct,—too near Heaven it appeared for any fleck of

mist,—calm in the hurlyburly around, and dwarfing with its giant

proportions all the subject mountains, rose in dark blue profile the

grand Presence of the Peak.

When our nerves had recovered their tranquil tone, we proceeded to use

glasses. Even the naked eye could see that the vertex of the cone had,

like Etna, two distinct summits, which at this distance presented a

considerable angle. That to the right was named by acclamation Victoria;

that to the left, Albert Mountain. At the time we were ignorant of the

melancholy event which but two days before had plunged a whole nation

into mourning. The deep metallic blue that invested Pico Grande,

compared with the green-brown hue of the nearer mountain parallels,

suggested the idea that a chasm separated fore from background. Happily

for us, it was not so.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE TOP OF MOUNT HELEN.

Page 136.]

After the first naming we proceeded to distinguish the others by

Christian appellations; even strict geographers cannot blame the act in

a place which has absolutely no terminology; besides which, by precising

our several points, the bearings and altitudes may be subsequently

corrected, and future travellers will more easily trace out our route.

The cone upon which we were standing—it proved subsequently most useful

as a landmark—was named by Mr. Saker, after his wife, ‘Mount Helen.’ I

contented myself with a glorious mass, looming high in the limpid air to

the N.N.W. (magnetic), and with similar marital dutifulness called it

Mount Isabel.[69] The ceremony was concluded with a seemly libation; we

could not dine here as Britons ought, but we compounded with the

assistance of the B. P. apparatus a bowl of punch. M. Casella’s

policeman’s lantern and new zeometer proved useful in the strong wind,

when the old shaving-pot occupied a long time in collecting wood and

charring it, to get rid of the smoke.[70] The extreme difference between

the two results, after five readings, was only 0·6, and the mean 0·5.

The summit of Mount Helen was found to be 9223 to 9383 feet, and the

base of the cone was 7932 feet above sea-level.

Thus exhilarated by our morning’s work we prepared at 10 A.M. to descend

the cone, which we effected after the fashion of visitors to

Vesuvius,—not on our feet. An observation from Mount Helen had given the

bearing of Earthwork Crater, near our camp, W.S.W.; we resolved to

follow the chord instead of the arc which we had taken during the

ascent. At the foot of Mount Helen we fell into a weathered lava-bed,

which we named No. 2. The breadth varies from 100 yards to a mile. It

issues from a neighbouring crater in a S.E. direction, bending to the

S., where, like No. 1, it terminates abruptly; and it is manifestly a

much newer formation than the field up which we had travelled in the

earlier morning. It is observable that, though the craters open in all

directions, the course of the lava-rivers is invariably southerly. I

leave the consideration to more expert volcanists than myself; but may

not the violent N. and N.E. gales—the constant land-breeze from the cold

peaks to the warm sea—that twists the trees upon these mountains, have

determined the direction of their liquid outflow?

Our road lay along a crater breached on the S.E. side, to which we gave

the name of our friend Judge Calvo; it lay nearly due north of Earthwork

Crater, and was another landmark. As we flattered ourselves that

breakfast was near, an ocean of white mist-cloud, dense but not dark,

overwhelmed us, and we wandered from east to west till after a long

delay we hit upon a hunter’s trail. This led us over deep black gashes

in the subsoil lava, and along the steep flank of Earthwork Crater into

camp. We arrived at 11·45 A.M., after a walk of nearly six hours.

Christmas-day was somewhat sad to those who could not prevent

‘The busy goste, aye flick’ring to and fro,’

winging her way to far-off regions which the heavy clay cannot reach. In

such wild scenes, with wilder work before them, men are too apt to think

regretfully of merry gatherings round the Yule log, the _leche de

almandras_, and the Christmas-tree, forgetting the inevitable worries of

‘home,’ and the pains and penalties of civilization, so terrible to

endure after the life of liberty in the desert; besides, if we lose the

revelry at night, do we not also escape the headache next morning?

By way of occupation on Christmas-day, in the morning I accompanied Mr.

Saker to the summit of Earthwork Crater. It lies about thirteen

miles[71] from Victoria, and five from the summit of the Peak. It is

here a typical formation, so it may be described at some length. From a

distance it resembles nothing so much as half an egg-shell with a broken

top; we named it from the regularity of its smooth grassy slopes,

already reddened by the change of season. No glacis, no work of

‘navvies,’ could appear more artificial. It is impossible not to see in

this shape the hand of Neptune; and we conjectured that from Mount Helen

to the shore all must have been formed in quick rise from a quiet

sea—submarine opposed to the subaërial above. This, however, must be

settled by the presence or absence of fossils, such as those which have

been discovered on Monte Somma. The southern base is clothed with the

forest of tall trees in which we have pitched our camp. Measured from

the bottom of the slope, the total height and length are 640 feet,

including 340 feet for the upper or grassy portion. The aneroid showed

162 feet of direct height.[72] The circumference of the upper rim is 522

feet, and the periphery of the bowl is complete except at the W.S.W.,

where, broken by a lava-stream trending southwards, it assumes from

above the shape of a horseshoe. The internal depth is one hundred

perpendicular feet; it has long burned out, and during the rains water

sinks in its cup, attracting small birds. Three distinct ridges of lava

may be traced in the inner wall. The highest part of the basin-rim is

the N.W., where another liquid stream from the N.E., butting up to the

crater wall, has sliced away the slope into a perpendicular cliff, and

has circled round a portion of the S.W. base. As in many similar

formations, the gradual slipping of the side soil under the influence of

sun and rain has formed a small clean flat margin at the base, like a

shallow saucer supporting an inverted cup.[73] The Phlegethon once

issuing from Earthwork Crater is nearly embedded in earth, and partly

overgrown with shrubs; there are little pitholes and rocks with

diminutive ledges, which at times must supply the beasts of the wild

with drink.

Nothing could be more beautiful than the slanting rays of the sun,

sharply bisecting the inner crater with yellow light, that refused to

blend with the purple shades below. We stood upon the topmost crest and

waved our caps, to see if the action would be reflected as in the Hartz

Mountains—without result as at Tenerife. The summit fully explained the

ant-hill-like appearance which the highlands wear when viewed from

Fernando Po and Ambas Bay. Besides the eruptive ‘lapilli’ craters,

hidden to the eastward by mist and lava-bed, we counted eleven distinct

forms in the north, to the south nine, and eleven to the south-west—a

total of thirty-one, within a radius of perhaps two miles, literally

undermining the whole land. They are of two distinct formations. Those

under 6000 to 7000 feet are montecules, covered with dense forest, but

still betraying their origin by their conformation: those above that

altitude are smooth, grassy, regular, and uniform. From this point we

could distinctly see the half-way platform of Little Camaroons.

After breakfast Mr. Saker left us for Camaroons River, promising to

return early the next month. We made up for him a party of six armed

men, who were directed to bring stores from our depôt at Victoria. The

child ‘Poor Fellow’ also accompanied him. Five days afterwards we heard

with pleasure that this first descent, through a region which might be

called hostile, had been effected without accident, except to boots. Mr.

Saker descended, at some pain to his crural muscles, Lava Bed No. 1 in

two hours twenty minutes, not including halts, and reached Victoria on

the next day. It was not the fault of his escort, however, that the

return did not end tragically. Krumen have no relish for the ‘bitter

sweets of war.’ Passing the outlying houses of Mapanya at early dawn,

the party was heard by an old man, who challenged them, and, receiving

no answer, shouted for help. Off at the sound like startled deer went my

acting head-man, a great burly fellow called Tom Bushman, followed by

Messrs. Seabreeze, Nyanyi, and others—they were subsequently punished by

half rations—nor did they stop till they had reached the Mission

Station, and had reported that, after a deadly fight, the white man had

been slain, and the rest of his escort made prisoners. Mrs. Saker,

knowing the men, was incredulous. Mr. Johnson at once sent a message to

King William of Bimbia, after which he and Mr. Pinnock started up the

hill. After a ten minutes’ walk they met Mr. Saker coming towards them.

He had suffered no damage beyond losing his way for a couple of miles,

and paying a head of tobacco for guidance to a Bushman. The letter

containing these details further informed us that our late companion had

found a direct path from Mapanya to Bosumbo, and that the down-journey

from our camp to Victoria could be made in twelve hours, allowing two

hours for the Lava Bed No. 1.

We did our best to honour Christmas Day. Kind Mrs. Saker had given us a

plum-pudding, which fared badly in the encounter, and we had beef, but a

trifle salt. A forest of Yule logs lay around us—I wished it had been my

property within easy carriage of Paris—and a giant fire lighted up the

camp. We spent a merry evening, telling old tales around our hearth,

and, cognac being deficient, we roughed it on a bowl of anizado. During

my wanderings I had found an as yet undetermined species of wild mint,

whose flavour when bruised is tolerable,[74] and we pronounced the julep

to be far from unpalatable. At this venerable season, when good works as

well as good living are expected from us, I contribute my quotum by

offering to my English fellow-countrymen the following recipe for a mint

beverage à la Virginie:—

_Recipe._

Take of mint quant. suff.; soak in brandy or other spirit for fifteen

minutes; sweeten according to taste. Cool the minted liquor with smashed

ice. Shake till the mixture is homogeneous. Add a sprig for ‘the

garden,’—and imbibe.

Before undertaking other expeditions we resolved to re-form the camp,

and thus employed the whole 26th of December. The Krumen were banished

to a certain distance, where their brawling voices and horseplay could

not offend, and were ordered to bring in daily a certain amount of

firewood, under penalty of ‘no chop.’ The Judge and I sallied out pick

and axe in hand. We improved our Acis, Mann’s Spring, by clearing away

the turf, deepening the basin, and embanking the precious lymph: after

half an hour the Naiad of the rill would not have known her own home.

Then the encampment was provided with a variety of comforts. Herbaceous

stalks and young branches compacted with ‘tie-tie,’ or the tender

withies of the clematis and various barks—rope is never wanted in an

African forest—formed chairs and fauteuils, couches, bedsteads, tables,

and benches, a platform for drying botanical specimens, a canopy to

shelter us from the sun, sleeping boothies, and a store hut. All was

rural in the extreme, but the general appearance was decidedly cosy. We

looked like anything but ‘castaways on a lee-shore.’ That our _coin du

feu_ might be the more comfortable at night, the Judge constructed a

Turkish lantern, a cylinder of red cloth round a framework of splinters,

and the effect was a pleasant glowing light. We cut away the boughs

which might be brought down upon our heads by violent winds, the wild

squalls, and fierce puffs, here as common as on the Peak of Tenerife,

and had no reason afterwards to regret this precaution. A Pelourinho, or

whipping-post, was erected _in terrorem_. Finally, we cleared decent

entrances, and we laid down tasks for lazy men to be done each day.

M. Mann was still suffering; he feared an attack of dysentery, ever

risky at these altitudes. The internal cold had disappeared before the

usual adhibitions—a little cognac internally, and externally plenty of

flannel. He was not, however, well enough to walk: the Judge and I

therefore resolved to make a reconnaissance of Pico Grande, and to place

a store of water-breakers on the way in readiness for a general

expedition to the summit.

After a fine night, when grave-like silence was interrupted only by the

wind thundering at times over our heads, and bringing down dry twigs

upon our dormitories, causing the trees to creek and groan—a sad sound

in the forest during storms—we arose at 5·30 A.M. on Friday, the 27th

December, and prepared for the undertaking. The party consisted of Judge

Calvo and myself: three Krumen—Messrs. Two-Glass, Kharabu, and Jack

Brass—carried water-breakers and provaunt; whilst ‘King Eyo,’ who

claimed all the right royal to do wrong, or to do nothing, brought up

the rear. The dawn was cloudless, windless, and clear, as the last

night’s Venus—we used to watch her as one would a barometer—had

promised; the morning haze was cool and pleasant; and we enjoyed the sun

as we wound along the clover-grown sides of Earthwork and Calvo Craters,

and up the rugged Lava Bed No. 2. The distance was about a mile and a

quarter, yet it was two hours before we threw ourselves down to rest

under the trees at the sheltered western foot of Mount Helen—we found it

necessary to treat the Krumen as the Chinamen do their ducks—beat the

last that enters the boat-house—and at 8·45 A.M. the thermometer in the

grass at the halting-place showed 57° Fah.

Resuming our way after fifteen minutes’ stretch, we entered upon the

grassy and rocky mountain-slope separating us from Mount Isabel. Having

crossed by a natural bridge a small deep and narrow crevasse, whose

sides were overgrown with vegetation, we turned northwards, wound over

three distinct folds of hill, where a few dry herbaceous plants

lingered, and where the bright hypericum already showed a stunted

growth. Sign of deer was numerous: not a quadruped, however, large or

small, met our eyes. We thought that we had detected a village at a

distance, but it proved a heap of rocks. Traces of natives, however,

showed here and there in a Robinson Crusoe-like footstep and in sundry

fireplaces. Leaving on the right a jagged broken cone, crowning an

earthwork-like eminence which I called Mount Selim, and on the left four

montecules of the usual broken-egg shape, we ascended a steep outlying

cone. At the summit, about half-way up Mount Isabel, we found a

sheltered terrepleine, which we judged fitted for a water depôt, and we

sat down to breakfast and to a draught of the carminative anizado. The

distance was about a mile and a half, and the hour 10 A.M.

From the apex of the sub-range, looking back, we could have enjoyed a

grand panorama of craters, sweeping in vast semicircle. Northwards,

however was a spectacle that absorbed all our attention. Straight before

us rose in ineffable majesty those glorious peaks, tangible, as it were,

in the morning æther, high towering over all the subject land and

dwarfing the craters and cones below. No chasm separated us from them.

Beyond the base of Mount Isabel the ground swelled gently upwards to the

feet of the King of all the Cones. I marked at once our path,—a broad

meandering lava-bed, which had been confined to certain limits by dwarf

spiracles dotted on both sides. The colour of Pico Grande’s radial lines

was peculiar. A faint, dull green seemed to streak the coal-coloured

eastern slopes, which were far less abrupt than the western; a long

perpendicular sweep of blue parted most sensibly Victoria from Albert

Mountain; and whilst the latter showed a distinct but small crater, the

former was beautified with descending stripes of red and yellow—remnants

of once-glowing heat—falling from a cliff or scaur a few yards below its

apex, and the foreground wore its usual coating of red-yellow grasses.

Nothing more vivid and pure than the lights, nothing darker and more

transparent than the shadows.

I seized the Judge’s arm, and pointed to the colossus, and swore that we

would play Jack the Giant-Killer that day. He meekly shook his head,

opined that we would do our best, and referred me to my breakfast, which

stuck in my throat.

Our Kruboys had shown even more than usual laziness, and King Eyo, who

carried only a gun, usually loitered half a mile behind. The party was

weeded by leaving the latter and Two-Glass, a noted shirker, to

supervise the remainder of our day’s provision. The breakers intended

for the future expedition were deposited in a safe place, and at 10·30

A.M. we set out with uncommon elation of spirits, ‘Excelsior!’ being now

the word. Mountain-climbing was now over, and with it the exhilaration

which the succession of distant obstacles to be overcome excites; but

was not Pico Grande before us?

The path ran along the steep side of a kind of gate, formed by two cones

with a little hollow between, and we were forced to tread on the edges

of our feet. After a quarter of an hour we had passed the right-hand

staple, and descended by a gentle slope, not destitute of pit-holes,

into a shallow gorge that screened us from the strong north-easter.

Hence we debouched upon the bed of lava which we had sighted from Mount

Isabel, and named it No. 3. From this position we could better

distinguish its source,—a crater on the left or westward of the great

cone. It flows from north-east to south-west, bending to due south.

Striking the end of the stream, which here has been suddenly arrested by

a rise of ground, we followed the smoothly bevelled rim of a hill—an

edging like the ‘ice-foot’ of the Polar regions—on the proper right, and

then struck across the bed towards another buttress on the left of the

old _coulée_. We afterwards regretted having preferred this course,

thinking that we might have saved ourselves distance and toil by taking

the other bank. Subsequent experience, however, proved the contrary. The

passage occupied half an hour. We spent the first twenty minutes walking

800 feet over an erupted matter overgrown with dry green moss, and

crumbling like pumice[75] beneath the tread. The last 400 feet lay over

a ridgy bed of ruddy black clinker, hairy with burnt cryptogams; its

detached stones, without intermediate débris, sharp-angled and sun-

polished, made progress slow and painful. The contrast of this hard,

dark, unweatherworn vein with the spongy green coating was curious; and

I noticed in the different gashes, sections, and chasms formed by

unequal cooling and floods, that the former everywhere underlies the

latter after a depth of three or four feet. Judging from the position,

both have been produced by the same outflow, which, however, could not

have been the work of a very remote epoch.

At 11·30 A.M., after walking about a mile and three-quarters, we reached

the cone on the proper left of the stream, wound along its edge, which

was clean cut as if smoothed by art, and encumbered by strong, thick

tussocks, which it would be a misnomer to call grass. The Great Peak was

sensibly neared,—a circumstance which not a little increased our _élan_.

After a ten minutes’ walk we found ourselves again condemned to cross,

at right angles too, the frontal ridges of the same lava-bed to the

north-east, where, being higher up, it was more broken but narrower. The

features were the same,—old and green, new and black.

This passage led us to what appeared two grassy cones outlying the base

of the Pico Grande. In a little hollow at the foot of the nearest we

found a clump of shrubby trees, which was marked out as the resting-

place of the future expedition. They rose in front of us with a central

depression, and, not knowing that they were separated from the Peak with

which they seemed to be connected, we judged it advisable to ascend the

hollow between them. The incline was unusually steep, and the surface

disconnected tussocks of the _Deschampia cæspitosa_, a graminea, which

forms masses of three feet diameter and two feet high, and which sinks a

cubit beneath the tread; its hard blades sound in the wind like the flow

of water, and its stiff points pierce the clothes like thorns. In little

patches there were finely-ground coal-black scoriæ, scorching in the

sunbeams, and raising the heat to Black Hole temperature. The ground

sounded hollow under the tread, but I listened vainly for ‘Bramidos.’

Having reached the summit, we found that the supposed two cones were but

the double head concealing the rim of a beautifully formed crater, an

inverted cone, circular, and with narrow edge-like lip, about 300 feet

in circumference. The regular internal slope shelving down from the

aperture was clothed like the external, with grass, to the very floor,

which has a jetty pavement of fragmentary lava. I called it Mount

Milnes, after a very good friend.

After that waste of labour in the merciless rays of the flaming sun—we

could easily have rounded this abutment of the Peak—we allowed ourselves

a quarter of an hour’s rest, and abandoned ourselves to the charm of the

situation. We were the first Europeans certainly, perhaps the first men,

who have ever stood within gunshot of that tall solitary pile. We made

eternal silence vocal with a cheer,—there was no one to deride our

demonstrativeness.

A nearer scrutiny explained some points which we had misunderstood from

afar. The main Peak was entirely isolated, with a long sloping chine on

our right (eastward), and a more abrupt descent in front and on the

left. The faint green hue of the former was produced by a scanty

crusting of lichen. The long sweep of blue was a slide—a herbless

rift—of fine black comminuted cinder; and the red and yellow scaurs were

fire-tinged scoriæ. The long eastern shoulder would have been the

easiest, the difficult loose slide of lava-dust the shortest. I

preferred a _mezzo termine_, and chose a ridgelet running up Victoria

Mountain.

At 1 P.M. we addressed ourselves to the task of walking round the crater

of Mount Milnes. Here, however, the Judge stopped; having slightly

sprained his right ankle, he decided, looking at the task before him,

that it was beyond his powers; and advised me to reserve it for another

day. Subsequences almost made me regret that I had not followed his

counsel. But on second thoughts—No! To be first in such matters is

everything; to be second, nothing. Besides, the announcement made to us

at Mapanya had rendered the affair a kind of steeple-chase; there was

perhaps a little ‘_malice_’ in my wish to win.

Descending the tufted cone, between which and the great Peak there was

no débris, I began to breast the ascent. Jack Brass, who carried my warm

clothing, had sat down in some secluded spot where he was doubtless

dozing in the warm midday sun, and Kharabu only remained to accompany

me. The good Judge lent me his flask of spirits and water: having

detected my companion neatly ‘tiefing’ the contents, I took the bottle

under my especial charge; and twice when Kharabu’s glazed eyes and

cracked lips showed symptoms of defaillance, it served to keep him

alive. These Krumen are not hill-men. Their iron bones and leathery

muscles are not to be tired with rowing and paddling, but on the

mountain they soon weary.

I first made a long elbow towards an isolated clump of basaltic _arêtes_

springing from the lava and pumice slope on the left. We will call them

‘Half-way Rocks.’ The walking was easy enough, and the angle gentle; but

no lava-stream here existing, and the small cinders slipping down with

the foot, it was somewhat fatiguing. From these little ‘Grands Mulets’ I

turned to the right, and, keeping the topmost red and yellow scaur in

sight, followed the ragged edge of a small ridge, whose mossy lava-lumps

afforded hold to the tread. The only remarkable feature of the ascent

was a sprinkling of coarse quartzose stone, which we had not seen

elsewhere. At times the all-fours position became preferable to the

usual and more dignified; but in presence of such a sun as then glowed

upon us, with far fiercer radiation than below, I had no shame in

prostrating myself.[76] As we neared the summit the steepness and

looseness of the material was increasing; Kharabu sank down nearly

fainting from the sun’s arrowy beams, and was allowed to remain behind.

At 1·30 I stood upon the summit of the Peak, where new and unexpected

objects met my sight.

Victoria Mountain now proved to be the shell of a huge ‘double crater,’

opening to the south-eastward, where a tremendous torrent of fire had

broken down the weaker wall. The whole interior and its accessible

breach now lay before me, plunging sheer in vertical cliff. The depth of

the bowl may be 250 feet; the total diameter of the two, which are

separated by a rough partition of lava, 1000 feet. The interior slope is

a highly irregular cliff, which drops horizontally, streaked and

ribboned with igneous matter, red and yellow, whose bands of colour

indicate horizontal stratification, and comminuted scoriæ standing at an

angle of 45°. Not a blade of grass, not a thread of moss breaks the

gloom of the Plutonic pit, which is as black as Erebus, except where the

fire has painted it red and yellow. To the north-west appeared a ridge

overtopping the rest of the two-headed cone which we had called Albert

Mountain, and a bluff wall or dyke, which I had not time to visit.

To record my claim I heaped up a small cairn of stones, and in it placed

a fragment from the facetious pages of Mr. Punch, perhaps the greatest

traveller on record, and certainly one of the traveller’s best friends.

When Kharabu rejoined me with the B. P. apparatus, an attempt was made

to boil. But Jack Brass had prudently kept with him the blanket intended

to shelter the match; the furious nor’-easter[77]—it left its mark upon

me for a fortnight afterwards—charging and eddying round the cone at the

rate of thirty miles an hour, threatened to sweep us away from the lip

of the crater’s gap like flies; and after a few attempts I desisted,

promising myself success at another and more favourable time.

In such doings, 2 P.M. had sped. There was a reverse to the medal,

Success—the prospect of a night to be spent in the open; and the

doctrine of inevitable Compensation taught me to expect some evil, which

came, however, in another form. The ascent had occupied seven hours, and

there remained barely four till sunset, for five miles to camp. I tried

again the Vesuvian style of descent, and narrowly escaped, so loose is

the surface, gaining a momentum which would have dashed me against the

boulders that studded the base. Under the black cinders lies a stratum

of grey ‘_ceneri_,’ which looks white by contrast; at the base of the

cone our line of descent appeared a thin glistening thread. When half-

way down, the Judge waved a signal from Mount Milnes for me to take the

western side of the lava-bed, which we had twice crossed on the up-

march. I preferred, however, encountering known rather than unknown

troubles. The descent of the Great Peak occupied thirty minutes.

A few words will describe the hurry homewards over the dry and weary

land. Skulking Jack Brass was found snugly curled up in a sunny form on

a hillside, and received a present which he will not forget. He appeared

to be terribly lame, but when time pressed he forgot all his ailments,

and devanced the rest of the party. Arrived at Mount Isabel, we awoke

King Eyo, who apparently had been hybernating ever since; loaded Two-

Glass, and rested ten minutes; a wind was blowing that shrank the

mercury to 40°, and made our extremities feel deadly cold. A cloud-bank

like a dust haze, 20° deep, was all we could see in the west, and, as we

passed our beacon and guide, Mount Helen,

‘The sun’s rim dipp’d, the stars rush’d out,

At one stride came the dark,’

and utter darkness, too, before 7 P.M. It is bad enough to be benighted

on a rutty English road. What was it here with a surface of grass

tussocks and lava-blocks, deep falls and jagged crevasses? We lighted

the wax-ends used for the B. P. They soon burned out, and what was worse

they melted the solder of the water-cup. After a heavy fall or two, and

shocks enough to break a Town man’s tendon Achilles, or to rupture his

diaphragm, we were compelled to halt. The Kru-cry, however, brought a

response, and presently we saw firesticks—the excellent Selim being as

usual to the fore—dancing in the darkness like Will-o’-the-wisps. The

cold night-wind threatening pleurisy kept us moving till we were able to

reach camp. We entered at 8·30 P.M., after full twelve hours occupied in

getting over ten miles. The Krumen and Eyo all arrived safely, and

Kharabu, besides a promise from his master, received a present of cloth

in consideration of his good conduct. The day of hard work was followed

by a wakeful night, caused by cramp and spasmodic contractions of the

lower limbs;[78]—already retribution had begun.

I was astonished by the extreme regularity of the mountain, and by the

almost complete absence of those accidents of ground which distinguish

Vesuvius, Etna, Stromboli, Pico de Teyde, Popocatapetl, and other

volcanoes. Considering the magnitude of the pyramid, its surface is

nearly as smooth as it can be up to the crowning vent. Nor is it, as

will afterwards appear, an ‘epitome of globe vegetation,’ Alpine types

being very rare; whilst the absence of snow deprives it of glaciers,

couloirs, debâcles, and moraines, Rigi Kulms, and Monte Rosas. I

remarked, however, with pleasure that there were no large watercourses

in the upper regions, showing the rains to be scanty; if heavy, meteoric

denudation would have stripped the cones of their thin coating of soil.

In many places, also, water, confined by higher ground, sinks; these

might be converted into tanks, as in Persia and Sindh.

The specimens forwarded to the Geological Museum proved to be all of

volcanic origin; scoriæ, lavas, bombs, trachytic traps, sands apparently

with an admixture of magnetic iron, and a few crystals of augite and

olivine.

In the morning the travellers were distinguished by the looped and

windowed raggedness of their dress, and by hobbling about like cheap

‘screws’ after a long hunting-day. Beyond sun and wind-burned hands and

face, my companion suffered nothing, and speedily recovered from his

sprain. But in an evil hour I had set out in a pair of loose waterproof

boots, which began by softening and ended by half-flaying the feet. It

was a spectacle next morning when they were removed. This is the fourth

recurrence of a similar annoyance, the three others having happened at

Meccah, at Harar, and on the hills of Usumbara. Caustic and diachylum

were both wanting for some time, till at last a little of the latter was

brought up from the lowlands. Presently supervened another African

consequence of cold, wet, and over-exertion—swollen feet. To this also I

had been a martyr in the Eastern region. In the lowlands the disease is

dangerous; it may last three months, and end in the worst consequences

of inflammation—ulcerations that cripple the limb. It has little acute

suffering. This absence of pain is typical of African disease, as

anæsthetic death is of India—in both places the exhaustion of nervous

energy may be the cause—and when feeling comes on recovery approaches.

The natives, who are equally ignorant of Dr. Allopath’s powder and Dr.

Homœopath’s pill, treat it with hydropathic bandages. I first tried

arnica plaster, in the absence of diachylum, and then dressings of rum

and water, in the want of spirits of wine.[79] My case concluded with a

little ague and fever, and I was unable to walk for a week, a fortnight,

a month, thus losing thirty days out of forty-six. Thus the exultation

of the day was succeeded by the depression of the morrow, and unusual

pleasure brought its own penalty.

[Footnote 67: This Hypericum (angustifolium) is described as one of the

links between Fernando Po, Camaroons, Abyssinia, and Bourbon: it is

common on the Peak of Tenerife, above 2000 feet high, and it ranges on

these hills between 7000 and 10,000 feet above sea-level, where,

however, it dwindles to a shrub. The smaller stems are as good as rose

or cherry sticks for pipes.]

[Footnote 68: In the chart the direct distance between the two peaks is

nine miles.]

[Footnote 69: Others were named Mount Emily, bearing N.N.E. ¼ E., and

Mount Eliza (one of the three sisters), bearing S. by E.; but they were

not in the line of road.]

[Footnote 70: M. Casella’s instrument, which I believe is now greatly

improved, was a policeman’s lantern, with the thermometer protruding

from the side of the water-cup. It had two great disadvantages, the

fragility of the tube and the effect of the wind upon the mercury. The

cup, moreover, was soldered instead of being made of block tin.]

[Footnote 71: Measured 70,394 feet.]

[Footnote 72: Little importance can be attached to an aneroid

observation at this altitude.]

[Footnote 73: This is on a small scale the Cañada of the Tenerife Peak,

a flat strip of ground, more or less broad, silted up with fine pumice.]

[Footnote 74: The same species flourishes in the upper heights of

Fernando Po, and there is another which grows in the lowlands.]

[Footnote 75: Neither here, however, nor elsewhere, did we find pumice

properly so called.]

[Footnote 76: Solar exposure or radiation is the opposite of

temperature. On clear days, when the latter is lowest in the shade the

former is highest, and _vice versâ_. Every traveller has felt this, and

yet the presence of snow, which merely proves its non-conducting powers

upon the highest mountains, has given rise to the popular idea that the

nearer we approach the sun the less heat we feel.]

[Footnote 77: The wind, despite the greater rarity of the air, blows

with much greater violence at 13,000 than at 5000 feet high. This

increase of velocity with height is probably due to our approaching the

centre of the aërial current.]

[Footnote 78: This African plague is accounted for by the faculty in

various ways. Dr. Clarke of Sierra Leone attributes it to the presence

of acrid substances internally, whereas it is most frequent ‘upon an

empty stomach.’ Others derive it from inequality of evaporation or

radiation from the body, from derangement of the liver, from bad

circulation, and from cold producing undue contraction of the muscles.

As usual with the obscure nervous disorders, where the scientific can do

little, every one has a remedy of his or her own. I have been

recommended to sleep with a tub of cold water under the bed, to hold a

mutton-bone in the right hand, to stand and stamp when unable to move,

and to kick out with the heel when the limb is as rigid as wood. A tight

ligature above the afflicted part, like the Arab Hibas, sometimes

removes extreme pain. The only remedy, however, is thoroughly to heat

the offending member by spirit frictions, hot foot-baths, and swathes of

flannel.]

[Footnote 79: The maximum proportions are one part of spirits to five of

cold water. Mr. Saker, whose prescription it is, obtained the former by

two distillations from trade rum, of which a gallon produced about one

quart of rectified alcohol, the rest being water, and a residuum too

offensive and poisonous to be endured. A pleasant offering of Europe to

her sister Africa!]

CHAPTER IV.

SUBSEQUENT ASCENTS BY MESSRS. CALVO, SAKER, AND MANN.

For a week we led a tranquil life, free from the care of cities, and

beyond reach of the barbarous Bakwiri, in this Paradise of wildernesses.

‘O Corte, O Cortejo,’ says the Spanish proverb; it speaks the truth,

like Sancho Panza. There are no azure fiends here. Even the Judge felt

no disposition to ‘caer la paletilla.’[80] Not a soul approached us; the

natives feared a rough reception by day from white men, who were

doubtless collecting the vast stores of cloth with which the mountains

are supposed to be covered;[81] and at night the jungle is not a

favourite walk with them. We rose with the sun, whose beams, passing

through a thicker atmosphere than that of the plains, were but faintly

warm, comforted ourselves chatting round the bright wood-fire, wrote our

journals, and, after breakfast at 8 A.M., proceeded to the business of

the day. The Judge made sundry excursions, with a view to short cuts. M.

Mann set out with his wire frames, and returned only to dry his

specimens, a process which must be repeated every day in these damp

regions, and which cannot be committed to natives. The Krumen, not

having been allowed to ‘wax fat and kick,’ and tamed by the discipline

of the pelourinho, laughed and sang whilst they worked at the camp and

felled trees. I was experimenting upon the time it would take one man to

make cultivable ground of an acre of bush—an operation at which, as it

involves destruction, they appear proficients. Selim sallied forth with

Black Beggar, the cook,—who is also my instructor in the Kru tongue, and

a first-rate shot with an old rattletrap musket,—in search of specimens

of small beasts and birds. As the dried nests showed, the season of

nidification was passed, and the juveniles were already on the wing.

Unhappily, our shot was too large; the arsenical soap would not come up

from Victoria before Mr. Saker, and many of the birds were too young for

good preservation. The little barbarians were so wholly unacquainted

with rice that when placed upon the ground as bait they paid no

attention to it. Insects are remarkably scarce at these altitudes,

whereas in the lowlands every dead tree’s bark contains a swarm. Only

two land shells were found, and none appeared in the grassy region above

the woods. Besides the field-rat before alluded to, no fewer than three

animals new to science were secured, and duly forwarded to the British

Museum—a mus, a crocidura, an anomalurus, and, the most interesting of

the series, a ‘beautiful new species’ of Sciurus, which Dr. Gray was

kind enough to name Sciurus Isabella.[82] Some of these were shot,

others were caught in the Kruman trap. A fine hawk or eagle haunted us

for days, but never trusted himself within reach of Black Beggar’s

unerring ‘scattering-iron.’ We also rigged up a musket in the usual way,

baited with a bit of meat attached to the trigger. After salt pork had

been tried in vain, we supplied its place with fresh meat, but met no

success. The larger animals appear very wary on the mountains. More than

once, especially at early dawn, antelope were sighted from afar, grazing

in the open, but never allowed a shot. Selim also saw two hawks

attacking a deer which was apparently maimed. It made the bush, however,

before he could reach the spot. The Krumen were often frightened at

night by the loud breathing and the laughing of the hyæna close to our

huts—once they met it during the day, when both parties fled

precipitately in opposite directions—and lay close under their blankets,

the only way to invite attack from the cowardly beast. After sitting up

for several nights, we abandoned the hope of securing a skin of this

animal, which did not fail, however, to strip our springes of their

‘small deer,’ rats and mice.

The forest wore a European look, but with dyes so limpid and tender that

the eye never wearied in contemplating it. This is here the ‘sweet of

the year,’ and the deadliest season at Fernando Po and upon the coast.

The days are those of the Tuscan Apennine in spring and autumn; the

morning is still, and ‘clear as the eyes of Christabel,’ and we hear the

distant murmurs of the restless waves upon the sounding Æthiopic shore.

During the day a mist-cloud, which the wind cannot rout, sweeps round

Earthwork Crater, bringing a refreshing change, and the evenings are

mild and serene. At times it threatens rain, but the downfall is never

more than a few drops. The daily wind is the north-easter, not a Trade,

the tyrant of the sub-tropical seas, but a land breeze, increased I

believe, by induction through the mountain-tops, and drawn with steady

and ceaseless force, as if from an endless reservoir, towards the

regions of damp heat below. The return current, or south-wester, was

rare; perhaps we had not attained its height. The clouds are torn to

pieces by it, and we sometimes see them travelling, as at Madeira, in

three several directions; when they meet, fierce and furious are the

battles. We meet once more at 3 P.M. for food, and after that we keep

our minds from starving with a book, or we ‘imp feathers to the broken

wings of Time’ with sketching. Thus the day walks on _lanei pedes_, and

after 6 P.M., when the sun is about to set through the lowland mists, we

collect round the blazing hearth of basalt blocks—there is no better

company to the wanderer than a fire[83]—and while away the last hours

with chat and drink. The deep, dark forest is as silent as the grave,

except when the screech-owl, most melancholy if not most musical, throws

her note into the shades, or the hyæna whimpers in the distance, ghostly

as the shade of some ancient denizen of the wild, or a mighty rushing

wind from the north sweeps high over the tree tops, hardly causing the

flame below to flicker. An avenue cut along the side of Earthwork Crater

shows the Evening Star smiling upon us with her soft and lovely light,—I

watch her as a lover when she sinks to rest behind the curtain of

moonlit cloud. We separate at 8 P.M., and enjoy sparingly the pleasures

of memory, which, methinks, the careful mental husbandman should reserve

like cards, in case of such accident as old age, when all the passions,

except that of eating, shall have been extinguished. During night the

grumbling of thunder far beneath our feet is our rude lullaby. Once, and

only once, I heard a cracking in the underwood, which my ears, now

familiar with the sounds of the backwoods, at once recognized as the

effect of a human visitor, perhaps of two. Selim brought my revolvers,

and we debated upon the propriety of firing a shot over the spot, as a

caution to spies. It is well we did not; we should only have disturbed

some harmless hunter visiting the spring. After a cool and comfortable

night—the mercury stands at 50°—unblemished by a single mosquito, or

without an atom of perspiration on the proboscis, we are awakened at

earliest dawn by the small brown birds, some tapping like woodpeckers

the hollow tree-trunks, others singing with might and main tutu-pigi-

tutu-pigi-tutu-pi. Who was it that said birds have no song in the

tropics? Any ear can hear that they are singing, and a good ear, when

familiarized with the novel music, can detect as much melody in it as in

that of any others. I presume, however, that association has more to do

with the pleasure derived from the singing of birds than with most other

human enjoyments.

The expedition, Krumen and all, save myself, being now in a high state

of preservation, it was judged advisable to make a second

reconnaissance. Mr. Saker had written to us on the 26th, telling us not

to wait for him. The letter, by-the-by, did not reach us till the

evening of the 29th, showing that our lazybones who had escorted the

returner had spent four days upon a two days’ march. Knowing that the

‘book’ which they brought up would probably mention their desertion,

they prudently left it with one of their number in the rear, and the

rest pressed on to receive a glass of rum. At 10·25 A.M., on the 2nd

January, 1862, Messrs. Calvo and Mann set out, accompanied by six Krumen

and King Eyo, with provisions for four days. I despatched about the same

time six other ‘boys’ to Victoria, in case Mr. Saker might wish to

return, and remained on the hill-side with Selim Aga and the four

fellows that completed the party.

Messrs. Calvo and Mann suddenly returned before sunset two days after

they had started. The latter had brought on a relapse, and looked weak

and weary; besides which they had allowed the Krumen to finish their

water and their stores. Moreover, they had forgotten to furnish

themselves with liquor; and the coldness of the mountain water had begun

to tell upon them. They had marched, after leaving camp, in an hour and

three quarters, to Mount Helen; and after resting thirty-five minutes

had reached in another hour and a half Mount Isabel, where they found

the water-breakers safe but rather leaky. Whilst their Krumen prepared a

roosting-place in an old crater, a grassy hollow, promising defence from

the alpine violence of the night winds, they ascended to the summit, and

with great difficulty. The azimuth compass had no stand, and their

‘tropical hands’ were dead with cold. They took bearings of the

principal points in the glorious sub-range of southern mountains over

which they had passed; and they found the dormitory anything but

unpleasant.

At six A.M., on the 3rd January, the reconnoitrers arose, breakfasted,

fed their men, and were _en route_ before the hour was ended. They

followed the west—not, as we did, the east—of Lava Bed No. 3, and found

it, contrary to what had been expected, by far the longer and rougher of

the two. After about an hour and a half of marching they reached the

grass-grown hills at the foot of the Pico Grande, and M. Mann named the

tallest, on the left hand or westward, ‘Mount Hooker.’ Passing round its

western flank, they found in the northern base a tolerably sheltered

nighting-place, where they deposited their luggage, under the charge of

three Krumen. Accompanied by Messrs. John, George, Clipper, and Tom

Pepper, whose activity was stimulated by hopes of cloth, after an hour’s

rest they reached the base of the great cone at 11 A.M. As had been

agreed upon in camp, they turned towards the left, or Albert Crater,

instead of ascending the front, and, rounding the western side, they

wound up the slope, which, overlaid with fine black scoriæ and ashes,

often caused them to ‘sink two steps backwards for one forwards.’ They

also found the wind so strong that it nearly blew them down. When near

the summit, they caught sight of a huge depression, distant about four

miles, and separated from the mountain by a long slope of cinder. They

described it as an ‘_effondrement_,’ a vast chasm in the earth, oval or

horse-shoe shaped, with a longer diameter of not less than three miles;

the sides, sparsely clad with shrubs and plants, fell sheer down. The

depth they placed at the enormous figure of 3000 feet; and the cavity

appeared large enough for the Peak to fit into it.

At 1·45 P.M., after nearly four hours’ climb, the explorers stood upon

the high back wall of Albert Crater, which commands a view of the whole

summit. They stayed there for half an hour; hung up the self-registering

thermometers, and left the top, too much benumbed by cold—the mercury

sank to 45° 50′—for further observations. The violent north-easter

seemed to pierce through them, and they descended the south-western

slope, between Albert and Victoria Craters, where they found what M.

Mann called ‘a wall of granite in huge blocks.’ At 2·30 P.M. they

descended as rapidly as possible; and at 3·10 P.M., after forty-five

minutes of slipping and sliding, they reached the rendezvous. King Eyo,

Black Beggar, and the handsome Ire—so called because he was probably the

ugliest nigger ever invented—having finished the whole breaker of water,

Sio, _alias_ Tom Pepper, was sent to fetch another from Mount Isabel.

Not relishing a solitary walk, he persuaded Clipper and King Eyo to

accompany him. The precious two started, and were seen no more that

night. The travellers did not raise the tent; they spent the hours of

darkness under _la belle étoile_, at the foot of the grassy cone, and

found the air exceedingly cold.

On the 4th January the reconnoitrers were delayed till 7·30 A.M. for

water, of which two breakers came instead of one. The idle Krumen had

suffered as they deserved: one half with thirst, the other with cold.

King Eyo, the sablest of youths, looked almost white, and threw himself

about as one with a colic. M. Mann’s relapse necessitating immediate

return, the party moved at 9·30 A.M.: reaching Mount Isabel, they saw a

strange apparition. On the opposite side of the crater stood a native

hunter, with his two small prick-eared curs, adorned with bell

necklaces. The man was habited in a rug round the loins, and held

nothing in his hand but a staff or spear. These tribes ignore the bow

and arrow. The poor wretch halted, spell-bound, which is not to be

wondered at, by the sight. Evil spirits in Africa are white and ugly, by

the same rule that they are black and ugly in Europe; and he must have

thought himself in dire proximity to what we should term the Devil.

Perhaps he saw before him the Great Pale Face, who haunts the big water,

guarding the treasures of the mountain.[84] M. Mann, wishing a sketch,

motioned him to approach: he waved an emphatic negative, tossed his

arms, and simultaneously shouted, with a peculiar wild cry, to his dogs,

who were drawing near the strangers, making them turn to the right-

about, like a file of soldiers. After this he fled wildly down the hill-

side, and was seen no more. The Bwea people, on the east of the

mountain, and the mountaineers generally, travel high up. Perhaps this

phenomenon accounts for the crashing of the wood which I had heard on

the previous night.[85] It is lucky that the country people are not less

cowardly than the Krumen. Of these, four out of the five, all armed with

matchets, ‘bolted’ from one naked hunter; John being the only brave that

stood his ground. They were not found till near the camp, when,

_mendaces in excelsis_, they declared that they had run away to warn

their masters, who had remained behind making collections, of the danger

that threatened the party.

I had been suffering from ague on that afternoon, and it much resembled

the pleasant inebriating attack at Lagos. It is, I have said, a highly

intellectual complaint; it heightens all the faculties; the memory

becomes most acute; visions of past things flit before the mental eye

with startling vivacity; flattering hopes of the future bubble from the

brain. You sing, sketch novels, compose _ariettes_, and spin verse like

an Italian improvisatore. In this state of wide-awakeness to all around,

I fancied, about 5 P.M., that a Kru cry was sounding in the distance,

and ordered those in camp to answer it. They obeyed, but manifestly

thought me _exalté_. However, at 5·30 P.M. we saw a line of bearers

winding along Earthwork Crater, a few yards above our heads, and I had

the pleasure of finding that there had been no accident. M. Mann had

been somewhat disappointed. He brought home some fine specimens of

ranunculus, monica, senecio, and leucathoë,[86] besides gramineæ,

helichrysum, veronica, cytisus, and others, inhabiting the lava-fields

which surround the highest mountain. But he had found only six species

not growing in the temperate region; the rest were the lower forms,

stunted and wilted by wind and cold. He discovered no Alpine types. The

conifer which he had met at San Thomé, 5000 feet above sea-level, is

absent from these mountains even at double that altitude. The evening

passed pleasantly in recounting past adventures. The four fugitive

Krumen were duly punished; the ringleader received three dozen; the

others were at once sent back with full breakers to Mount Isabel, and

all forgot for a week the taste of pork and grog.

On the next day our party upon the hill-side received another accession.

At 8 A.M. the usual shouts and answers in the Victoria road announced

the return of Mr. Saker, who was accompanied by Mr. R. Smith, a

coadjutor of the Camaroons Mission, six Krumen, and three Camaroons men,

who deserted _en masse_ on the third day. Their ascent presented few

novelties. Myombi and Botani had been harangued by Mr. Johnson upon the

folly of ill-treating white men who could close the market to them: and

this threat of what is to an African the worst of penalties, made both

chiefs and people exceptionally civil. They had persuaded two Bosumbo

men to carry part of the loads to Mapanya, and a few leaves of tobacco

had induced old ‘Balmat’ to accompany them to ‘Ridge Camp.’ They had

also found a short cut between Bosumbo and Mapanya, enabling them to

avoid the long eastern _détour_ over bad ground which we had made during

our ascent. They had performed the journey in fifteen hours and fifteen

minutes of actual marching, and Mr. Saker estimated the distance at

twenty-three miles.[87]

We now became a thoroughly dilapidated party, ‘a pitiful company for

mountain research.’ Mr. Saker took sights all day, and had fever every

night; Mr. Smith worked out a two months’ tertian which he had caught in

the Camaroons River; my foot was still painful; and M. Mann suffered so

much from an old dysentery that it was thought better for him to try

change of air. It is frequently the effect of the hill climates in

India, and even of a return from the tropics to England, to draw forth a

disease whose seeds are latent in the system, after which crisis the

sufferer may expect a complete return of health.

Active steps were also rendered necessary by the state of our

provisions. The twenty-five hungry Krumen had got through 1000 lbs. of

rice in a fortnight, no stores had arrived in the adjoining river from

England, and Victoria market supplied nothing but yams and kokos, the

latter of which were sold at eight per leaf of tobacco. ‘Balmat’ made

his appearance in camp, accompanied by two youths equipped with sword

and musket, and hung round with little gourds containing their

ammunition. They brought a present of provisions, and, by way of

securing a larger return gift, they declared, in their loud and barking

voices, that a neighbouring ‘king,’ hearing of white men being upon the

mountain, had declared war against them for allowing us to pass,—a

campaign that may terminate in the loss of a goat. They promised to hunt

the neighbourhood for ‘bush-beef’[88] and to supply us with meat, but we

could not place faith in their words.

The Krumen were sent under Black Will to bring up the remainder of our

stores from Victoria on the 6th of January, and four days later M. Mann,

with ten others, took with him sixteen dollars, cloth, and matchets, to

tempt the people to sell stock. He was accompanied by the Judge, who had

reasons for wishing to reach Fernando Po before the next mail departure,

and who, though the only sound man amongst four sick, found his position

the reverse of pleasant. He took with him King Eyo, whose departure was

a relief; the little rascal’s extreme idleness was really painful to

contemplate. A manchila was rigged up for the invalid, but the shaking

and jolting of the inexperienced bearers soon rendered it unendurable.

The travellers left at 10 A.M., and with great difficulty reached

Victoria that night. Their men shirked as usual, lagged behind, and,

when urged on with the stick, threatened to desert.

On the 13th of January, Mr. Smith still remaining unwell, Mr. Saker set

out with four Krumen to effect his ascent. Starting at 7·30 A.M., he

made for Mount Isabel, and boiled thermometers. After halting there two

hours, he entered upon Lava Bed No. 3, and, warned by Judge Calvo’s and

M. Mann’s experience, followed its eastern side. Another two hours

placed him at the foot of a small grassy cone, which he named Mount

Arthur, and he camped in the rim or hollow; round the base were blocks

of lava, rising eight or ten feet from a bed in front and forming a kind

of shelter. The night was most enjoyable, the mercury at dawn showing

33° Fah.

On the next day Mr. Saker left his camp at 6 A.M. and ascended the long

south-eastern ridge, where lava-lumps and stunted tufts of grass

afforded a superior footing. After three hours and ten minutes of hard

climbing, the party stood on Mount Victoria, about 150 feet below the

highest summit. The day was favourable and windless. A single B. P.

observation was made, 188° (Fah.), temperature 59°. As will presently

appear, much importance cannot be attached to this, the first of

observations. Water cannot be overboiled, but it is fair to suspect the

lower estimate of underboiling. The descent of the cone occupied him one

hour and a half. He left his camp at 2·10 P.M. on the same day, and

reached us a little before dark. Mr. Smith had already commenced the

descent; on the next day he was followed by Mr. Saker. After ten hours

of actual walking they arrived without accident at their home.

The following is the only account of this third ascent which has yet

appeared; it was first printed in some missionary paper, and bore date

10th February, 1862:—

‘In company with M. Mann and Mr. Consul Burton we reached an elevation

of pure air, and stayed there some days. After a careful survey of the

high region where we were encamped, I left to explore the peak, and

ascended from the south side. During my absence M. Mann had ascended the

north side, and Consul Burton had attempted the west face.[89] After a

day’s weary toil over beds of lava, we reached the foot of a small mount

somewhat sheltering to weary travellers. There I spread my blanket and

passed the night. It was a glorious evening, but somewhat cold; at early

dawn I found the glass at 31° Fah. But the sun rose: a cloudless

morning, and it soon grew warm. At 6 A.M. I began the ascent, and at 10

reached the southern summit or ridge. By this time it was very warm, and

the wind that sweeps so fearfully in these regions seemed hushed, and

light, fleecy clouds ever and anon shut in the surrounding scenery.

Towards the east I saw a range of mountains that I had never before

observed, and took their bearings, but the attempt to secure the angles

of summit towards the west was not so successful; as, ere I could bring

two points together, one would be obscured. At this point I found the

water boil at 188°, thermometer 58°. This gives an elevation nearly the

same as our charts give it from trigonometrical survey below. My attempt

to explore the crater was a failure; the whole was enshrouded in cloud.

The crater must be of enormous extent; the two most prominent peaks we

named Victoria and Albert (little did we think then, in December, that

the nation and our beloved Sovereign were then being plunged into

irreparable grief); and those peaks present a large angle at seven

miles’ distance. I regret I did not previously take it, and my failure

to take angles leaves me in much ignorance of what I wished to

ascertain. After a long delay I began the descent, and at _two_ reached

my nightly place, and after rest and refreshment set out on return to

our camp. Here I found the Consul a little better, but still unable to

walk much. As I had stayed on this second run up the mountains ten days,

I was compelled to leave for this place and for Cameroons.

‘It is only needful to mention here that in those visits to the highest

regions we have ascertained that there are now native towns at about

3500 feet elevation, that cultivation extends but little further, and

that beyond these heights there is every inducement to seek a temporary

home for invalids and wearied missionaries.’

[Footnote 80: A popular Spanish phrase for home-sickness, from which the

soldiers at Fernando Po suffer severely. The idea is that the shoulder-

blade falls and the arm loses strength. The remedy is very Oriental; I

have seen it at El Medinah. The patient lies upon the ground, a friend

walks over and tramples upon him, and he recovers.]

[Footnote 81: In the East hidden treasures consist of gold and jewels,

and the magical methods by which they are brought to light are applied

to milk by the pastoral Somal and the Irish, and to cotton cloth and

copper-rods by the trading West Africans. The only explanation to the

natives of our ascending the mountain was the existence of these

treasures.]

[Footnote 82: See Appendix IV.]

[Footnote 83: Even at Fernando Po I find a stove absolutely necessary in

mornings and evenings for health and comfort; but it is only the old

African who thinks of so apparently unnatural a procedure.]

[Footnote 84: The reader will find this explained in Appendix II.]

[Footnote 85: On the 1st February M. Mann, when collecting plants

sheltered in a hollow from the strong wind, had a similar rencontre. ‘I

suddenly,’ he says, ‘observed a native close by, who, without seeing me,

had unwittingly dropped upon me. When I addressed him he stretched out

his hand, and after a few minutes pronounced the word “tobacco.” I

called to him to come nearer, which he was unwilling to do, and when I

went towards him I saw that he trembled with fright. He was a head

taller than I, and nearly twice as stout, without any clothes except a

small piece of thin cloth about his loins: he had arms and a cutlass. I

made him understand that he should bring me a hyæna and a gazelle, which

he promised, and slowly went away, looking back as though afraid that I

should lay hands upon him.’]

[Footnote 86: In this region the temperate zone, botanically speaking,

would extend from 5000 feet to the summit. In more northerly mountains,

Etna for instance, the zones are usually reckoned to be five, viz.

lowland or cultivated, wooded, shrubby, grassy, and of cryptogams. For

sanitarial purposes the torrid would extend from the shore to 1500 feet

above sea-level, the temperate from 1500 to 7000 feet, and the frigid to

the top.]

[Footnote 87: This is about double the true figure, 13 geographical

miles. I made a practice of asking each member of the expedition his

estimate of every march, registered the lowest, and found on comparing

it with actual measurement by the cord that it was usually twice too

long. When instruments are not used this must ever be expected. But it

is no objection to the general credibility of a book if its 300 miles of

distance are reduced to 120. This sounds like a truism: apparently,

however, it is not generally acknowledged to be true.]

[Footnote 88: Formerly there were wild cattle upon the Peak of Fernando

Po; but they were probably let loose there by Spaniards in the last

century. We heard of none on Camaroons Mountain.]

[Footnote 89: Mr. Saker knew perfectly the facts of the case, which he

here ‘pretty considerably’ misstates.]

CHAPTER V.

THE FINAL ASCENT.

In the lower regions the ‘smokes,’ or hazy season, last from early

December to the end of January, and they seem gradually extending up the

mountain. On the 12th January the clouds rose for the first time

overhead. On the 19th, after a still, clear morning, the mist settled

upon us, and a few heavy drops, heralded by the smell of rain mixing

with the nutty odour of the forest, fell at 4·30 P.M., and between 5 and

6 P.M. Then a double bank of clouds, lightning cumuli, with flesh-tint

lights and steely-blue shades upon a grey ground, forging up

portentously from the S.E. to the zenith, showed us for the first time a

mountain storm.

On beginning, the thunder growled as usual far below our feet;

frequently it seemed to ascend, and the low continuous rumbling of the

distance was broken by rattling peals, seemingly around us. The

lightning flashed bright from N. to S., veering to the S.W., and lastly

to the N.W.; it was mostly globular, shooting like Roman-candles through

the lower air, whilst in places a web-work of vivid zigzag flame played,

darting into groups, over the mountain and the dwarf crater near us. The

wind, at this time usually northerly, blew heavily from the west, and

the storm once more worked round to the S.E., with occasional

coruscations from the N.W. and due N. Little Camaroons appeared to be

the centre of attraction; the head was covered with a thick cap of

cumuli, dense and grandiose, that moved gradually eastward. As the loud

thunder died away in the several gradations of distance—sheet-lightning

still appeared in the north—a cold wind set in from the east, and,

freshening to a gale, brought with it an hour’s heavy rain from the

tumultuous rollers around. After two hours of atmospheric commotion all

was again quiet, and a clear moonlit night induced sound sleep.

The savage appearance of the lightning upon these Acroceraunian Hills

made me guard against possible accidents, by planting upon the southern

lip of Earthwork Crater directly above our camp a young tree with a

matchet lashed to the top. It was ‘strong medicine’ to the dejected

Krumen, who disliked the appearance of fire-globes shooting across the

path at least as much as their master did. Our rude _paratonnère_,

however, was not struck, although it had the best of opportunities.

The 22nd January was to me a _dies mirabilis_. At 8·30 A.M. there was

another bad storm, lightning volleying, and thunder cracking and pealing

in unpleasant proximity. The phenomenon wore the usual aspect of

Tornado,—the Turner: beginning in the N.W., it veered round through the

S.E., and returned to its original direction, often dying away and

presently resuscitating. At 10 A.M. a high north-easterly gale brought

with it large scattered gouts, which presently thickened to a close

shower. I was afterwards informed that those below saw the north-eastern

flank of Pico Grande sheeted with snow.

At noon the weather had improved, and the tonic of oxygen developed by

the storm enabled me to leave my leafy bower, after nearly four weeks of

not unpleasant prison. Selim reported that Fernando Po was in sight for

the first time. I crept a few yards along the south-western slope of

Earthwork Crater, and, armed with sketching materials, sighted a

peculiar view. The mists, at first thickly rising from the south-west,

thinned out and floated northwards. They met and tussled, wearying

themselves in the fray, now rendering everything invisible beyond ten

yards, then opening out a prospect of twenty miles. At length the sickly

sun became victorious. The horizon seemed raised high above its proper

place, and in the dark grey abyss below purple-grey masses of cloud

floated over a sea undistinguishable from the misty sky, whilst on the

extreme line of sight rose Fernando Po, a ghastly form, like one of

Ossian’s favourite mountains. The Peak, which was apparently double,

bore 229° 15′ (M.), and Clarence, or Sta. Isabel, a darker dot at the

base, was 225°.

The change of air and scene worked miracles for me: the next day and the

next saw me on foot in picnicking guise, attended by my factotum and two

Kruboys, laying down a base to check the distance of Mount Helen, and

sketching the several craters that lay upon our line of ascent.

At 1·30 P.M. on the 25th of January, M. Mann returned with three Krumen;

he had made a gallant march, having left Victoria but yesterday morning.

His health had been restored by a diet of iron-rust burned in brandy or

rum, and cold arrowroot tempered with chalk,[90] the prescription of the

good Mr. Johnson. The traveller had procured little in the way of

provision, only forty kokos were forthcoming: for his scarlet blanket he

had been offered, in ascending series, a pig, a fat goat, a small boy,

and a large girl; but he could not afford to part with it.