Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/204

4 for half a day together, and the snow was plainly seen from a very great distance, more especially when the sun was near the horizon in the morning and evening. I remained in Arusha 6 days. The Wa-massai, Heaven only knows through whom, had got wind of my intentions, and had sent a band of some 2000 men to meet me and resist my passage. All manner of negotiations, entreaties, promises of presents, and threats availed nothing: I always received the same reply—“The red man must not set foot on their soil, else their cattle would surely perish.” They insulted my people who were sent out to fetch firewood and water, and chased them back into camp, until my porters got so thoroughly cowed that, dreading desertion on an extensive scale, I resolved to pursue my way due north, and at once undertake the ascent of the snowy peak.

Three days’ march over the table-land, about 2200 feet high, which separates Arusha from Djagga, brought me within the territory of Uru. Here everything seemed at first to be going on well, but very soon it became apparent that treachery was meditated, so I quitted it just as the unfriendly feeling began to manifest itself, fortunately without any loss on my side. In two days more I reached another small kingdom, that of Mossi.

I was at first most hospitably received here, and the youthful Sultan Kimandara was most courteous; but very soon he began the old African habit of lying and shuffling. I perceived that I could not hope to be any more successful with him than with others, unless I undertook to do something unusual. I therefore, under these circumstances, requested the young sultan to drink blood with me, since, as his warriors had told me, I must either do this or leave the country. Of course the brother in blood of their sultan was now an entirely different personage, and two days later I set out for Kilima-ndjaro, Dr. Kärsten, six of my own people, and two Wa-Djagga forming my company. We passed the first night at an elevation of about 6500 feet, the second at 11,000. For the first 8500 feet or thereabouts, there was a beautiful growth of underwood, after which vegetation thinned off quite suddenly; trees and brushwood continued to grow as high as 9500 feet, but above this there were no more ferns, nothing but shrubs with very short stems, and a species of Erica. At last only a few roots covered the soil, where it was not strewn over with huge masses of rock.

On the third day I left my people behind at an elevation of 12,800 feet, and went forward with Dr. Kärsten; ere long, however, my two negroes refused to advance farther, and my white companion was suffering so severely from headache that I was compelled to halt. Barometric and hypsometric observations gave an elevation of 13,900 feet. The actual snow limit, however, was