Chapter II: We Encamp at ‘mann’s Spring.’ (2)

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.

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.]