KILIMA-NJA.RO.
THERE is something deeply depressing, at least to some minds, and certainly to our own, in most accounts of African explorations. African travellers have seldom been of the quality of Arctic explorers, who seem to have all badness frozen out of them, and have not often possessed the literary skill of travellers in Asia and South America ; but still they have been usually men of high qualities, courageous, devoted, and above all patient,—men, on the whole, whose efforts can be followed with sympathetic and even admiring interest. They have seen much that is new, much that is wonderful ; and all they have seen has been on a grand scale. Still, from the days o Mungo Park downwards their narratives have been tiresome. It is excessively difficult to remember what they have discovered ; the regions they have traversed seem all more or less alike, and the people they have visited vary only in degrees either of detestableness or hopelessness. The area covered is so vast, the features of Nature are so gigantic, and so constantly repeated, the want of moderation in everything is so manifest, the tribes are so many, so black, and usually so bloodthirsty and bad; that the imaginative hopefulness which narratives of exploration usually stir is entirely wanting. Interest flags, and the memory refuses to perform its office. Europe has been investigating Africa for two hundred years, but it has not found much ; it has no clear notion of the Continent, and does not feel as if, though the exploration is getting fairly complete, the
huge mass had been permanently added to the general possessions of mankind. If anything turned away its attention for. twenty years, Europe might forget Africa again. One reason of this is the small number of those who go. Scarcely any one who reads about either Western or Eastern Africa—that is, the bulk in area of the Continent—feels, in consequence, a wish to go there, nor do we detect in any one an appreciation or even a definite idea of the special scenery to be observed. Usually even those who have real much have only a confused notion of great, districts, covered with rank grass ; and tall mountains not to be ascended ; and wide, unwholesome rivers, covered with a floating fever-giving malaria ; and huge, swampy deltas, full of dense jungles, and wild beasts, and rare trees ; and tribes, now untameably ferocious and now inexplicably gentle, but without even rudimentary notions of order, or policy, or relation to the general world. If they do not kill the traveller, they forget him ; do not care if he is killed, and open indifferently to let him pass as their own jungles might. Nobody thinks of a walk in Equatorial Africa with a sense of desire, or hopes to see a great city grow there, or fancies that room for a kingdom might be found there, or believes that Africa will yield any of the great intellectual fascinations which have so often lured travellers into Asia. We have read most books on African travel ; and after making all allowances, we find among them none with the attraction of, say, Mr. Atkinson's book on Eastern Siberia—that wonderful example of word-painting—or Mr. Gihnour's enchanting sketch of life among the Mongols, or Abbe Hue's account of Chins, or even the inexplicably dull but instructive books of which so many have been poured out about India, without one of them giving an idea of what India is like.
It is, therefore, with a real sense of relief, a genuine pleasure of a deep kind, that we read an account like that which Mr. H. H. Johnston has just given to the Royal Geographical Society of his five months' expedition to Kilimanjaro. Mr. Johnston, an experienced African traveller, as bold as Stanley, and full of the quick perceptions and literary skill which most African travellers lack, was sent out by the British Association and the Royal Society in combination in a thoroughly sensible way, with a definite and limited, and therefore attainable object. He was to explore Kilima-njaro, the lofty but short range of mountains, ninety miles long by forty broad, which lie in Eastern Equatorial Africa, between the great Lake Victoria Nyanza and the Northern portion of continental Zanzibar. The mountain range is not very far from the sea, and, therefore, accessible ; it was known to rise in points to an altitude of 18,000 feet, and to be covered in its highest peaks with perpetual snow ; and as it bad hardly been visited, and must possess all climates, it was thought that wild beasts or flowers, or trees, or even human beings of interest, might be found in its recesses. It was, in fact, a kind of African Roraima, with this difference, that, unlike the wonderful Guiana mountain which mortal foot has probably never trod since the creation, and which is possibly inaccessible even to wild beasts, Kilima-njaro was believed to be within human reach. It proved to be so in a rare degree. Mr. Johnston fouud it on his arrival the Lakeland of Africa, the one solitary morsel of this detestable continent yet discovered to which the epithet of " delightful " can fairly be applied, the one place which, when the continent has been subdued, and the blacks have been elevated, say, to the level of Bengalees or Peruvians, and cities have been built, and Europeans are clustering everywhere, as they do in Asia, in little, energetic, over-vitalised groups, doing everything, claiming everything, and generally over-perceptible, ought to be claimed as the International Park or huge general sanitarium for Eastern Africa. The range is as healthy as if it were in Europe, and as ascendable as if it were in England. Mr. Johnston ascended up to the perpetual snow, to within 2,000 ft. of the top of Kebo, 18,000 ft. high ; and at 16,000 ft. found it scarcely freezing, and only felt once the beginning of mountain-sickness. He, though not especially a powerful man, had walked up alone, "without a stick," and apparently without much effort, and without an obstacle, except that arising from a cold mist which a Cockney going up Snowdon would, he says, have despised. He found the buffaloes' footprints 14,000 ft. above the Bea, saw elephants 13,000 ft. in air, and knows that great antelopes wander right up to the snow-line. In ascending, his party "crossed the cultivated zone, which ended at about 5,500 ft. in that part,
entered, a healthy district with pleasant grassy knolls and many streams of running water, and camped beside a lovely fernchoked brook at 6,500 ft., the whole ascent being very gradual. The following: day they passed through stunted forest, not unlike an English woodland, where the trees, however, were hung with unfamiliar ferns and creepers, and where deliciouslyscented parasitic begonias trailed their pink flower-bells from branch to branch. The drac,sena, which is cultivated by the Wa-Chagga to form hedges, here grew wild. Tree-ferns were abundant and handsome. Above 7,000 ft. the orchilla moss draped the forest trees in long grey festoons. Tracks of elephantwere very numerous. The other noticeable inhabitants of the forest were dark-blue touracoes and tree-hyraxes. 'Wart. hogs were occasionally met with up to 8,000 ft. At 9,000 ft. they camped _for the night by a small spring of water in the midst of a grand bit of forest, not of that stunted character which marked the lower woods. He caught a chameleon and many beetles here, and also shot touracoes and pigeons."
At 11,000 ft., where Mr. Johnston built a village, and found himself eating beefsteaks, brought in by the natives," with a furious appetite," he left his followers and, with only three men, advanced upwards to the snow-line, through a country which only in places lost its green, the barren belts having been burnt-up by human agency, probably with some notion of culture. " Small pink gladioli studded the ground in numbers. At an altitude of nearly 13,000 feet bees and wasps were still to be seen, and bright little sunbirds darted from bush to bush, gleaning their repast of honey. A little higher they found warm springs, the thermometer showing the temperature of the trickling mad to be 91° Fahr. Mounting high above the rivulet the scenery became mach harsher. Vegetation only grew in dwarfed patches as they passed the altitude of 13,000 feet, and the ground was covered with boulders, more or less big, apparently .lying in utter confusion, and without any definite direction. They were not very difficult to climb over, and even seemed to act as irregular stone steps upwards. In their interstices heaths of the size of large shrubs grew with a certain luxuriance. About 13,700 feet he saw the last resident bird, a kind of stonechat apparently. It went in little cheery flocks, and showed such absence of fear that he had to walk away 'from it before shooting, to avoid shattering his specimen." Mr. Johnston's followers left him near the top, oppressed with superstitious fears; but lie still wandered upwards, as he says, with " stupid " perseverance, but really with that determination not to fail which sometimes overmasters Englishmen, until, at a height of 16,000 ft., he caught through a rift in the mist a glimpse of the snow-covered cone of Kebo, apparently quite near, and only 2.000 ft. above him. He turned at last, driven back by the damp cold, and the loneliness, and the fear of losing himself utterly, and at 15,000 ft. re-entered the region of vegetation. He found his settlement untouched ; and on October 18th began his descent on a new line, meeting some reward in" scenery of great beauty. On one day they travelled for hours through a delightful country, made for a European settlement, and singularly English in look, with open grassy spaces, which seemed in the distance ruddy cornfields, and shady woods -and copses full of fine timber. Plenty of running streams of clear water intersected this gently sloping, almost level plateau. which, although such a tempting idyllic land, was entirely uninhabited, save by buffaloes and elephants. The average elevation of this country was between 8,000 ft. and 7,000 ft., and the temperature consequently almost cool, ranging from 43 at night to 70° in the midday warmth. After some four hours' walking from their camp, they crossed the long ridge that marked the southern flank of Kimawenzi, and began to descend the eastern slope of the mountain. Soon they emerge& on a kind of heath-like country, and then looked forth on a splendid view stretching from Mwika to the mountains of Baru and Ukambani (the Kiulu range), with Jipe on one hand, and the River Tzavo on the other. At their feet lay the banana groves ef the inhabited belt of Useri and Rombo." The complete exploration which Mr. Johnston had intended could not be made for want of funds, but he declares his willingness to go back.; and if he is willing, he has only to lift his hand, and any amount of needful cash will be instantly forthcoming. Here at last is a true wild laud unknown to Europeans, and within reasonable distance, and with everything which makes exploration attractive,--a fine climate, glorious scenery, peaks higher than Mount Blanc up to which women could walk, endless game, rare orchids, rare birds, new peoples, and plenty of beefsteaks.
Kilima-njaro must be a sportsman's paradise. We venture to say there are forty men in England willing to accompany Mr. Johnston, and to pay 25.000 for the privilege of doing it; and that he may take his next trip accompanied by a fall train of geologists, naturalists, photographers, and huntsmen, till all Kilima-njaro is astir. Indeed, if Mr. Johnston is not quick he will be too late, for his account has been before the world a whole week; and by this time Lord Dunraven ought, in the regular course of things, to have bought the mountain—we suppose the Zanzibar man has some real or imaginary rights there— the Duke of Sutherland ought to have organised a prospecting expedition for gold, and twenty German savants, with promises from Bismarck in their pockets, ought to be crowding to Zanzibar. There may even be a scramble, as Lord Aberdare smilingly said, to annex Kilima-njaro ; and we should not be surprised if Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, who is nothing if not geographica], in his next speech at Eye, furiously denounced Mr. Gladstone for not having sent so much as a gunboat to the top of Kebo. Seriously, Mr. Johnston has discovered a wonderful thing, an unknown tract of Equatorial Africa, where Europeans can live and explore with health and pleasure, amid scenery as'beautiful as the Alps, and entirely new. His book upon it, if he writes one, should be a grand success ; but it is a pity that he should throw away his time on books. There are plenty of them in the world ; but there are not many persons with the right to regard a lofty African range as "Those hills, you know, where last summer I had such an enjoyable time. Splendid scenery, elephants and wild buffaloes, glorious orchids, and oh, the beefsteaks !"
Previous page
