the

to strike the Ururi valley, shown by | of blood-brotherhood, and then they the three most recent maps to exist sold us food. After we had bought as between two ranges of mountains; the much as we wanted, my intelligent larger and more easterly of these has friend and blood-brother, Iyutha been named the Aberdare Mountains, son of the principal chief of those parts and I expected to find within them a – guided us to the north, to the point nucleus of old rocks, forming what is where the steppes of Laikipia rise known to geologists as a "horst." I highest, into the forests of Kenya. did not find the horst, which is not Here the loads and most of the porters very surprising, as I could not find the were left with the head askari, while I mountains, though we marched over turned east into the forest zone. the site upon which they were sup- The next three days were amongst posed to be. The fact is that Thom- the most dismal I have ever spent, and son failed to recognize that one great the work was as unlike mountaineering peak, known as Settima, which he saw as it well could be. We literally had from the north, was the same moun- to hew our way through dense, dark, tain that he had previously sceu from damp forest and bamboo jungle. the west; two mountain chains have, Overhead was a dense canopy of vegetherefore, found their way upon the tation, that made it dark, condensed

map instead of one volcanic cone. the mist that always hung over the That one who is usually so correct forests and dripped steadily upon us. should have made this mistake, is At every blow of the mattocks, with probably only due to the fact that his which we cut our way through the attention was then mainly occupied by jungle or cleared the elephant tracks, the Masai. We were more fortunate the sodden bamboos poured showerin this respect, as we got across with- baths upon us. Our feet and legs were out any encounter with the Masai; we kept wet and cold by the undergrowth sometimes saw the smoke of their of ferns, selaginellas, and stingingkraals in the distance, and then nettles, and the swamps through which promptly took to the woods, and thus we had to wade. The damp cold managed to pass unnoticed. The guide chilled us to the marrow, so that every and I usually spent the afternoon hour we had to stop to light fires and scouting ahead, in order to find a clear warm up the porters, who otherwise route for the next day's march. would have been too numbed to proceed.

On the morning of the fourth day we emerged from the forests to the Alpine pasturages above, and for a while basked in the sunshine. The weather, however, soon changed, and we spent the afternoon in a scramble through a blizzard of sleet and hail, and finally had to pitch our camp on a frozen peat swamp. We were now above the bare slope that can be seen

We reached Kikuyu in safety, and there again were in trouble for food. Though no European had been there, the fame of the guns and of the commercial methods of some of them had preceded us. Our request for admission to purchase food was met by an angry refusal. "Some white men came a few harvests back to our friends away there at Karthuri; they stormed the villages; they took what food they wanted, and then burnt the rest. in the sketches of Von Höhnel and When the elders asked for payment they were shot, while the warriors were carried off as slaves into the land of the Masai, and we have heard of them no more. After three days of "shauri," argument and the suspicions of the Wakikuyu and persuaded them that our aims were peaceful; we contracted the ceremony

Hobley, which was identified by the one as the crater wall, and by the other as an east and west ridge, of which the highest peak is one of the points. It is really a rock-slope bared by the ice-fall we allayed of the ancient sheet glacier that once covered the mountain. Next day my tent was carried up to some agglomerate crags on a col, and there I stayed

with four men, using this as a base for | ing, when we should all be warm, only excursions among the southern ridges. replied with his usual stolid fatalism, Next day I climbed a mountain sixteen "Yes, it will come, and, Inshallah " thousand seven hundred feet in height, | (the native equivalent for D.V.), we which is the most conspicuous of the shall be alive when it does come. secondary peaks on this part of the After such a night I did not start mountain. The ascent was not a diffi- next morning feeling quite as "fit" as cult one, but a scramble up a chimney I had hoped to do, especially as I had in a lava cliff was too much for the to go off without my breakfast, all our nerves of the faithful Fundi; as the food having been buried under a snowrocks were very rotten I was not sorry drift. We soon reached some moraines to lower him to the bottom, pull up the we had passed the day before, scaled rope, and finish the climb alone. The the rocks at the old ice-fall, and turned descent to the lake was much more again up a steep slope of roches mouamusing until a raging snowstorm came tonnées, covered in places with moraine matter, to the end of the principal southern glacier.

on.

This day's reconnaissance had shown me the only line by which I could at- I followed up the left lateral motack the peak, or even get well above raine, as I was afraid of rock-falls on the névé-fields, so I moved a shelter the right, and, taking once or twice to tent and two men to a valley which I the glacier, reached the main south propose to name after Count Teleki, as arête, at a poiut sixteen thousand eight in it he reached his highest point, and hundred feet in height. I thence I prepared for an early start next day. struck off northward across the névéA snowstorm came on in the afternoon, field, but as the crevasses were snowand continued throughout the night. covered it required considerable care. Several times I thought the tent would As the crest became steeper I was able be blown away, but about two in the to keep along it, tying the rope round morning I was alarmed by the rush and rocks and pulling it up after me by a whistle of slipping snow; with a crash loop. Soon, however, the ridge bethe wall of turf and stone, that we had came corniced. At first I risked a built above the camp, fell in upon the traverse across the glacier to the left, tent. The doorway was blocked by but I soon reached a point where the snow and earth, but one desperate jerk dangers ahead were too serious to justore up the loosened tent-pegs, and we tify the continuation of the ascent. sprang out into the storm, to examine, The glacier was too crevassed to be as well as I could in the blinding snow-crossed with safety by a man alone, storm, the exact extent of peril that while ice-falls from the cornice swept faced us. The slip, however, had the face of the cliff to the east. It stopped, though it had covered our would have been very rash to have tent ground and buried the few things attempted to work across after the and food we had with us. There was morning sun had been playing so long || no danger, but it was impossible to upon them, and there was nothing for light a fire or reset the tent in the it but a return. I had, however, done darkness and the storm, and there the five things for which I had planned was nothing for it but to jump about, my visit to Kenya: these were (1) to wrapped up in our blankets to keep collect the flora and fauna of the differourselves alive, until the morning. ent zones; (2) to see if an Alpine flora The two Zanzibaris suffered terribly, occurred similar to that of correspondwhich, as the temperature was twenty-ing altitudes in Kilima Njaro; (3) to eight degrees below freezing, was not examine the geological structure of the surprising. My boy Yussuf simply mountain with a view to the determisobbed with the cold, while the more nation of its position in the African stolid Fundi, in answer to my exhorta-mountain system; (4) to see if there tions to cheer up, as the sun was com- be any true glaciers upon it; (5) espe- |

cially to determine whether these had dry religious rites having been per

at any time had a greater extension
than at present.

formed, we again set out, under the guidance of my brother Iyutha, who safely led us, though after much wordy warfare, and threats of a more serious nature, through the district of Kornu.

In the next district progress was again forbidden. "You may not harm me," the chief argued, "but if I let you through, other men will follow afterwards and steal our cattle and goats, and take away our women as

To make the ascent of such a peak as Kenya quite alone, was a task which I had never expected to be able to accomplish. To have gone on further would have risked the results that had been obtained, while my responsibility to my men forbade the incurring of unnecessary risks. Two other strong arguments also urged return: a heavy snowstorm was blowing up from the slaves. You white men," he added, west, and I was getting ravenously hungry. The storm broke before I had got off the arête, and I was therefore glad to reach the moraine and run down it to camp.

Next day I tried again by the main west arête, but was stopped by some vertical cliffs that I could neither scale nor turn, at a slightly lower level than I had reached the day before. While trying to find a way round these, I did not notice that the usual afternoon snowstorm was brewing earlier than usual; it broke upon me before I had got off the steeper part of the arête and rendered some rocks I had easily crossed in the morning quite impassable.

I had therefore to descend on the north side of the arête, missed the paper marks I had left in the ascent, struck the wrong valley, and did not get back to camp and a welcome supper of baked beans till three hours after dark. It was during this descent that I had my last view of the mountain.

"have faces that smile like the sky, but you are bad inside." As I was the only white man who had been in his country, though four others had been not very far away, this was a rather sweeping generalization from very limited data. But as far as the latter part of his verdict was concerned, it was true, for I was then very bad inside. Luckily, however, for me at least, the chief was suffering madly from toothache. An injection of cocaine soothed the aching molar, and the suggestion that if I had to go back the toothache would probably go back too, had a satisfactory effect, and the second district of the Waikuyu was also passed in peace. The return march hence to the coast offered little of general interest, though it proved that much of the great grazing land, known as the "Athi Plains," really belongs to the basin of the Tana, and not of the Athi.

In attempting a brief summary of the geographical results of the expeditiou, one may refer, in the first case, to There the news was awaiting me the industrial prospects. The outlook, that the men I had left at my lower I fear, is not very bright. There are camp were ill; mountain - sickness, very few indications of mineral wealth, frostbite, chilblains, and hemorrhage and as a rule not even enough to found of lungs had seized many of them. Ia mining company on. The soil is was obliged next day to return and doctor them up. These illnesses were Somewhat serious, and as the weather had taken a turn for the worse, it seemed to me I was bound, in fairness to my men, to return to a warmer and lower level.

often rich, as is usually the case when it has been allowed to lie fallow for centuries. The rains, however, are very uncertain, and agricultural produce cannot pay with the present cost of transport. Freight to England is very heavy, so that, even if there were a Four days later we camped on the railway to the coast, produce would be outskirts of the Kikiyu country, and seriously handicapped. Labor is cheap, having bought several days' food, we but except among tribes who have not arranged for permission to cross. Sun-yet been civilized, it is fitful and uncer

tain. Cattle ranching might pay except | the few Kenya birds that I collected. that occasionally the whole country is He has dotted over the map of equatoswept by disease, and the cattle and rial Africa several small, isolated, elebuffaloes are then practically extermi-vated districts, with similar avian nated. Until we know more of the faunas; of these he has made his nature of the disease, cattle-rearing Cameroonian sub-region. It was not must be very risky. There is still known whether the tree-like groundsel plenty of ivory, but even if this were of Kenya was more allied to the spegot for nothing, transport at £300 a cies of Kilima Njaro, Abyssinia, or the ton knocks a hole in the profits. We Cameroons, but the collections made are constantly told that the country is have enabled my colleague, Mr. Baker, very healthy; so it may be for hyænas, to show that this, as well as other spefilaria, and bacteria, but it does not cies, have most affinities with those of seem to be so for Europeans, and for Kilima Njaro. It seemed, moreover, transport animals, human or otherwise. difficult to understand how this high The exploitation of the country is, flora could have passed from one region however, much more promising scien- to the other, for the surveys of Kilima tifically. The new topographical de- Njaro have failed to discover traces of tails discovered are only of technical former more extensive glaciation. It interest; such are the survey of Lakes appeared probable that, as with the Losuguta and Kibibi, which had only Andes, the glaciers were now at their been previously seen from a little dis- greatest. Mr. Whymper kindly tells. tance, the mapping of the islands of me that only twice did he find any Baringo, and the recognition that these traces of roches moutonnées below the are only the remnants of a volcanic present level of the glacier, and these crater, or the collecting of native place were so little below it that a mere local names. More important points were change in wind, for example, would the determination of the nature of the account for these. D'Orbigny, morelake basins in the Rift Valley, the over, argued from the absence of such traverse across Laikipia by a new route evidence that the Andes are still under- & over the site of the so-called Aberdare going elevation. On Kenya there is Mountains, and the determination of clear evidence that the glaciers once the water-parting between the Tana extended for at least forty-five hundred and the Athi. The discovery of the feet below their present termination, glaciers on Kenya is of greater general for at that point there is a fine terminal interest. It is, however, in connection moraine, while erratics occur still lower with the important changes in the in the forests. The lower limit of the structure and climate of the country in Alpine flora is at about ten thousand geologically recent times, and its bear- four hundred feet. At the time of ing on the distribution of the African maximum glaciation it would therefore flora and fauna, that the most interest-have reached the level of five thousand ing geographical results have been feet, and have extended far across the obtained. On Elgon and Kilima Njaro country. it was known that the higher slopes yielded a flora of a kind quite unlike that of any lower part of Africa, and has affinities with those of the uplands of Abyssinia and of the Cape. Count Teleki had observed the presence of a tree like Senecio, or groundsel, much like one of the most typical of these plants on Kilima Njaro, so that the occurrence of the Alpine flora there was probable. Dr. Bowdler Sharpe has shown that the same features hold with

But the geology of the district is likely to help the zoologist in the attempt to unravel the distribution of the African fauna no less than the botanist with the flora. Let us take, in the first case, the land fauna. At the time of maximum glaciation the great extension of the snow must have led to a much greater rainfall in the lower parts of the country. The forests then would have extended lower and helped again, not only to increase the rainfall,,

but distribute it more evenly through-respective applications of these theout the year. There would then, more-ories, and thus the exploration of east Africa is not of value merely as yielding new topographical information, but from its bearing on the principles of geographical evolution.

J. W. GREGORY.

From Chambers' Journal. GREAT CORK FORESTS.

over, possibly not have been any such sharp differentiation into wet and dry scasons. Hence districts that now, as barren, sandy deserts, present a barrier to animal migration, would then have been well-watered, fertile prairies, thin scrub would have been replaced by Woodland, and the present woods would have spread out from the river valleys into extensive forests. Thus all the factors that govern the distribution of animals would have been quite differ- WHEN experts in the science of forent from those that rule at the present estry discourse upon cork forests, they day. It is the same with the fresh- generally confine this significant nowater faunas, though here the change menclature to the cork forests of Spain is due not to the alteration of climate and Portugal, which are reckoned the but of the structure of the country. largest and finest cork-producing forIf we take the fish fauna, it is so mixed ests in the world. The scattered groups up at present that, as Dr. Günther re- of cork-trees growing throughout the cently remarked to me, "The rivers northern coasts of Africa rank next in must have had a very different course priority to those of southern Europe; from the present ones." Professor but they do not appear, even in the Suess has suggested that there was aggregate, to deserve the appellation once a connection between the Nile conferred upon some of the groups of and the Rift Valley, and the collection the latter continent. of fossil mollusca from the old lake beaches renders a connection with the rivers now belonging to the Nile system highly probable. Many of the fish of the Tana, Sabaki, and Athi, as well as of the rivers of the Rift Valley, have been identified by Dr. Günther as Nile and Abyssinian species. There is other evidence which also suggests that before the Nile had cut its course back through the gorge south of Lado, the drainage of the great lakes followed eastward, along the Salisbury Lake chain, into the Rift Valley; thence it probably flowed through the region of Afar, much of which is now below sea level, and finally discharged into the

The Americans, many years ago, took active steps to propagate extensive cork plantations for themselves; and by way of experiment, a large quantity of Portuguese acorns were transmitted in the year 1859 and planted in selected parts of their country; and the result, eleven years after, proved satisfactory so far as the growth was concerned. Some of the trees attained to a height of thirteen feet, and the stem to a diameter of eleven inches, including the bark, which attained a thickness of one inch. This evidently rapid growth would infer that the American zone was all that could be desired for the favorable rearing of cork-trees. But, strange to say, this was not the case; In addition to these questions there although the growth of the tree had is the nature of the Rift Valley, which been exceptionally strong, the quality has yet wider general bearings from of its salient product turned out to be its evidence upon the two brilliant of an inferior character. The cork theories of the evolution of existing generally improves with the age of the Continental form, which we Owe to tree; in this instance, however, even Professor Suess, of Vienna, and Professor Lapworth, of Birmingham. The study of the Rift Valley may be expected to throw much light upon the

Red Sea.

after years of maturity, the cork harvested did not improve to any great extent, and, indeed, is still of a secondrate quality.