Birds of Cameroon Mountain. 479 



.... The western portion of the mountain has much less of 

 lava-beds and more of grass-land. Looking due west from 

 the camp, about three miles distant, one sees the wood 

 creeping up to a small peak, and directly behind this the 

 small Cameroon Peak, which is also thickly wooded. 



On April 17th I left to ascend the Peak, and reached the 

 summit at two o'clock, the actual ascent taking one hour 

 and fifty minutes. At the base of the Peak there are old 

 lava-beds, where the stones are now thickly coated with a 

 greenish lichen. A pretty red heather also is to be found 

 growing in thick bunches. In the last portion of the ascent 

 one sinks ankle-deep in fine ashes. The summit is a most 

 forbidding-looking place, nothing more than a series of deep 

 craters, or vast ash-pits would better describe them. There 

 are at least five of these, and they are so fresh-looking that 

 the ash might have been thrown up but yesterday. There 

 are no weeds nor grass to tell their age, but here and there 

 grow large tufts of a spongy, dark green moss. It was 

 pretty cold, with a maximum temperature of 55° and mini- 

 mum 50° at 2.30 P.M. Continual mists kept jaassing over 

 us, but now and again the sun would part them and disclose 

 to view the mountain below us, and even the blurr of 

 distant forest-land beyond. 



We succeeded in creeping up to the highest point, which 

 terminates in a kind of promontory, and is actually the rim 

 of a very deep crater where the lava has made its exit. 

 I . . . had to lie down to take a photograph of the land 

 below, which showed a picturesque group of grass-covered 

 mounds, or rather, extinct craters, lying to the west. 



On the 18th of April Jose and I left to try and gain the 

 small Cameroon Peak by following the first ridge in a due 

 westerly direction, but it turned out to be farther ofl^ than 

 it looked. After two hours we gained a wooded ravine. On 

 the other side of this the forest-growth crept up the hill 

 to cover the first small Peak, which I have already men- 

 tioned. The trees in this ravine were of scarecrow appear- 

 ance, which was accentuated by the long tresses of lichen 

 streamiu"' from their limbs. 



