126 In the Heart of Africa 



sizes to be found. We caught one large specimen in a trap 

 and discovered it to be identical with the species discovered 

 by the Duke d'Abruzzi on Ruwenzori. Then there are wild 

 cats and different kinds of long-tailed monkeys, of which the 

 most common is the fine red and grey-green coloured Cercopithe- 

 kus Kandti. We also found quite a new sort of bush-buck, one 

 of which I shot in a forest glade close to swampy ground. 



The natives' talk ran a good deal on a beast of prey said 

 to be something midway between a lion and a leopard, and 

 which the people called "kimisi." Up till now no European 

 has sighted this creature: it would probably be some kind of 

 large-sized wild cat. 



Whilst in the district, Lieutenant von Wiese, accompanied 

 only by an Askari and a native, achieved the distinction of 

 being the first European to climb Mount Sabinjo. It is probable 

 that no man had trodden the summit before, for Captain von 

 Beringe, who in 1903 reached to within 150 metres of the peak, 

 had to turn back owing to the steepness of the rock, whilst his 

 companion. Dr. Engeland, had stopped at an altitude of 3,150 

 metres on account of an attack of vertigo. It would never enter 

 the head of a native to undergo such a seemingly purposeless 

 fatigue, which, according to his faith, would serve only to draw 

 down the wrath of the mountain spirits. Kirschstein also 

 ascended Sabinjo later, right to the summit. On that occasion he 

 established the fact that the geological character of the mountain 

 had up to that time been entirely misunderstood. 



"Sabinjo," writes Kirschstein, "is not, as reported by von 

 Beringe and Herrmann, the jagged remains of the wall of a 

 crater which has been torn up in the east and west, but rather 

 an old peak of trachytic-andesitic stone formation, deeply 

 eroded — a homogeneous lava cone. In contradistinction to the 

 stratified type of volcano, made up of overlying layers of ashes 

 and lava masses, like Ninagongo, with broad crater summits, 

 no loose volcanic matter plays any part in the creation of such 

 masses as Sabinjo. Sabinjo owes its existence solely to a con- 

 sistent flow of lava. The viscous fluid, a stony, yet paste-like 



