276 THE LAND ‘OF FHE 29On 
rising amid hills that mount to a height of over 10,000 feet 
above the sea and flowing among rocky gorges and valleys 
for scores of miles before it brings its pure waters to the 
slow, muddy, fever-haunted Tana. It flows right around 
the great bases of Kenia and from Kenia’s snows and dark, 
unknown forests takes many a tributary on its way. 
Mt. Kenia stands all alone in the middle of a vast blue 
plain. On the Nairobi or southern side, the foot hills 
of Kikuyu, richly wooded, break somewhat the splendid 
upward sweep of its ascent. Looked at from the south 
it reminds me of Etna, as you see it from Taormina. 
Though Kenia’s crown, even from that side, rises far 
more abruptly, and as its altitude is over 18,000 feet, it 
has a far larger snow-field. 
From where I now was, I looked toward the northern 
face, grandly precipitous and abrupt. The final peak, 
an unbroken bastion of rock, ribbed and crowned with 
perpetual snow, looks absolutely inaccessible to the foot 
of man from this side. The mountain was ascended 
some few years ago, after a desperate struggle of three 
months. The party was well equipped, and had its base 
camp not fifty miles from the southern face. They cut 
their way through swampy jungle and densest forest; 
when these were conquered the chief difficulties of actual 
climbing were overcome but the porters fell ill by the score 
and many died. The Meru, a then unknown tribe, 
murdered many more, and it was a sadly wrecked sefari 
that struggled back to Fort Hall. The mountain looks 
as though when once the forest was passed there would 
be no great difficulty in reaching the peak and ascending 
it from the side on which this party made the attempt. 
But on the northern front, and up this absolutely sheer 
wall of rock, which must be higher far than the final rock 
precipice of the Matterhorn, no unwinged thing will ever 
mount. 
