FROM GILGIL TO KENIA 277 
On this brilliant morning as I looked across the level 
plain, the ascent of the lower part of the mountain looked 
easy enough and I feel sure that if from this northern side 
an attempt to penetrate the forest girdle were made, it 
would be found that the woodland and jungle belt that 
offer so stubborn a resistance on the other side, were much 
narrower and easier to pass. From this side an ascent 
has never been attempted for as I said before, until two 
years ago the country hereabout was very dangerous.* 
Crevasses and bamboo thickets were here merged in 
soft dark blue mass. Fleecy trailing clouds were still 
clinging to the tree-tops, as if unwilling to obey the upward 
call of the sun. As the sun gained power and these fleecy 
veils drifted away, Kenia, in all her radiant beauty, rose 
majestically before me. Two years before, for a full 
week, evening and morning, I had studied her, but that 
was from the other side. This grand new mountain I 
had never seen. Not one summit but a group of peaks 
with fine snow-field and tumbling ice fall between them. 
Sheer from the rocky base below they rose, sheer as a wall 
for more than 2,000 feet, one bastion mightier than his 
fellows rising high above them all. There is not in all 
North America, neither in Canada nor the United States — 
I speak advisedly for I know the whole Rocky Mountain 
chain pretty well— anything equal to the splendour of 
the summit of this virgin mountain of the plain. 
Kilimanjaro is higher, but for beauty it is not to be 
* When I returned to Nairobi some months after writing these notes I found that while I had been 
camped within a few miles of the forest belt on the northern slopes of Kenia, unable to move my sefari 
as our transport had broken down and we were quite out of food, a small government expedition, 
undertaken by the forest department, had actually attempted to penetrate the forest belt from this 
side. The estimate I had formed of its difficulties, as these notes show, proved to be quite a true 
one. The party penetrated the magnificent forest region with little difficulty. They then encountered 
very heavy bamboo thickets, but in piercing them were greatly aided by the elephant paths, and these 
once mastered, a comparatively easy ascent to the base of the great final peak lay open. From this 
northern side that crowning mass of rock, snow and ice seemed quite unscalable. The party made 
a complete circuit of the mountain, travelling well above the forest belt, and having gained some useful 
knowledge returned, all well, to Nairobi. 
Mr. Wm. McGregor Ross (Director of public works, E. A. P.) took many admirable photographs. 
One of these is here reproduced. 
