ro4 CLIMBING IN RUWENZORI 



the day of our first ascent — that is to say, we were 

 enveloped in clouds all the time, and except for one 

 moment, when the true top of Kiyanja loomed hazily 

 through the fog, we saw no view whatever. 



I have been asked why it was that on neither 

 occasion did we attempt to make the short ascent 

 that lay between us and the true top of our peak. 

 The answer is sufficiently obvious. For a party 

 equipped as we were with only a single ice-axe and a 

 piece of rope too short to be of the slightest use, and 

 numbering only one member who had any experi- 

 ence of ice and snow, to wander in dense fog along 

 an unknown ridge of an untrodden mountain, with 

 invisible slopes on either side, would have been 

 contrary to the truest principles of mountaineering, 

 and would have been only to court disaster. 

 Moreover, though we had, as a matter of fact, 

 ascended higher by several hundred feet than any 

 of our predecessors in Ruwenzori, and had been the 

 first to reach the watershed of the range above 

 the snow-line, we were not actuated by any lust of 

 establishing ' records.' 



The conclusions that we drew from the occasional 

 and fragmentary glimpses which we obtained of 

 various portions of the range were in the main 

 accurate, and I should like here to correct a mis- 

 representation of them that was published in the 

 Geographical Journal.^ H.R.H. the Duke of the 

 Abruzzi, in his lecture before the Royal Geographical 

 * Vol. xxix., p. 131. 



