294 IN AFRICA 



We then sent for the sultan of the Ketosh tribe 

 and interviewed him. He was singularly reticent 

 about the subject, and both he and the other natives 

 called in used all their crude intelligence to discour- 

 age any attempt to go up into those districts that 

 were so full of strange, forbidding influences. 

 They said there were no trails, and when we said 

 we would go anyway, they said there was a trail, 

 but that it was so tangled with undergrowth and 

 vines that one had to creep through it, like an ani- 

 mal. We still said we would go, and told the sultan 

 to get us guides, for which we would pay well. 



All this happened while we were in the Ketosh 

 village that lies on the slope of the mountain just 

 beneath the great rock wall, a thousand feet high, 

 whose upper rim is honeycombed with the ancient 

 caves of the aborigines. For days we had stopped 

 there, endeavoring to get food and guides, and for 

 days the sultan and his people had placed every ob- 

 stacle in the way of our ascending higher the mys- 

 terious and comparatively unknown mountain. The 

 great rock escarpment shut off the view of the 

 peaks beyond, but we felt that if once we could 

 scale the first precipitous slope we would find trav- 

 eling much easier on the gentle slope of the moun- 

 tain. 



At last, after persuasion, threats, money, and 

 pleading had in turn been tried, the sultan brought 

 his son and said that his son would guide us. 



The son was the craftiest and crookedest looking 

 native I had seen in Africa. After one look at him, 



