276 THE LAND OF THE LION 



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. 



