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 photographi. 

 One of these is here reproduced. 



