244 Dr Beke on the Mountains forming 
undulating plain, said to extend from the banks of the 
Hawash as far as Berbera.”* From my section of the 
country, published in the fourteenth volume of the Journal of 
the Royal Geographical Society, it will be scen, however, that 
the level of the Hawash at Melka Kuya, where those mis- 
sionaries as well as myself crossed that river, is as much as 
2200 feet above the level of the Indian Ocean, on the shore 
of which Berbera is situated. There is consequently nothing 
unreasonable in supposing the “level ground,” out of which 
Kilimandjaro rises, to have an absolute elevation at least 
equal to that of the “ undulating plain,” extending to the foot 
of the Aialu Mountains.+ 
The notion that a plain must necessarily be of low eleva- 
tion is so prevalent, that it generally requires an effort of 
reason to imagine it otherwise; and yet, as Humboldt re- 
marks, “the level portions of our continents, to which we 
give the name of plains, are the broad summits of mountains, 
of which the feet are at the bottom of the ocean: considered 
in respect to submarine depths, these plains are elevated 
plateaus, of which the original inequalities have been par- 
tially filled up by horizontal layers of later sedimentary de- 
posits, and covered over with alluvium.” tf 
Kilimandjaro was, on its discovery, described by Mr Reb- 
mann as consisting of “two summits rising to the limit of 
snow out of the common mountain mass. The eastern is the 
lower, and terminates in several peaks, which in the rainy 
season are covered far down with snow; but in the dry season 
it sometimes melts entirely away, while at other times a few 
spots will remain. The western summit is the proper per- 
petual-snow mountain, which, rising considerably above its 
neighbour, affords also much more room for snow, it being — 
formed like an immense dome. It is ten or twelve miles 
distant from the eastern summit, the intervening space pre- 
* Journals of the Rev. Messrs Isenberg and Krapf, p. 45. 
T “It is needless to remark how fallacious an instrument for levelling the 
eye is. The ‘Shimba Range,’ behind Mombasah, is estimated by Dr Krapf to 
attain a height of 4000 feet to 6000 feet. By B. P. thermometer, it appears 
to rise from 750 feet to 1200 feet above sea-level.” —Burton in ‘“ Journ. Roy. 
Geogr. Soc.,”’ vol. xxix. p. 23, note. 
{ Cosmos (Sabine’s translation), vol. i. p. 278. 
