A BITTER NIGHT ON KIBO 



193 



unfavourable, and I only succeeded in getting one view of 

 Kimawenzi. Fogs came up from below ever more and more 

 frequently, and rushed, as if driven before a hurricane, at the 

 two peaks, yet all the while the most solemn stillness reigned, 

 broken only by the sound of my own footsteps. A hunt for 

 any living creatures sharing my solitude was rewarded by the 

 finding only of one little black spider. 1 So there was nothing 

 more to be done now, and we made our preparations for the night. 

 We made our little linen mountain tents as snug as we could, 

 piling up sand outside to keep out the cold, and lit a fire with 

 straw at which to warm ourselves and brew some cocoa. The 

 temperature fell rapidly ; at six o'clock in the evening the 

 thermometer registered — 0'5° Centigrade, but at a quarter to 

 eight it marked —7 '6° Centigrade. I had already been very 

 conscious of the rarity of the atmosphere, and had to take 

 breath very much oftener than usual when I was at work. As 

 night fell the fog cleared off, and against the cloudless, moonlit, 

 star-bespangled sky we could see the ice-clad peak of Kibo as 

 clearly as by day. The fuel we had collected had nearly burnt 

 out, and the bitter cold now drove us into our tent. We had 

 thick woollen underclothes and heavy overcoats on, with warm 

 wraps to supplement them, but for all that we were kept awake 

 all night by the bitter cold, and rushed out quite early in the 

 morning but little refreshed by our rest. The things we had 

 left out were covered with a thick coating of ice, and we saw 

 that the thermometer had marked —11° Centigrade during the 

 night, which did not at all surprise us. We set to work to make 

 another big fire at which to thaw our frozen limbs. Owing to 

 the slow combustion in the rare atmosphere, the ashes that 

 we had left nine hours before were still smouldering, so we 

 had only to fling on a little more fuel to get a good blaze. The 

 water in our flasks was frozen hard and had to be melted before 



1 Tylophora bicolor, new species. Eng. Sim. 

 VOL. I. 



