AMID THE SNOW PEAKS OF THE EQUATOR 



261 



race. There is a small area of swamp, 

 but this terrace is chiefly remarkable for 

 the wonderful luxuriance of the heath- 

 trees, which here attain their greatest 

 growth. 



STRANGE LOOKING HEATH-TREES 



A heath-tree is a thing entirely unlike 

 any of the trees of England ; the reader 

 must imagine a stem of the common 

 "ling" magnified to a height of 60 or 70 

 or even 80 feet, but bearing leaves and 

 flowers hardly larger than those of the 

 "ling" as it grows in England. Huge 

 cushions of many-colored mosses, often 

 a foot or more deep, encircle the trunks 

 and larger branches, while the finer 

 twigs are festooned with long beards of 

 gray lichen, which give to the trees an 

 unspeakably dreary and funereal aspect. 

 This first terrace was perhaps the most 

 difficult and tiring part of the whole as- 

 cent, for not only did the heath-trees 

 grow very close together, but the ground 

 beneath them was strewn with the dead 

 and decaying trunks of fallen trees, some 

 of them hard as bog oak, and others 

 ready to crumble at a touch, but all of 

 them covered with a dense carpet of 

 thick moss, which necessitated a careful 

 probing before any step forward could 

 be taken. The way in which our por- 

 ters, encumbered as they were with awk- 

 ward loads, hopped nimbly from one 

 trunk to another made one feel thor- 

 oughly ashamed. 



As we ascended the steep slope the 

 heath-trees became rather less dense, and 

 in the intervals between them appeared 

 a few helichrysums, tall senecios with 

 clusters of yellow flowers, and a beauti- 

 ful little blue violet (Viola abyssinica) 

 very similar to the English dog-violet. 

 At the top of this slope, about 11,800 

 feet, the climber enters upon a new 

 world, or, to speak more truly, it is a 

 tract that seems to be a relic of a long- 

 past age. 



One would not be in the least sur- 

 prised to see pterodactyls flying scream- 

 ing overhead (they must have been noisy 

 creatures, I think) or iguanodons floun- 

 dering through the morasses and brows- 



ing on the tree-tops. But there are no 

 living creatures to be seen or heard ; it is 

 a place of awful silence and solitude. It 

 is an almost level meadow or "swampy 

 garden," as Sir H. H. Johnston called it, 

 a mile or more long and several hundred 

 yards wide. 



GIANT LOBELIAS AND GROUNDSELS 



Out of the moss, which everywhere 

 forms a dense and soaking carpet, grow 

 thick clumps of helichrysum with white 

 and pink flowers, and standing up like 

 attenuated tombstones are the tall spikes 

 of giant lobelias (Lobelia deckenii). 

 Groundsels (Senecio adnivalis) grow 

 here into trees 20 feet high, Saint 

 Johns wort (Hypericum) is a tree even 

 higher, and brambles (Rubus doggetti) 

 bear flowers two inches across and fruit 

 as big as walnuts. Through the middle 

 of the meadow the Mubuku meanders 

 over a gravelly bed, as perfect a trout 

 stream in appearance as one could wish 

 to see. On either side are steep rocks 

 and slopes covered with heath-trees 

 looming like ghosts upward into the 

 everlasting fog. At its upper end the 

 meadow is bounded by an almost pre- 

 cipitous wall, over which the Mubuku 

 stream falls in a splendid cascade. 



Our next camp was pitched under the 

 shelter of another overhanging cliff, and 

 surrounded by huge blocks that had 

 fallen therefrom. Our porters found 

 refuge in all sorts of queer holes and 

 crannies among the rocks. There was 

 not space enough to pitch a tent, and we 

 were a miserable little party as we sat 

 huddled round a fire of sodden heath 

 logs, which produced only an acrid and 

 blinding smoke. 



The cliff overhead is the haunt by day 

 of large fruit-eating bats (Roussettus 

 lanosus), which measure about two feet 

 across the wings. At sunset they come 

 flapping out, and for a second or two 

 afford a chance of a difficult shot before 

 they disappear through the heath-trees 

 towards the valley below. To judge 

 from the number of their tracks, which 

 we found about the camp and far up the 

 mountain sides almost to the snow level, 



