294 
IN AFRICA 
We then sent for the sultan of the Ketosh tribe 
and interviewed him. He was singularly reticent 
about the subject, and both he and the other natives 
called in used all their crude intelligence to discour¬ 
age any attempt to go up into those districts that 
were so full of strange, forbidding influences. 
They said there were no trails, and when we said 
we would go anyway, they said there was a trail, 
but that it was so tangled with undergrowth and 
vines that one had to creep through it, like an ani¬ 
mal. We still said we would go, and told the sultan 
to get us guides, for which we would pay well. 
All this happened while we were in the Ketosh 
village that lies on the slope of the mountain just 
beneath the great rock wall, a thousand feet high, 
whose upper rim is honeycombed with the ancient 
caves of the aborigines. For days we had stopped 
there, endeavoring to get food and guides, and for 
days the sultan and his people had placed every ob¬ 
stacle in the way of our ascending higher the mys¬ 
terious and comparatively unknown mountain. The 
great rock escarpment shut off the view of the 
peaks beyond, but we felt that if once we could 
scale the first precipitous slope we would find trav¬ 
eling much easier on the gentle slope of the moun¬ 
tain. 
At last, after persuasion, threats, money, and 
pleading had in turn been tried, the sultan brought 
his son and said that his son would guide us. 
The son was the craftiest and crookedest looking 
native I had seen in Africa. After one look at him, 
