148 
In the Heart of Africa 
are very brittle and porous in nature, offer very little foothold, 
and cause a good deal of sliding and stumbling. The edges 
are as sharp as knives, and cut and tear one’s boots and clothes 
in a terrible fashion. 
The entire lava field is grown over with a species of lichen 
which has a whitish appearance in the sunlight, and gives the 
exact impression of an immense ice-field or glacier, an impression 
which the use of long alpenstocks rendered still more realistic. 
It naturally followed that in surmounting the obstacles of this 
difficult journey everyone had to find a path for himself, and 
before long we were so widely separated from one another that 
recognition of the individual khaki-coated figures popping up 
and down among the lava blocks was only possible by the aid 
of a telescope. As I had good going I arrived first at the 
southern slope of the mountain. At this spot a chain of eighteen 
parasitic cinder craters rise up like pearls on a chain, in a 
crevasse running from north-west to south-east. The lowest of 
them opens out in a wide semicircle to the south-east, and the 
spot where the lava stream makes its egress can be distinctly 
seen. A second one, apparently of more recent date, higher 
up the slope of Namlagira, has broken through the common wall 
of the crater chain and has taken a south-westerly direction. It 
originates from a steep-walled shaft of only a few metres cir¬ 
cumference, from which a heavy white vapour with a sulphurous 
acid smell poured out incessantly. The Askari looked into the 
smoking depths with manifest distrust, and a man from the 
Burunga neighbourhood, whom we had taken with us as a guide, 
could not be persuaded to approach anywhere near in his 
tremendous awe of the scheitani (devil) who without doubt dwelt 
there. 
Dr. von Raven and von Wiese came up soon after, whilst 
Grauer and Kirschstein, who were lower down, hungrily awaiting 
the arrival of the luncheon basket, put in their appearance later. 
We at once commenced the ascent to the summit of the crater, 
and proceeded without very great difficulty. Certainly a way 
had to be cut through the bush region with axe and knife, but 
