WHAT THE COUNTRY LOOKS LIKE 
9 
Beyond the bamboos the path becomes terrible. You emerge from the 
gloom of this first forest belt on to bare rock and obtain glorious views over the 
flower-braided hill-slopes below, over the band of dark green velvet forest, and 
beyond into plains that are purple-blue with a diamond flash of water here and 
there till the horizon is closed up with the palest silhouettes of other 
mountains. 
The path is now scarcely apparent. It is a hazardous progress up a steep 
face of smooth polished rock from grass clump to grass clump. Here and there 
on ledges of the rock where a little vegetable soil may have collected tussocks 
of grass are growing, and these afford a precarious foothold ; nevertheless 
though there is no good path it is obvious that men often pass this way up 
and down the mountains since the tussocks of grass that are regularly trodden 
A BAMBOO THICKET 
on are grey and dead in comparison to those untouched by the human foot, 
which remain green. Here the difficulty of your ascent will be lightened by 
the joy you must feel in the lobelias, if you have any sense of colour. In the 
crevices of these glabrous-looking mountain ribs will grow bunches of lobelias 
extravagant in their thousands of blue flowerets. 
At last the ascent of this mountain wall is safely accomplished, and you 
fling yourself panting on short wiry turf growing in clumps and know that you 
have reached the limits of “ Jack-in-the-Beanstalk’s ” country. 
All the great mountains of South Central Africa seem to be isolated 
fragments of an older plateau, and most of them present more or less precipitous 
wall-like sides rising above the foot hills, which latter are created by land slides 
and debris , or represent smaller remains of the plateau that in course of time 
have been more worn away than the larger blocks constituting the big 
mountains or the long mountain ranges. These wall-like sides are naturally 
difficult of ascent; but when one has clambered up over the edge, and on to 
