12 
TEE KILIMA-NJARO EXPEDITION. 
mountain. Mr. Thomson was the first who saw the 
northern aspects of Kilima-njaro. 
I might also mention that Dr. Fischer, a German 
traveller, passed within some thirty miles of Kilima¬ 
njaro a little while before Mr. Thomson. He sub¬ 
sequently penetrated Masai-land as far as Lake 
Kaivasa. 
All these above-mentioned travellers had paid visits 
of a more or less fleeting character to Kilima-njaro, and 
few had studied in any way its natural history, or had 
attempted to make collections of any importance. 
Yon der Decken brought back some beetles and one 
or two plants. Hew gathered and sent home a few 
specimens of the flora growing on the upper slopes. 
Dr. Fischer introduced us to a new Touraco 5 dwelling 
in the vicinity of the mountain, and Thomson in his 
hurried ascent procured some twenty plants, nearly 
all of which were new to science. But in the main 
little of the flora or fauna of Kilima-njaro had been 
made known, and the object of my mission was to make 
collections which would materially aid us in settling 
the relations which this clump of mountains bore to 
other lofty African ranges in its peculiar forms of life. 
The Kilima-njaro Committee, taking into consideration 
the peculiar difficulties of African travel, hesitated to 
send out on this expedition any one who, though a 
trained naturalist, should yet have had no previous 
experience of the climate and mode of life in the dark 
continent; and although I professed little skill or 
capacity in natural history collecting (for you may 
be enthusiastically fond of the study of botany and 
zoology, and yet be a very poor taxidermist or herba¬ 
list), it was thought that my acquaintance with the 
5 Turacus Hartlaubi. 
