152 
THE KILIM A-NJA B 0 EXPEDITION. 
for miles round, and offers views of unexampled mag¬ 
nificence in all this lovely country. To the north, 
without a single fleck of intervening cloud, rises Kilima¬ 
njaro, the whole central ridge and both the peaks 
completely visible. The eye first rests irresistibly on 
the splendid snowy dome of Kibo, absolute in white¬ 
ness under the glare of the vertical sun, with a few 
faint purplish blots, like the crater-shadows on the 
moon’s face, coming out where the bare rock breaks 
through the snow, and then in the few hollows, gaps, 
or crevasses , tender cool shadows of pale blue break 
somewhat the dazzling effect of unsullied white. Be¬ 
low the snow-cap of Kibo lies a great stretch of purple 
moorland broken up dimly into ravines, cliffs, hillocks, 
and ridges by shadows of deeper tint, but seen with 
the eyes half shut seeming a band of purple colour 
merging’ into a colder bluish tint where it reaches the 
distant snow, and becoming darker and sombrer where 
it mingles with the middle distance of dark-green 
forest. To the left of Kibo, a rounded descent of the 
mountain-mass stretches down with some few jags 
and modulations till it passes away into the far-off 
plain, and to the right of the snowy dome a ridge 
nearly horizontal reaches to the sister and minor peak, 
the jagged Kimawenzi, which has merely patches and 
streaks of snow resting amid its strange black peaks 
and pinnacles. 1 The background to the entire scene 
is a sky of intense blue, which is almost free from 
cloud save for a few vapourous cumuli lying behind 
the centre ridge of the mountain. In the middle dis¬ 
tance are grandly swelling, rolling hills, magnificently 
wooded with, in some cases, a forest growth so uni¬ 
form that, looked down on from a height, its surface 
1 Vide illustration of Kilima-njaro, p. 234. 
