280 
THE KILIMA-NJABO EXPEDITION. 
men to follow me into tlie mists and hailstorms, and 
could not unaided carry tent, instruments, and food, 
I had reluctantly to resign my long-meditated feat, 
and leave the actual summit of Kilima-njaro still 
virgin. 
Moreover, my time for collecting at these high levels 
was coming to an end. Although I had soon got 
inured to the climate myself, and felt invigorated by 
the frosty nights, my poor followers, accustomed to 
the greenhouse-atmosphere of Zanzibar, were suffering 
cruelly from the cold. To clothe forty men in warm 
blankets was beyond my resources, and to induce them 
to live for a long period lightly clad in garments of 
cotton, in a temperature which was often below the 
freezing-point, required, to say the least, considerable 
persuasion ; but my chief anxiety arose, not so much 
from their unwillingness to remain a few weeks longer 
at an altitude of 10,000 feet, as from their unfitness 
to do so. Several of the men were suffering severelv 
O e/ 
from bronchial affections; one or two had had touches 
of pleurisy; of chilblains and rheumatism all com¬ 
plained ; so that T began to fear that, unless I moved 
to lower levels, I should have ho men left to carry my 
loads. Therefore, after deliberating with the head¬ 
men of the caravan, I prepared to evacuate my highest 
station on Kilima-njaro at the end of October, and 
following a new route through unexplored country, 
return to my settlement at Taveita. 
