336 
THE KILIM.A-NJABO EXPEDITION. 
veller there is something very wonderful and imposing 
in the aspect presented by such a region as Kilima¬ 
njaro. The summits clothed with virgin snow, the 
upper regions bearing the humble plants of temperate 
climes, the heaths, the hounds’-tongues (to call them 
by their familiar names), the forget-me-nots, the 
buttercups, clematises, anemones, violets, and gera¬ 
niums ; the bracken, polypodies, and male fern that 
are always associated with the flora of our chilly 
lands; and then, descending through rich forests of 
tree-ferns, draccenas, and moss-hung mimosas to the 
vegetable wealth of the equatorial zone, to the wild 
bananas, the palms, the orchids, the india-rubber 
creepers, the aloes, and the baobabs that are among 
the better-known of the myriad forms of vegetation 
clothing the lower spurs and ramparts of Kilima¬ 
njaro. 
Zone above zone .... 
The climates of Earth are displayed as an index, 
Giving the scope of the Book of Creation, 
There in the gorges that widen, descending, 
From cloud and from cloud into summer eternal, 
Gather the threads of the ice-gendered fountains, 
Gather to riotous torrents of crystal, 
And, giving each shelvy recess where they dally 
The blooms of the north and its ever-green turfage, 
Leap to the land of the lion and lotus ! . 
