I have contracted a fatal chill this time. I
scrape the ashes out of the fire into a heap, and
put my sodden boots into them, and they hiss merrily,
and I resolve not to go to sleep again. 5 A.M.—Have
been to sleep twice, and have fallen off my box bodily
into the fire in my wet blankets, and should for sure
have put it out like a bucket of cold water had not
Xenia and Kefalla been roused up by the smother I
occasioned and rescued me—or the fire.
It is not raining now, but it is bitter cold and Cook
is getting my tea. I give the boys a lot of
hot tea with a big handful of sugar in, and they then
get their own food hot.
Setting forth how the Voyager attains the summit of
Mungo Mah Lobeh, and descends therefrom to Victoria,
to which is added some remarks on the natural history
of the West Coast porter, and the native methods of
making fire.
September 26th.—The weather is undecided
and so am I, for I feel doubtful about going on in
this weather, but I do not like to give up the peak
after going through so much for it. The boys
being dry and warm with the fires have forgotten their
troubles. However, I settle in my mind to keep
on, and ask for volunteers to come with me, and Bum,
the head man, and Xenia announce their willingness.
I put two tins of meat and a bottle of Herr Liebert’s
beer into the little wooden box, and insist on both
men taking a blanket apiece, much to their disgust,
and before six o’clock we are off over the crater
plain. It is a broken bit of country with rock
mounds sparsely overgrown with tufts of grass, and
here and there are patches of boggy land, not real
bog, but damp places where grow little clumps of rushes,
and here and there among the rocks sorely-afflicted
shrubs of broom, and the yellow-flowered shrub I have
mentioned before, and quantities of very sticky heather,
feeling when you catch hold of it as if it had been
covered with syrup. One might fancy the entire
race of shrubs was dying out; for one you see partially
alive there are twenty skeletons which fall to pieces
as you brush past them.
It is downhill the first part of the way, that is
to say, the trend of the land is downhill, for be
it down or up, the details of it are rugged mounds
and masses of burnt-out lava rock. It is evil
going, but perhaps not quite so evil as the lower
hillocks of the great wall where the rocks are hidden
beneath long slippery grass. We wind our way
in between the mounds, or clamber over them, or scramble
along their sides impartially. The general level
is then flat, and then comes a rise towards the peak
wall, so we steer N.N.E. until we strike the face
of the peak, and then commence a stiff rough climb.
