Evidently one of the labourers from Buea, named Xenia, is a good
man. Equally evidently some of my other men are only fit to carry
sandwich-boards for Day and Martin's blacking. I dine luxuriously
off tinned fat pork and hot tea, and then feeling still hungry go on
to tinned herring. Excellent thing tinned herring, but I have to
hurry because I know I must go up through the edge of the forest on
to the grass land, and see how the country is made during the brief
period of clearness that almost always comes just before nightfall.
So leaving my boys comfortably seated round the fire having their
evening chop, I pass up through the heavily lichen-tasselled fringe
of the forest-belt into deep jungle grass, and up a steep and
slippery mound.
In front the mountain-face rises like a wall from behind a set of
hillocks, similar to the one I am at present on. The face of the
wall to the right and left has two dark clefts in it. The peak
itself is not visible from where I am; it rises behind and beyond
the wall. I stay taking compass bearings and look for an easy way
up for to-morrow. My men, by now, have missed their "ma" and are
yelling for her dismally, and the night comes down with great
rapidity for we are in the shadow of the great mountain mass, so I
go back into camp. Alas! how vain are often our most energetic
efforts to remove our fellow creatures from temptation. I knew a
Sunday down among the soldiers would be bad for my men, and so came
up here, and now, if you please, these men have been at the rum,
because Bum, the head man, has been too done up to do anything but
lie in his blanket and feed. Kefalla is laying down the law with
great detail and unction. Cook who has been very low in his mind
all day, is now weirdly cheerful, and sings incoherently. The other
boys, who want to go to sleep, threaten to "burst him" if he "no
finish." It's no good - cook carols on, and soon succumbing to the
irresistible charm of music, the other men have to join in the
choruses. The performance goes on for an hour, growing woollier and
woollier in tone, and then dying out in sleep.
I write by the light of an insect-haunted lantern, sitting on the
bed, which is tucked in among the trees some twenty yards away from
the boys' fire. There is a bird whistling in a deep rich note that
I have never heard before.
September 23rd. - Morning gloriously fine. Rout the boys out, and
start at seven, with Sasu, Head man, Xenia, Black boy, Kefalla and
Cook.
The great south-east wall of the mountain in front of us is quite
unflecked by cloud, and in the forest are thousands of bees. We
notice that the tongues of forest go up the mountain in some places
a hundred yards or more above the true line of the belt. These
tongues of forest get more and more heavily hung with lichen, and
the trees thinner and more stunted, towards their ends. I think
that these tongues are always in places where the wind does not get
full play. All those near our camping place on this south-east face
are so. It is evidently not a matter of soil, for there is ample
soil on this side above where the trees are, and then again on the
western side of the mountain - the side facing the sea - the timber
line is far higher up than on this. Nor, again, is it a matter of
angle that makes the timber line here so low, for those forests on
the Sierra del Cristal were growing luxuriantly over far steeper
grades. There is some peculiar local condition just here evidently,
or the forest would be up to the bottom of the wall of the crater.
I am not unreasonable enough to expect it to grow on that, but its
conduct in staying where it does requires explanation.
We clamber up into the long jungle grass region and go on our way
across a series of steep-sided, rounded grass hillocks, each of
which is separated from the others by dry, rocky watercourses. The
effects produced by the seed-ears of the long grass round us are
very beautiful; they look a golden brown, and each ear and leaf is
gemmed with dewdrops, and those of the grass on the sides of the
hillocks at a little distance off show a soft brown-pink.
After half an hour's climb, when we are close at the base of the
wall, I observe the men ahead halting, and coming up with them find
Monrovia Boy down a hole; a little deep blow-hole, in which, I am
informed, water is supposed to be. But Monrovia soon reports "No
live."
I now find we have not a drop of water, either with us or in camp,
and now this hole has proved dry. There is, says the sergeant, no
chance of getting any more water on this side of the mountain, save
down at the river at Buea.
This means failure unless tackled, and it is evidently a trick
played on me by the boys, who intentionally failed to let me know of
this want of water before leaving Buea, where it seems they have all
learnt it. I express my opinion of them in four words and send
Monrovia Boy, who I know is to be trusted, back to Buea with a
scribbled note to Herr Liebert asking him to send me up two
demijohns of water. I send cook with him as far as the camp in the
forest we have just left with orders to bring up three bottles of
soda water I have left there, and to instruct the men there that as
soon as the water arrives from Buea they are to bring it on up to
the camp I mean to make at the top of the wall.
