I Awake Finally About 5 A.M.
Soaked Through To The Skin.
The waterproof sheet has had a label
sewn to it, so is not waterproof, and it has been raining softly but
amply for hours.
About seven we are off again, with Xenia, Head man, Cook, Monrovia
boy and a labourer from Buea - the water-carriers have gone home
after having had their morning chop.
We make for the face of the wall by a route to the left of that I
took on Monday, and when we are clambering up it, some 600 feet
above the hillocks, swish comes a terrific rain-storm at us
accompanied by a squealing, bitter cold wind. We can hear the roar
of the rain on the forest below, and hoping to get above it we keep
on; hoping, however, is vain. The dense mist that comes with it
prevents our seeing more than two yards in front, and we get too far
to the left. I am behind the band to-day, severely bringing up the
rear, and about 1 o'clock I hear shouts from the vanguard and when I
get up to them I find them sitting on the edge of one of the clefts
or scars in the mountain face.
I do not know how these quarry-like chasms have been formed. They
both look alike from below - the mountain wall comes down vertically
into them - and the bottom of this one slopes forward, so that if we
had had the misfortune when a little lower down to have gone a
little further to the left, we should have got on to the bottom of
it, and should have found ourselves walled in on three sides, and
had to retrace our steps; as it is we have just struck its right-
hand edge. And fortunately, the mist, thick as it is, has not been
sufficiently thick to lead the men to walk over it; for had they
done so they would have got killed, as the cliff arches in under so
that we look straight into the bottom of the scar some 200 or 300
feet below, when there is a split in the mist. The sides and bottom
are made of, and strewn with, white, moss-grown masses of volcanic
cinder rock, and sparsely shrubbed with gnarled trees which have
evidently been under fire - one of my boys tells me from the burning
of this face of the mountain by "the Major from Calabar" during the
previous dry season.
We keep on up a steep grass-covered slope, and finally reach the top
of the wall. The immense old crater floor before us is to-day the
site of a seething storm, and the peak itself quite invisible. My
boys are quite demoralised by the cold. I find most of them have
sold the blankets I gave them out at Buana; and those who have not
sold them have left them behind at Buea, from laziness perhaps, but
more possibly from a confidence in their powers to prevent us
getting so far.
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