{363} "Tshi-Speaking People," Colonel Sir H. B. Ellis.
{439} Since my return to England I have read Sir Richard Burton's
account of his first successful attempt to reach the summit of the
Great Cameroons in 1862.
His companions were Herr Mann, the
botanist, and Senor Calvo. Herr Mann claimed to have ascended the
summit a few days before the two others joined him, but Burton seems
to doubt this. The account he himself gives of the summit is:
"Victoria mountain now proved to be a shell of a huge double crater
opening to the south-eastward, where a tremendous torrent of fire
had broken down the weaker wall, the whole interior and its
accessible breach now lay before me plunging down in vertical cliff.
The depth of the bowl may be 360 feet. The total diameter of the
two, which are separated by a rough partition of lava, 1,000 feet. .
. Not a blade of grass, not a thread of moss, breaks the gloom of
this Plutonic pit, which is as black as Erebus, except where the
fire has painted it red or yellow." This ascent was made from the
west face. I got into the "Plutonic pit" through the S.E. break in
its wall, and was said to be the first English person to reach it
from the S.E., and the twenty-eighth ascender, according to my well-
informed German friends.
{455} The African Association now own two steamers. Alexander
Miller Brothers and Co. also charter steamers.
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