There's
next to no fish on them in West Africa, and precious little good
rank fetish, as the population on them is sparse - the African, like
myself, abhorring cool air.
Nevertheless, I feel quite sure that no
white man has ever looked on the great Peak of Cameroon without a
desire arising in his mind to ascend it and know in detail the
highest point on the western side of the continent, and indeed one
of the highest points in all Africa.
So great is the majesty and charm of this mountain that the
temptation of it is as great to me to-day as it was on the first day
I saw it, when I was feeling my way down the West Coast of Africa on
the S.S. Lagos in 1893, and it revealed itself by good chance from
its surf-washed plinth to its skyscraping summit. Certainly it is
most striking when you see it first, as I first saw it, after
coasting for weeks along the low shores and mangrove-fringed rivers
of the Niger Delta. Suddenly, right up out of the sea, rises the
great mountain to its 13,760 feet, while close at hand, to westward,
towers the lovely island mass of Fernando Po to 10,190 feet. But
every time you pass it by its beauty grows on you with greater and
greater force, though it is never twice the same. Sometimes it is
wreathed with indigo-black tornado clouds, sometimes crested with
snow, sometimes softly gorgeous with gold, green, and rose-coloured
vapours tinted by the setting sun, sometimes completely swathed in
dense cloud so that you cannot see it at all; but when you once know
it is there it is all the same, and you bow down and worship.
There are only two distinct peaks to this glorious thing that
geologists brutally call the volcanic intrusive mass of the Cameroon
Mountains, viz., Big Cameroon and Little Cameroon. The latter,
Mungo Mah Etindeh, has not yet been scaled, although it is only
5,820 feet. One reason for this is doubtless that the few people in
fever-stricken, over-worked West Africa who are able to go up
mountains, naturally try for the adjacent Big Cameroon; the other
reason is that Mungo Mah Etindeh, to which Burton refers as "the
awful form of Little Cameroon," is mostly sheer cliff, and is from
foot to summit clothed in an almost impenetrable forest. Behind
these two mountains of volcanic origin, which cover an area on an
isolated base of between 700 and 800 square miles in extent, there
are distinctly visible from the coast two chains of mountains, or I
should think one chain deflected, the so-called Rumby and Omon
ranges. These are no relations of Mungo, being of very different
structure and conformation; the geological specimens I have brought
from them and from the Cameroons being identified by geologists as
respectively schistose grit and vesicular lava.
After spending a few pleasant days in Cameroon River in the society
of Frau Plehn, my poor friend Mrs. Duggan having, I regret to say,
departed for England on the death of her husband, I went round to
Victoria, Ambas Bay, on the Niger, and in spite of being advised
solemnly by Captain Davies to "chuck it as it was not a picnic," I
started to attempt the Peak of Cameroons as follows.
September 20th, 1895. - Left Victoria at 7.30, weather fine. Herr
von Lucke, though sadly convinced, by a series of experiments he has
been carrying on ever since I landed, and I expect before, that you
cannot be in three places at one time, is still trying to do so; or
more properly speaking he starts an experiment series for four
places, man-like, instead of getting ill as I should under the
circumstances, and he kindly comes with me as far as the bridge
across the lovely cascading Lukole River, and then goes back at
about seven miles an hour to look after Victoria and his sick
subordinates in detail.
I, with my crew, keep on up the grand new road the Government is
making, which when finished is to go from Ambas Bay to Buea, 3,000
feet up on the mountain's side. This road is quite the most
magnificent of roads, as regards breadth and general intention, that
I have seen anywhere in West Africa, and it runs through a superbly
beautiful country. It is, I should say, as broad as Oxford Street;
on either side of it are deep drains to carry off the surface
waters, with banks of varied beautiful tropical shrubs and ferns,
behind which rise, 100 to 200 feet high, walls of grand forest, the
column-like tree-stems either hung with flowering, climbing plants
and ferns, or showing soft red and soft grey shafts sixty to seventy
feet high without an interrupting branch. Behind this again rise
the lovely foot hills of Mungo, high up against the sky, coloured
the most perfect soft dark blue.
The whole scheme of colour is indescribably rich and full in tone.
The very earth is a velvety red brown, and the butterflies - which
abound - show themselves off in the sunlight, in their canary-
coloured, crimson, and peacock-blue liveries, to perfection. After
five minutes' experience of the road I envy those butterflies. I do
not believe there is a more lovely road in this world, and besides,
it's a noble and enterprising thing of a Government to go and make
it, considering the climate and the country; but to get any genuine
pleasure out of it, it is requisite to hover in a bird- or
butterfly-like way, for of all the truly awful things to walk on,
that road, when I was on it, was the worst.
Of course this arose from its not being finished, not having its top
on in fact: the bit that was finished, and had got its top on, for
half a mile beyond the bridge, you could go over in a Bath chair.
The rest of it made you fit for one for the rest of your natural
life, for it was one mass of broken lava rock, and here and there
leviathan tree-stumps that had been partially blown up with
gunpowder.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 141 of 190
Words from 143404 to 144466
of 194943
