Our Arrival Brings Herr Liebert Promptly On The Scene, As Kindly
Helpful And Energetic As Ever, And Again Anxious For Me To Have A
Bath.
The men bring our saturated loads into my room, and after
giving them their food and plenty of tobacco,
I get my hot tea and
change into the clothes I had left behind at Buea, and feeling once
more fit for polite society, go out and find his Imperial and Royal
Majesty's representative making a door, tightening the boards up
with wedges in a very artful and professional way. We discourse on
things in general and the mountain in particular. The great south-
east face is now showing clear before us, the clearness that usually
comes before night-fall. It looks again a vast wall, and I wish I
were going up it again to-morrow. When "the Calabar major" set it
on fire in the dry season it must have been a noble sight.
The north-eastern edge of the slope of the mountain seems to me
unbroken up to the peak. The great crater we went and camped in
must be a very early one in the history of the mountain, and out of
it the present summit seems to have been thrown up. From the sea
face, the western, I am told the slope is continuous on the whole,
although there are several craters on that side; seventy craters all
told are so far known on Mungo.
The last reported eruption was in 1852, when signs of volcanic
activity were observed by a captain who was passing at sea. The
lava from this eruption must have gone down the western side, for I
have come across no fresh lava beds in my wanderings on the other
face. Herr Liebert has no confidence in the mountain whatsoever,
and announces his intention of leaving Buea with the army on the
first symptom of renewed volcanic activity. I attempt to discourage
him from this energetic plan, pointing out to him the beauty of that
Roman soldier at Pompeii who was found, centuries after that
eruption, still at his post; and if he regards that as merely
mechanical virtue, why not pursue the plan of the elder Pliny? Herr
Liebert planes away at his door, and says it's not in his orders to
make scientific observations on volcanoes in a state of eruption.
When it is he'll do so - until it is, he most decidedly will not. He
adds Pliny was an admiral and sailors are always as curious as cats.
Buea seems a sporting place for weather even without volcanic
eruptions, during the whole tornado season (there are two a year),
over-charged tornadoes burst in the barrack yard. From the 14th of
June till the 27th of August you never see the sun, because of the
terrific and continuous wet season downpour. At the beginning and
end of this cheerful period occurs a month's tornado season, and the
rest of the year is dry, hot by day and cold by night.
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