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.
{463} A Naturalist in Mid Africa, 1896.
{465} The accounts given by the various members of the Stanley Emin
Relief Expedition well describe the usual sort of West African
hinterland work, but the forests of the Congo are less relieved by
open park-like country than those of the rivers to the north or
south. Still the Congo, in spite of this disadvantage, has greater
facilities for transport in the way of waterways than is found east
of the Cross or Cameroon.
{468} Export of coffee from the Gold Coast, 1894, given in the
Colonial Report on that year published in 1896, was of the value of
1,265 pounds 3s. 4d.; cocoa, 546 pounds 17s. 4d. The greater part
of this coffee goes to Germany.
Export of coffee from Lagos, given in Colonial Report for 1892,
published in 1893, was of the value of 12 pounds. No figures on
this subject are given in the 1894 report, published in 1896, but I
cite these figures to show the delay in publishing these reports by
the Colonial Office and the difficulty of getting reliable
statistics on West African trade.
{493} "The Development of Dodos." National Review, March, 1896.
{504} Ethnology, p. 266. A. H. Keane, Cambridge, 1896.
{508} Lagos Annual Consular Report (150, p.6), 1894: "There were
only three cases of drunkenness. Considering that in the Island of
Lagos alone the population is over 33,300, this clearly proves that
drunkenness in this part of Africa is uncommon, and that there is
insufficient evidence for the contention which is advanced that the
native is being ruined by what is so often spoken of as the heinous
gin traffic; it is a well-known fact by those in a position best
able to judge by long residence that the inhabitants of this country
have a natural repugnance to intemperance."
{509} Board of Trade Journal, August 1896.
