The Kilimanjaro Expedition and The Great Siberian Railway

Kilimanjaro is the name currently given to a huge mountain-mass in Eastern Africa, consisting of two giant peaks and many lesser ones, situated below the third parallel south of the Equator, and at a distance, in a straight line, of about 175 miles from the coast. The highest of the two principal summits—Kibô—reaches an elevation 18,880 feet above the sea, and the lesser peak—Kimawenzi—attains to 16,250 feet. Both ascend above the snow-line, no other point in the same clump of mountains doing so, and both are the craters of extinct volcanoes. The entire mass of Kilima-njaro seems to be due to volcanic upheaval, and it was doubtless at one time, and that geologically recent, the great vent of the volcanic forces of Eastern Equatorial Africa, which are still active in regions further to the north or west in the district lying between the Victoria Nyanza and the Indian Ocean.

Kilimanjaro, ever since its existence was positively known to modern geographers, has been claimed as the highest of African mountains, its chief summit reaching an altitude of nearly 19,000 feet. It is just possible that in the unknown region stretching between the Victoria Nyanza and Abyssinia loftier peaks may be discovered, or that Mount Kenia, which lies about 200 miles due north of Kilima-njaro, may be found after accurate measurement to exceed the height of the latter mountain by a few feet, but until this is done, the geography-books may still continue to put forward Kilima-njaro as the highest peak in Africa. Indeed, this they are likely to do for the next decade or so, whether he is superseded or not, for I have remarked that in all geographical questions, physical or political, it takes a sadly long time for increase of knowledge to penetrate the school manuals used in the instruction of the British youth. They always seem separated from the progress of discovery as the fixed stars are separated from our powers of vision. Just as the rays of light now reaching us from Sirius would be found illustrating a condition of things going on many years ago, so in most of the school geography-books, geographical knowledge is reflected a decade or so in arrears. I think in most of them France is now deprived of Alsace and Lorraine, and the territorial unity of Italy is a fait accompli; but I fancy the Congo is as yet undiscovered, and Turkey in Europe still extends its suzerainty over “the Danubian Principalities,” Servia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro. I took up one of these school class-books the other day and found that Mount Miltsin (12,000 odd feet) in Morocco was the highest known peak in Africa. Doubtless next year, in a later edition, the claims of Kilima-njaro will be considered, and just as these receive a tardy recognition, some adventurous traveller will bring to our knowledge another African Alp of mightier proportions and loftier summit destined to oust from his proud position the object of my recent journey, who, displaced from the homage of the eager geographer, must be content to linger still a few years longer in possession of the vague respect of the British schoolboy.

Although the mass of Kilima-njaro rises rather abruptly from a fairly level plain, it is hardly to be called isolated, and indeed it may be said that an almost continuous chain of mountain-ranges and independent peaks connect it with Abyssinia on the north, Natal on the south, and, possibly, also with the Cameroons on the west. Judged by the flora which clothes its higher regions, it may be almost regarded as the common meeting-ground of many forms peculiarly characteristic of these three widely separated mountain-districts.

To ascertain the relationships of the fauna and flora of Kilima-njaro, two learned societies—the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society—at the instigation, I believe, of Mr. Sclater, the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, delegated certain of their members to form a Kilima-njaro Expedition Committee, and funds to the extent of 1000l. were placed at their disposal. The great height attained by Kilima-njaro, and the fact that this snow-clad mountain-mass lies in the Equatorial zone, and exhibits an extraordinary range of climates on its broad slopes, were thought sufficient causes to give rise to or explain many curious features in its fauna and flora; moreover, a like condition of things—perpetual snow under the Equator—was only to be met with elsewhere in Central and South America, no mountains in other parts of the tropics reaching to the snow-line. In all cases lofty ranges lying in little-known regions are interesting to students of natural history. Isolated mountains of great height are often like oceanic islands, and serve as a refuge and a last abiding-place for low types or peculiar forms, which in larger and more densely-populated areas find the competition too keen, and are extinguished in the struggle for life. Or, it may be, some species or genus, originally of a generalized type, becomes by various circumstances the inhabitant of an alpine range or a sea-girt island, and being thus removed and protected from the natural checks to its peculiar development offered by the contemporaneous evolution of its fellows, may, as it were, run riot in the absence of rivalry, and assume very eccentric and singular forms. Thus we can imagine that a pigeon something like the modern didunculus of the South Sea Islands once arrived in Mauritius, having perhaps hitherto had to contend with the usual dangers which naturally menace the existence of a meek-spirited, plump bird that is good to eat. But this pigeon, either chancing on Mauritius in the course of its long flights, or dwelling on the island at a date when its connection with a pre-existing continent was being severed, found itself in singularly favourable circumstances, plenty to eat and nothing to attack it—no animals of prey being left on the island. So in the course of time, no longer obliged to fly from foes or take long journeys in search of food, this pigeon became a dodo, huge, fat, and inert, with atrophied and useless pinions. Again, on the mountain-ranges of Sumatra, of Japan, of North America, also on the Alps of Europe, dwell queer, old-fashioned ruminants—goat-antelopes, capricorns, chamois—which would have long since perished in the fierce, hustling life of the plains, or more probably have become moulded into some advanced and perfected type, like the great ruminants of the lowlands. There were these possibilities of zoology to encourage exploration; and another interesting feature in the fauna and flora of high mountains is that they often retain vestiges of an older nature, that has long since been supplanted in lower levels by a new reign. In this way Kini Balu, the lofty mountain of Borneo, preserves on its upper slopes an Australian flora long since superseded in the plains below by the vegetation of India. On the Alps reappear the butterflies of Arctic Europe. The Abyssinian mountains can show genera and species of animals and plants from temperate countries north and south, from Europe and the Cape of Good Hope, and consequently the question as to the relations of the fauna and flora of Kilima-njaro, the highest mountain known in Africa, with that of other regions, was one of great interest, and one which, however decided, might solve many curious puzzles as to the geographical distribution of living forms.

If we should discover around the snows of this huge mass of extinct volcanoes the gentians and edelweiss of the Alps, or even other semi-Arctic forms, these would arouse a supposition that during some past glacial epoch the frigid North had sent its children into Central Africa, following the ice and snow. Or should we find, as we ascended Kilima-njaro, the birds, beetles, butterflies, and plants of the Cape of Good Hope, or even the antique types of Madagascar, this might show that the clump of snow mountains had served as one of the last footholds of the older autochthonous African nature, which was dispossessed and driven into distant islands and remote corners of the continent by recent inroads of the lustier things of Europe; by the advent of the apes, and lions, and huge herbivora, which scattered and extinguished the feeble lemurs, insectivores, and edentates that heretofore prevailed. It might also be, in a lesser way, with man as it had been with lower forms of life, that the fastnesses of Kilima-njaro should prove the shelter of some poor type, some human relic of a race long passed away, whose speech, whose handicraft, whose superstitions would arouse new problems for the anthropologist, or serve as a happy link to strengthen imperfect chains of evidence.

Questions like these, which the existence of snow-clad mountains in Central Africa inevitably suggested, were of sufficient importance to warrant the despatch of an expedition, which should obtain information and material to aid in their solution; and at one time it was proposed that Mr. Joseph Thomson should endeavour to combine with his journey across the Masai country (since so splendidly carried out) a prolonged journey on Kilima-njaro, and a consequent investigation of its fauna and flora. But for many reasons this plan had to be abandoned, and the British Association and Royal Society combined to organize a separate expedition, with the command of which I was entrusted some months after my return from the River Congo.

Kilima-njaro is supposed to have been vaguely known to the Portuguese as early as the sixteenth century, and inasmuch as these people held Mombasa for nearly 200 years, and Mombasa lies within 180 miles of the mountain, and is the point of departure and return of many Swahili and Arab trading parties, who visit the base of the snow peaks, it would indeed be curious if no rumours of the existence of such a mighty object of wonder ever reached the ears of the Portuguese.

Enciso, a Spanish writer of the sixteenth century, mentions its existence, and calls it “Mount Olympus.” Others have supposed that the legendary Mountains of the Moon had their basis of actual existence in Kilima-njaro; however this may be, putting aside vague rumours which in this case had a just foundation and in many other cases had no foundation at all, the first European who discovered Kilima-njaro and made its existence known to the civilized world, was Rebmann, a German missionary, who, wandering inland from Mombasa, first descried the wonderful snowy dome of Kibô, the highest summit of the mass, on the 11th of May, 1848. Being a simple-minded man, and overawed by the unexpected beauty and majesty of the spectacle which the distant snow-clad summit offered as it rose from a base of sombre forest into the clear blue sky, he fell on his knees and recited the 111th Psalm, seeming almost to think that a little pimple on the surface of our tiny planet was one of the chief and most glorious productions of the Creator. Rebmann had the good fortune to alight on Kilima-njaro in times of peace before the Arab traders and the slave trade had brought the curse of internecine war to the industrious and thrifty agriculturists who inhabited the fertile mountain-slopes. He consequently wandered about freely, through most of the little Čaga[3] states, with a small following of some ten porters and but little baggage. On his return to the coast he communicated his discovery to Krapf, who shortly afterwards started himself for the interior, and discovered Mount Kenia, but only saw Kilima-njaro from a distance of forty miles. The results of these two remarkable expeditions were modestly made known to the geographical societies of Europe, but in Paris alone did the discovery of Kenia and Kilima-njaro meet with any practical recognition. The silver medal of the Geographical Society in that city was awarded to Messrs. Krapf and Rebmann, for making known the existence of snow-clad mountains in Eastern Equatorial Africa.

In England the missionaries’ information was greatly discredited, because they had not been able to map out their journeys by observations for latitude and longitude, and could only fix the position of the mountains, of which they alleged the existence, by dead reckoning. As a matter of fact, they placed them with wonderful accuracy, considering the rough methods employed, and subsequent discoveries have corroborated their statements. Krapf only saw Mount Kenia from a distance of over forty miles, and Rebmann probably approached no nearer than fifteen miles to the snows of Kilima-njaro. Both could only asseverate that they had seen snow, and both were accused of being deceived by their vivid imaginations. Their most relentless critic was a redoubtable person, for long years a terror to real explorers, Mr. Desborough Cooley, a kind of geographical ogre, who used to sit in his study in England, shaping and planning out the map of Africa (basing his arrangements of rivers, lakes, and mountains on ridiculous and fantastic linguistic coincidences and resemblances of his own imagination), and who rushed out and tore in pieces all unheeding explorers in the field who brought to light actual facts which upset his elaborate geographical schemes. Mr. Cooley proved in the most exhaustive and conclusive manner, that Messrs. Krapf and Rebmann could not have seen mountains capped with perpetual snow in Equatorial Africa, and,ergo, they did not exist.