Chapter XIII: ), and continue upwards till near the borders of the snow

Gorgeous crimson gladioli, pale pink and mauve and cerulean blue irises, grow to great altitudes; indeed, some of the flowers of the grassy uplands between 10,000 and 14,000 feet, are particularly brilliant in colour. There are vivid blue cynoglossums, the blush-pink everlastings, the yellow euryops, the strange straw-coloured proteas, with red bracts and red-leaf shoots, the smalt-coloured lobelias (_L. Deckeni_), and many others which it would be tedious to catalogue.

Fig. 64.

Single Fruit. Half natural size.
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Ferns cease to be found at a greater altitude than 13,000 odd feet. The giant heaths above that altitude give place to smaller species, the vegetation generally becomes more and more stunted, and therefore the strange Senecios look the stranger from their towering in solitary grandeur above the lowly herbs. But after an altitude of 14,000 feet is passed they are also absent from the scene; then one is left with a few artemisias (southernwood), heaths, and everlasting flowers, until at length they too disappear, and there remain little red and greenish lichens, expanses of yellow sand, lead-coloured rocks, black boulders, and snow.

Taking into consideration the fact that the region of Kilima-njaro is volcanic, and therefore probably geologically modern, it must be evident that the main features of its vegetation are of no great antiquity. It is therefore an interesting problem as to which of the two _floras_—the South African or the Abyssinian—was the first to reach the chilly regions round its snow-clad peaks. It is also as yet an undecided question as to which _flora_ is the advancing one; whether the Cape forms are slowly penetrating northward, some of them reaching Abyssinia, some of them arrested on the heights of Kilima-njaro, and marking a return flow of the vegetation (and possibly of the _fauna_ also) of Southern Africa, or whether the great invasion of Northern forms which have so largely contributed in later epochs to the modern _fauna_ and _flora_ of Tropical Africa is still going on. Whilst Cape genera and species of plants penetrate to Abyssinia, Abyssinian forms have reached the Zambesi highlands and the Drakensberg Mountains.

The _flora_ of the higher regions of Kilima-njaro is almost equally divided in its affinities between Abyssinia and Cape Colony. There are besides, in the collections I have brought back, two new genera offering no near allies; types of other genera only known hitherto in Arabia or India; and some new species of East African genera that have apparently modified themselves for life at high altitudes. It is interesting to note that while some of the species whose generic home is in the hot tropical plains have strayed up the great mountain and got used to the cold, so others, which come from temperate regions, have ventured down the mountain and got used to the heat. A curious instance of this is _Artemisia afra_, which I have found at 14,000 feet near the snow, and at 3000 feet, in close proximity to the hot plains. If plants of temperate or cold climates could occasionally stray so far as this from the regions and the temperature they most affect, it would materially aid in their distribution, for the seeds of the _Artemisia_ (this plant will be familiar to my non-scientific readers as “southernwood,” or “old man”) might easily be borne from the jungle at the base of Kilima-njaro to the precincts of Mount Meru, some thirty miles distant, and find on the chilly slopes of that mountain another congenial home and starting-place for a further colonization of unknown peaks beyond. Thus, taking into consideration the fact that more or less high ground connects the mountains of the Kilima-njaro district with the Cape Colony in the south and the Cameroons in the west, it is possible to account for the presence of many hardy genera belonging to temperate zones on the heights of Tropical Africa without always invoking special climatic changes and revolutions in the past.

To the ordinary mind even of an unreflecting traveller there is something very wonderful and imposing in the aspect presented by such a region as Kilima-njaro. The summits clothed with virgin snow, the upper regions bearing the humble plants of temperate climes, the heaths, the hounds’-tongues (to call them by their familiar names), the forget-me-nots, the buttercups, clematises, anemones, violets, and geraniums; the bracken, polypodies, and male fern that are always associated with the _flora_ of our chilly lands; and then, descending through rich forests of tree-ferns, dracænas, and moss-hung mimosas to the vegetable wealth of the equatorial zone, to the wild bananas, the palms, the orchids, the india-rubber creepers, the aloes, and the baobabs that are among the better-known of the myriad forms of vegetation clothing the lower spurs and ramparts of Kilima-njaro.

Zone above zone....
The climates of Earth are displayed as an index,
Giving the scope of the Book of Creation,
There in the gorges that widen, descending,
From cloud and from cloud into summer eternal,
Gather the threads of the ice-gendered fountains,
Gather to riotous torrents of crystal,
And, giving each shelvy recess where they dally
The blooms of the north and its evergreen turfage,
Leap to the land of the lion and lotus!...