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.