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Show Kilimanjaro, the Everest of Africa employ irrigation to grow their crops of bananas, sweet potatoes and grains. Sometimes they merely divert a mountain moun-tain stream, but frequently consider able engineering skill Is used to bring water through tubes or chunnels considerable con-siderable distances. The forest belt, not Kilimanjaro's glaciers, supplies most of this life-giving water. The rain-forest Is a vast sponge, drinking up the rain and squeezing It out In springs. Shun Crater and Plain, "Below the agricultural belt Is the scorched dry plain. It Is almost as Impossible to get the natives to venture ven-ture down to the hot plain as to get them to approach the Ice-capped crater. "Elephants Inhabit the thick forests of Kilimanjaro's slopes. Explorers often see their spoors on bunks seemingly seem-ingly Impossible for such huge animals to manage. One writer reports seeing murks Indicating that the elephants thrust their tusks Into the ground to steady themselves on a descent, and that scrulTed bark showed that they wound their trunks about trees to help themselves up to higher positions." Is Much Higher Than Blanc . or Whitney. Washington, D. C. Kilimanjaro mountain of Tanganyika territory, which bus been the object of a recent expedition. Is one of the most notuble "violent contrasts" In Africa, sometimes termed the continent of "violent con-trusts." con-trusts." "Although Africa spreads Itself to both tetNperato zones," says a bulletin of the Notlohul Geographic society, "by whim of geography its only notable no-table snow peaks are under the sun's ; most direct glare and, of Its 'high spots' near the Equator, Kilimanjaro Is chief. . "Kilimanjaro was unknown to the world a century aso. and unsealed are like Lnbrador or the Alaskan steppe, but Instead of -harboring reindeer, rein-deer, they support flocks of eland. The mountain Is a gnme preserve aud the flocks thrive. "Next comes a belt of heather similar sim-ilar to that of the Scotch highlands. Then the elevation drops, the region of heavy precipitation appears and with It the rain-forest, almost constantly con-stantly swathed In mist. This thins to the ordinary tropical forest and then dwindles to the mountain's 'temperate zone,' where the tribesmen live. It Is estimated 125.1KK) people now reside on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, and they are counted by some explorers among- the most Intelligent and progressive natives na-tives of Africa. "The Chagga and other tribes even nntil 1889, but now a railway from Mombasa approaches Its flanks. In Us way It alTonls Africa claim to the greatest mountain on the face of the earth. Everest, at 29,002 altitude is almost 10,000 feet higher than Kilimanjaro; Kiliman-jaro; there are even peaks having similar sim-ilar volcanic origin rising higher In South and Central America, but all of those great ones rise on the bucks of their neighbors. Kilimanjaro stands alone in the heat-scorched wind-swept plain. Without even the company of mountain ridge it rises solitury from t plateau at 2,500 to 4,000 feet to the now-rapped mujesty of 19.819 feet. : Overshadows Blanc and Whitney. "Europe Is proud of Its Alps and Pyrenees aud the United StHtes considers con-siders the Itockies mighty mountains, yet Kilimanjaro Is nearly a mile higher high-er than Mt. Whitney, America's tallest peak. It is almost 4.000 feet higher than Mt. Blanc, Europe's leading summit, sum-mit, Kilimanjaro has for company on the equator Mt. Kenya, Just over the border, giving1 Its name to Kenya colony col-ony and 'the Mountains bf the Moon,' officially Kuwenzorl, In Uganda, feeding feed-ing - the White Nile with water fur Egypt. "Natives Inhabiting the slopes of Kilimanjaro have the legend that the mountain has a silver peak. To tribes who have never seen snow, this seemed the most satisfactory explanation for the gleaming white cap. They assoel- ated It with their gods, and the first white men to explore It had great difficulty dif-ficulty satisfying the natives that they would not drive away Ituyll, the god In the form of a giant cow inhabiting the mountain's high plains. "The mountain is a small world In Itself, or more properly half a world. The snow cap Is its polar cup; the high, cold ridges, without vegetation. |