The path ends with the canes; and that which we follow after leaving them we make for ourselves. But upwards is the right way; you can't go wrong, for the ravine is like a funnel cut in half, and the easiest slope lies in its centre, to which we all gravitate by a sort of 'natural selection.' The forest is dense under foot and overhead; perhaps it is as well that it is, for without clinging on to the branches and tree-stems, and swinging bodily by them up bad places, the lower part would be as difficult as the upper. The forest primeval, silent and gloomy, shuts out the light, and the air feels hot and stifling. Dead trunks lie rotting on all sides, mere touchwood many of them, resenting our footsteps by a cloud of dust; giving homes to a variety of lovely ferns, including the hartstongue, which grows in tufts on the dead-wood wherever its roots can penetrate. Everywhere strange forms meet the eye, as if Nature in a frolic had run wild to form them. From the branches depend long trails of 'lianes,' ropes that twist and twine and squeeze the life out of the trees they fasten on. Orchids are here also, fleshy leaved, with no apparent roots; and black shapeless masses perched in the higher tree forks, the nests of the destructive white ant. Mosses clothe the ground with an emerald tapestry, beautiful to the eye, but treacherous and squelching full of water under foot. Everywhere is a rank garden of luxuriant dripping vegetation, which, speaking as to comfort, we could have done without.

After a stiff climb, the funnel narrows visibly, and we get into the central watercourse, where there is free space to breathe and less vegetation. The path is rough, macadamised by gigantic boulders, moss-grown and slippery, standing at incalculable angles, very tedious to clamber over, amongst which a sharp lookout has to be kept to preserve our poor dear shins. Gradually the trees, hitherto a green arcade overhead, thin away, and the watercourse emerges into a steep grassy slope, growing steeper at every step. Above, facing us, is the gap spoken of already; on the left is the mountain ridge; on the right rises old Pieter Both, cold, gray, and menacing—and a long way up. The ravine has narrowed to some fifteen yards; here and there is a scrubby bush. The water-course is now the only way possible to climb by, and in two places there are in it rocks twelve feet high standing straight up, which have to be clambered over somehow.

Above, on the right, is the 'Shoulder,' a narrow projection about twenty yards long, and two or three wide, on which breakfast is to be eaten and preparations made for the final climb. To reach this 'Shoulder' appears a sufficient task from where we are; beyond it rises a smooth perpendicular cone, without flaw or crack, mid air, apparently impossible. Yet as we bend back our heads and say so, out of one side far up, springs a small figure; and the word 'impossible' is wiped out of our dictionaries when we behold that a 'black man and a brother' has essayed the task. Up to the 'Shoulder' it is all hands and feet; beyond that there is nothing for it but rope. Viewed from a distance, the 'Shoulder' forms the knees of the sitting figure which the mountain is said to resemble. From many points the resemblance to the statue of Her Majesty at the London Royal Exchange is ludicrously exact.

When the top of the grass slope is reached, there is a narrow band of turf, dotted with half-a-dozen scrub bushes of a foot or little more high. This band leads off horizontally to the right, and is the only possible way to the 'Shoulder.' A very bad way indeed it is. From below it looks nothing but a strip of green ribbon stretched across the middle of a rocky face, black and green and slimy as ever earth, air, and water put together have concocted to puzzle mountaineers. In truth it is little better than it looks. There are toe-holes to stick your boots into as you walk with your face to the wall; and here and there a shrub to let you feel something between your fingers, besides a bunch of dead damp grass to save you from eternity. The whole passage is oozing with sludge and water, very slippery, and the grass looks utterly rotten and unreliable.

This track, which is about one hundred yards in length, lands you a little below the 'Shoulder;' then a dozen yards' stiff steep climb and you stand upon it—perhaps sit at first—for a yard farther on across it is space, sheer awful space, which to look down till you have got your breath is neither wise nor pleasant. You soon get used to the feeling; but it is a little startling just at first to find that this promised landing-place where breakfast is to be served ends in nothing, just three feet beyond the baskets that contain the provender. When you have got your breath, the first thing to look at is the great bare cone immediately above and the dangling rope up which your road must lie. Your eye takes it all in at a glance, and that first glance is not promising. But breakfast puts a better construction on the onward journey; and by the time we have made acquaintance with the Oxford sausages and Australian sheep's tongues, we begin to scramble about quite merrily, and doff boots, coats, and hats for the task with as jaunty a grace as did my Lord Russell on Tower Hill.

The summit of Pieter Both is a cone of sugar-loaf form, compressed at the sides, that nearest the 'Shoulder' having a slight bulge, without which the ascent would be certainly impracticable. From the 'Shoulder,' which is covered with short grass and wind-scarred scrub, a ridge some three yards wide runs up to the foot of the 'Ladder Rock.' This ridge, which narrows as it goes up, is composed of rock-fractures firmly cemented together, and is to all appearance a great buttress supporting the cone. Up this you climb, hands and knees, without requiring a rope. The buttress comes to an abrupt end at the foot of a huge cube of rock, flat-sided and perpendicular, which stands bolt upright, and bars all further climbing without mechanical aid.

This is the 'Ladder Rock,' and is between fifty and sixty feet in absolute perpendicular height, its breadth being less than twenty feet. Running down its centre is a crack, without which the difficulty of climbing it would have been greatly aggravated, if not insurmountable. Against the face of the 'Ladder Rock' hangs a rope, the end disappearing over the upper edge where it has been made fast; the climb up it being made easier by a rough rope-ladder, which takes you up some dozen feet, to where the crack is sufficiently wide to admit your toes; that reached, grasping the rope with every one of your ten fingers, and squeezing as many of your toes into the crevice as you can, you must trust to your muscles and swing yourself up. The top of this rock reached, you are glad to sit or lie down upon a second ridge like the lower one, but much steeper and narrower; so narrow that in climbing up it, still with the rope tightly grasped, you sit astride it, your legs dangling over the sides, where it is better not to let your eyes follow unless the head that owns them is of the steadiest. This ridge has been christened 'The Saddle,' and is made up of broken rock cemented together with lava. Here and there are tufts of grass, with bosses of the silver-leaved 'everlastings,' wind-torn and ragged, and other plants. The 'everlastings' shew brightly against the cold gray rocks, and tempt many of the party to pluck them to adorn their hats when they get them; which just now is somewhat doubtful, as the slightest slip may be fatal. This dreadful 'Saddle' is said to have once vanquished two aspirants; one of them, conscious that he had 'lost his head,' lay flat along the ridge, allowing the man who came to his rescue to climb over his body, a ticklish bit of mid-aërial gymnastics, which happily came off successfully.

The 'Saddle' rises at a steep angle, say the steep roof of a house, and ends at another 'facer;' a huge rounded rock perhaps ten feet high standing straight up across the way, the way now having