Billmon at the Whiskey Bar reports:
From Great-Great-Uncle (by marriage)* Ernie:
Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai,' the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen thawed carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.
Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1938
Billmon quotes the Grauniad:
Whiskey Bar: Modernizing Hemingway: "Africa's tallest mountain, with its white peak, is one of the most instantly recognisable sights in the world. But as this aerial photograph shows, Kilimanjaro's trademark snowy cap, at 5,895 metres (1,934ft), is now all but gone -- 15 years before scientists predicted it would melt through global warming."
"The peak of Mt Kilimanjaro as it has not been seen for 11,000 years," March 14, 2005
I'm going to go get a stiff drink.
*Yep. I'm not kidding. When my grandmother Florence Usher was a small child, they would send her out to sit in the backseat when Ernest took her Aunt Hadley for a drive...
