RUWENZORI.
TWO thousand years ago Sabaean Arabs, trading on the East Coast of Africa, and now and then making an expedition into the interior, came back with stories of a great inland sea and snow mountains beyond it. Greek and Roman travellers spread the rumour, until it found its way through Marinas of Tyre into the pages of the geographer Ptolemy, and the equatorial snows were christened the Mountains of the Moon. Then for centuries the world forgot all about the source of the Nile, which Alexander the Great saw in his dreams, and its attendant wonders. When the exploration of Equatoria began, the mountains were the last things to be discovered. The mists from the Semliki Valley shroud their base, and only on the clearest days and for a very little time do travellers get such a prospect as Mr. Grogan got,—" a purple mass, peak piled upon peak, black-streaked with forest, scored with ravine, and ever mounting till her castellated crags shoot their gleaming tops far into the violet heavens." Speke in his first great journey heard from the Arabs of Unyamwezi of a strange mountain, seldom visible, covered with white stuff, and so high and steep that no man could ascend it ; but his expedition took him to other places. Baker in 1864 was within sight of the range, but the mist never lifted. More extraordinary still, Stanley in 1875 camped several days at the foot of it, and did not realise its magni- tude. He thought the mountain above him was something like Elgon, and he christened it Mount Edwin Arnold; but he had no thought of snow and glaciers, and he disbelieved the native stories of the white stuff on the top. Gordon's emissary, Gessi, in 1876 records a strange apparition, "like snow- mountains in the sky," which appeared to his men. Then came Emin Pasha, who lived for ten years on Albert Nyanza, and never once saw the range,—a fact which may be explained by his short-sightedness. The rediscoverer was Stanley, who in his Emin Relief Expedition in 1888 suddenly saw the great panorama from some high ground south-west of the lake. The passage is worth transcribing :— "While looking to the south-east and meditating upon the events of the last month, my eyes were directed by a boy to a mountain said to be covered with salt, and I saw a peculiar shaped cloud of a most beautiful silver colour, which assumed the proportions and appearance of a vast mountain covered with snow. Following its form downward, I became struck with the deep blue-black colour of its base, and wondered if it portended another tornado; then as the sight descended to the gap between the eastern and western plateaux I became for the first time conscious that what I gazed upon was not the image or semblance of a vast mountain, but the solid substance of a real one, with its summit covered with snow. . . . . . It now dawned upon me that this must be Ruwenzori, which was said to be covered with a white metal or substance believed to be a rock, as reported by Sayan's two slaves."
The first serious attempt at exploration was made by a German official, Dr. Stablmann, who in 1890 explored the foothills, dis- covered the wonderful giant alpine vegetation, and ascended a height of 13,000 feet, almost to the snow-line. Since his day a dozen travellers have extended our knowledge, until this summer the Duke of the Abruzzi ascended all the peaks and completely charted the range.
Ruwenzori is the most mysterious of the world's great mountains, for the question of its existence at all has been rivalled in obscurity by the question of its height. Mr. Moore, who in 1900 ascended the peak then called Kiyanja, and believed to be the highest, to an altitude of 14,900 feet, put the loftiest peak of the range at only 16,000 feet. Sir Harry Johnston, who followed him shortly after on the same mountain to a similar height, was convinced that the highest peak was not under 20,000 feet. Mr. Wylde, Mr. Grogan, and Major Gibbons shared the same opinion, and till the other day it was assumed that Ruwenzori was the loftiest of African summits. In the last year, however, the world has changed its view. Mr. Douglas Freshfield's expedition, which was prevented by bad weather from making the final ascent, came to the conclusion that the extreme height was no more than 18,000 feet. Since then other travellers have borne the same testimony, and Lieutenant Behrens, R.E., in a paper pub- lished in the Geographical Journal last July, by a series of exhaustive measurements displaced Kiyanja from its position as chief summit, and gave to the twin tops of the highest peak altitudes of 16,625 and 16,549 feet. How difficult the task of measurement must be is shown by the fact that Lieutenant Behrens, though living in a place from which Ruwenzori might have been visible on most days, only saw it seven times, and then only for a few moments after sunrise. The Duke of the Abruzzi has at last solved all the difficulties. The highest group, which he calls Mount Stanley, has two summits, Margherita and Alexandra, which reach respectively' 16,810 and 16,744 feet,—a conclusion not widely different from that of Lieutenant Behrens. Ruwenzori, therefore, fulls short both of Kenia and Kilimanjaro in the list of African mountains.
The narrative of the Duke of the Abruzzi, which he told to a brilliant audience in Rome on Monday, and will repeat to-night in London at the Royal Geographical Society's meeting, is one of the most fascinating in the recent history of mountain travel. As a mountaineer he stands high, having made many remarkable ascents in the Alps, and having been the first to conquer Mount St. Elias in Alaska, once believed to be the highest peak in North America. As a traveller he has won fame by a Polar expedition, and it is this combina- tion of organising power and mountaineering skill which was necessary for the ascent of Ruwenzori. A long expedition through tropical forests and glens before the climb is reached makes demands upon a talent which the ordinary mountaineer rarely possesses. With half-a-dozen companions and two guides the Duke reached Entebbe on May 7th of last year. A caravan of two hundred and twenty native porters was formed, and fifteen days later he reached Fort Portal, at the base of the mountains. There very wisely the Duke lightened his party, and alone, except for his two guides and nine porters, traversed the Mubuku Valley, and formed a high camp at a height of 12,464 feet. He at once set to work, and in thirty-five days, between June 10th and July 15th, climbed the sixteen highest peaks of the range. He took all measurements himself, and these were rectified and checked by the triangulations which one of the party con- ducted below. Several of the peak3/4had to be climbed twice when bad weather nullified the observations. Very interesting is his account of the ascent of the highest summit, Mount Stanley. He arrived at the top of the peak Alexandra at 6.30 in the morning, when the whole range was covered with mist, out of which stood two snowy tops. Five hours later he had also ascended Margherita. During the whole climb only the two little nipples of snow stood out of the fog. As a general principle, we are strongly averse to the naming of mountains after persons where any reasonable native name exists. But the case of Ruwenzori is an exception, since there has never been any settled native nomenclature. Duwoni accordingly becomes Mount Speke. and Kiyanja Mount Baker, while the other summits and cols are very appropriately called after earlier explorers,—Gessi, Emin, Stuhlmaun, Baker, Freshfield.
The riddle of equatorial snow has been solved, and there is nothing startling in the answer. The upper part of the mountain has no marvels to show equal to the giant groundsels and lobelias and the forest of heath on the lower slopes. The climbing never seems to have presented any difficulty. The snow and ice were in good condition, there was no neve, and the temperature on the tops varied only between 42S degrees Fahrenheit and 26'6 degrees. The glaciers were all small, without tributaries, as in Norway; the limit of per- petual snow was about 14,600 feet, and the area covered by it was a circle with only a five-mile radius. The weather was the chief tribulation, and the expedition succeeded only by patience, perseverance, and its admirable organisation. Another of the great geographical secrets of the earth has been solved, and we are glad that the honour should have fallen to so redoubtable a traveller. No English mountaineer need regret that a mountain within the Empire has been conquered by one whom all Englishmen whole-heartedly admire, and who has shown himself so appreciative of the work of a race "whose tenacity of will," to quote his Rome address, "and humanity of purpose have carried the light of civilisation everywhere, even to the foot of Ruwenzori itself."
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