CHAPTER Y 

 BUWENZOBI AND ITS SXOJFS 



IT may easily be iinaii^ined that the Special ( 'oiuniissioner iVoiu tlie 

 iiioinent of his appoiutnieiit to f^gaiida had his mental visit)ii con- 

 centrated on Kuwenzori, that little-known range of snow-monntains in the 

 extreme westof tiie Protectorate. Political business, however, of many kinds, 

 and of more importance to the objects of the mission than geographical 

 ex[)loration, detained him in countries east of Kuwenzori till (lie late spring 

 of 1900. In ]\[arch and April of that year he had been seriously ill at 

 Entebbe with l»lackwater fever, and the medical officer attending' him was 

 of o}»inion that out of regard lor life and health Iw should leave the 

 tropical climate of Uganda lor a while and see what eifect a trip to the 

 snows would have on an ana-mic bodv. 



Vigour returned, however, soon after quitting the coast-lands of the 

 Victoria Nyanza. As we rode through Toro we looked out eagerly for 

 that faint jihantasmagoria of i)inkish snow and mauve rock which was to 

 appear in the heavens after every sunrise. ]^ut the great mountain was 

 in a sulky mood, and it was not until we were only thirty miles from 

 its base that for one precious five minutes we saw the alternation of snow 

 and rock limned like the glimpse of another world in the western sky. 



Kuwenzori is still the most mysterious and least-known mountain of 

 Africa. Its existence as a snowy range, or a single snow-})eak, was reported 

 by Stanley on native information as far back as 1875, though, curiously 

 enough, at that time he does not seem to have attached sufficient 

 importance to the natives' stories of snow, which he repeats without 

 comment. Yet he himself stood, in 1875, close to the eastern fiank of 

 this mighty mountain mass, and spent days if not weeks within sight of 

 it. The whole time, however, the uj)per regions of tlie mountain remained 

 comj)letely veiled in clouds, and Stanley vaguely estimated an altitude of 

 15,000 feet as the possible climax of this imperfectly outlined mass of blue 

 mountains. All the time Sir Samuel Baker, Gessi Pasha, and other explorers 

 or officials of the Egyptian Sudan were navigating Albert Nyanza, the snow 

 summits of Kuwenzori remained obstinately concealed behind banks of clouds. 

 Sir Samuel Baker was struck with the a})parent size of the great mountain 



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