CHAPTER V 

 BUWENZOBI AND ITS SNOIVS 



IT may easily be imag-ined that the Special Commissioner from the 

 moment of his appointment to Uganda had his mental vision con- 

 centrated on Ruwenzori, that little-known range of snow-mountains in the 

 extreme west of the Protectorate. Political business, however, of many kinds, 

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

 exploration, detained him in countries east of Ruwenzori till the late spring 

 of 1900. In March and April of that year he had been seriously ill at 

 Entebbe with blackwater fever, and the medical officer attending him was 

 of opinion that out of regard for life and health he should leave the 

 tropical climate of Uganda for a while and see what effect a trip to the 

 snows would have on an anannic body. 



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 phantasmagoria of pinkish snow and mauve rock which was to 

 appear in the heavens after every sunrise. But 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. 



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

 Africa. Its existence as a snowy range, or a single snow-peak, 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 flank of 

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

 it. The whole time, however, the ujjper regions of the mountain remained 

 completely veiled in clouds, and Stanley vaguely estimated an altitude of 

 15,000 feet as the possible climax of this im]jerfectly 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 Ruwenzori remained obstinately concealed behind banks of clouds. 

 Sir Samuel Baker was struck with the apparent size of the great mountain 



