Introduction 



many remarkable lantern slides from their instantaneous and 

 timed photographs. 



We were given on this occasion the gist of the chapters 

 in this book which treat of the region about Lake Kivu, 

 and between Kivu and Ruwenzori, special stress being laid 

 on the wonderful gorilla of those regions (a distinct species), 

 on the active and silent volcanoes of the Umufumbiro or 

 Virunga region (between Lakes Kivu and Edward), and the 

 fringe of the mighty Congo Forest, along the Semliki River. 

 But the author's journey for his special collecting purposes 

 seems to have begun early in igig (after the Great War had 

 been closed by an armistice), at the Katanga frontier of 

 Northern Rhodesia, to have continued across and up Lake 

 Tanganyika to Ujiji, and thence overland through the valley 

 of the Malagarazi River and its north-western affluents, to 

 the lofty tablelands of Burundi. From Burundi he and his 

 plucky wife — as capable an African explorer and photographer 

 as her husband — made their way to Lake Kivu, and thence 

 through the great volcanoes of Virunga to Lake Edward, 

 especially along the almost unknown western coast of Lake 

 Edward (where the tameness of the elephants and other big 

 game testified to an un visited hunter's paradise), whence 

 they made their way to the Belgian post of Mbeni, on the 

 middle course of the Semliki. 



From Mbeni the author effected his climb up the slopes 

 of the Ruwenzori range to an altitude of nearly 13,000 feet. 

 From Mbeni he and his wife explored the still mysterious 

 Congo Forest, and made their way eventually across that 

 forest belt to Stanle5rville on the Upper Congo, from 

 Stanleyville by steamer nine hundred miles down 

 river to Stanley Pool, from Stanley Pool by railway to 



XX 



