Chapter I. 
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.” 
“ Ruwenzori ” is the one among many native names by which, 
in Stanley’s opinion, the mountain is most widely known in the 
surrounding region. 
Of all the explorers who in the preceding twenty years had 
travelled through these regions and sailed upon the waters of 
the lakes at the foot of the chain, not one had suspected the 
near presence of vast tracts of eternal ice and snow hidden from 
all eyes in the impenetrable cloak of cloud and mist. 
In 1864, Sir Samuel Baker had given the name of “Blue 
Mountains ” to the vast shapes faintly seen looming through the 
mists of the plain to the south of the Albert Nyanza. He did 
not, however, form any adequate conception of their real 
proportions. 
Stanley himself, in the December of 1875, when actually 
encamped upon the eastern slopes of the chain, relates, but 
without comment, the descriptions given by the natives of the 
shining white colour and intense cold of peaks which he could 
not see but which were said to be towering above him. 
Sir Harry Johnston mentions certain private letters written 
in 1876 by Romolo Gessi during his first complete exploration of 
the shores of the Albert Nyanza. In these letters mention is 
made of a strange vision which the writer saw in the sky, as if 
of mountains covered with snow. Possibly he ascribed this 
vision to an hallucination. The fact remains that the discovery 
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