EXPLORERS LOST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 224, 21 September 1934, Page 5

EXPLORERS LOST.

UQANDA SEARCH.

AIRCRAFT TO BE USED. HAUNTS OF CROCODILES. Search by aeroplane, native bearers, and trained bush men is being organised with Government aid for two young Englishmen who have disappeared in the "lost world" region of Lake Rudolph. Uganda. The missing men are Dr. W. S. Dyson, of Manchester, medical officer and anthropologist, and Mr. W. H. D. Martin, surveyor, both members of the Rudolf Rift Valley Expedition. They set out in a frail, collapsible canoe for the comparatively unknown South Island. They intended to be absent a week. There has been no word of them since. Leader's Alarm. Mr.- V. E. Fuchs, of St. John's College, Cambridge, leader of the expedition, who is at the base camp, became alarmed by their absence, and telegraphed to Nairobi asking for Government help in organising a search, and for the use of an aeroplane. The country the expedition is exploring ie one of the few places still in the reptilian stage of zoological development. South Island is a mystery island. Its landscape is often clouded by steam and sulphur vapours which escape from huge fiesures in the ground. Mammals are practically non-existent. The chief reptiles are the crocodiles and the huge monitor lizards. These lizards: defy man by spitting and snapping at him. They live on crocodile eggs, which they dig out of the mud. The whole atmosphere of the island ie prehistoric; its secrets are safely held.