ROYAL EXPLORER

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 184, 2 May 1933, Page 9

ROYAL EXPLORER

Death in East Africa UNHAPPY LOVE AFFAIR (Reuter— Special to “The Dominion.”) London, March 23. The Duke of Abruzzi, cousin of the King of Italy, who recently died in Italian Somaliland, East Africa, imposed exile upon himself because lie was unable to marry the girl he loved. In 1907 the Duke met and fell in love with an American girl, Miss Catherine Elkins, tlie daughter of the late Senator Elkins. But the King of Italy refused his consent to a marriage between his cousin and a commoner. Then tlie Duke, one of the handsomest men in the Italian royal family, declared that he- would never marry anyone else, alnd left. Italy to spend his life in Italian Somaliland. Six years later, in 1913, (lie girl married another-man. an American, but. tlie Duke remained true to her, and died a bachelor at the age of GO.

From 1915 to 1917 ho was comman-dorin-chief of the Italian -Navy, and he gained fame as an explorer as well as a soldier. He was the first to climb Mount St. Elias in Alaska in JS97. He organised an expedition to tlie North Pole in 1899, and went further north than any one had done up to that time. lie took part in expeditions to Central Africa and tlie Himalayas, elimbing 24,G00 feet in the Karagoram range of the Himalayas—tlie highest point at that time attained by man.