JUNGLE ROMANCE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3445, 19 March 1932, Page 6

JUNGLE ROMANCE

MISSING FOR 29 YEARS.

"WHITE CHIEF'S DEATH."

The story of real life romance and adventure, rivalling the most ambitious fiction of the late Sir Rider Haggard, has been carried by a small buff official envelope into the humble home in Duisberg, Germany, of an aged German railway pensioner and his wife. The letter came from the British Commissioner of a Gold Coast district. It told the astonished old couple that their son, Wilhelm K'noog, whom they had not heard of since 29 years ago, when he was reported lost in a shipwreck off the Gold Coast, had died in Africa. Old Herr Knoog read the letter with difficulty, for his eyes are weak" and the German of the district commissioner was little better. He was, however, able to make out that when he was shipwrecked Wilhelm was cast up on shore and wandered aimlessly inland.

Wilhelm worked his way through the jungle into the" centre, of darkest Africa. There he fell in with a negro tribe called the Mutasari. A few years ago a British expedition found him there, ruling over the negroes, and known as "The White Prince."

The "White Prince" had forgotten all his German and the little bit of sailors' English he had picked up, but in the difficult African language of his tribe he told the Englishman, through' an interpreter, how, many years ago, he had married the daughter of the Mutasari chief, and on the chief's death had succeeded him.

The Englishmen invited the German sailor to'return with them to civilisation. Knoog refused, saying he was happier where he was. The final chapter of the romance tells how negro runners—obeying the last command of their "White Prince" —conveyed the news of Wilhelm Knoog's death to the nearest British official, so that it might be forwarded to his relatives in far-off Germany.