THE CROSSING OF AFRICA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10670, 3 June 1895, Page 2

THE CROSSING OF AFRICA.

(New York Sun.) Lieutenant Count Yon Gotzen, a young officer in the German army, has accomplished an eventful journey across tropical Africa, his route taking him nearly half the way through districts which no white man had visited, and ha has made some important and interesting discoveries. He has stood on the crater wall of the only active volcano in Africa; ha has found large lakes that were never heard of before, and he has traced at least one important river from source to mouth. Yon Gotzen is possessed of considerable private means, and spared no expense in order to make the expedition a success, so that when he left the Indian Ocean ia October, 1893, and started inland, he was at the head of one of the largest and beat equipped expeditions of the kind that ever entered Africa. He started from the port of Pangani, a little north of Zanzibar, with 518 persons in his caravan, of whom 400 were ; black, porters l and thirty-three 'were soldiers. Among his white comrades were a geologist and a physician, and he had made so little stir xa all the work of organising his big enterprise that the world hardly knew he had started. It was only after he began to send home news of fresh discoveries that wide attention was called to him. A LAF.GE SALT LAKE. Yon Gbtzen made his first important discovery after travelling about 300 miles toward Victoria Nyanza, when he suddenly came upon the large salt lake Umburre, which is one of the most southern of that remarkable chain 1 of dead seas extending hundreds of miles north and south, a considerable distance east of Victoria Nyanza. Here ia a very long, wide rift in the earth whose drainage cannot escape to the saa, but settles in these depressions, forming a series of big and small salt lakes. Explorers had never heard of Lake Umburre before, although they had passed both north and south of it. Over a hundred miles directly west of Victoria Nyanza, ia the largo country .of Ruanda, lying partly in the. Congo State and partly in German East Africa, No European had ever penetrated this region, and we knew nothing of ißuanda except a few. vague facts supplied, by Stanley, Stuhlmann and Baumann, wh° skirted its eastern edge. Yon Gotzen. crossed ■ this populous region, whose inhabitants- are a fine-looking race. The King has the title of Kigeri. He has a dozen residence's in various places, at one of which be gave the explorer’s party a hospitable reception. The Arab traders have tried in vain to penetrate this country. They have always been repulsed, and not a single Arab did Yon Gotzen meet in this part of Africa. apkica’s great volcano.. In Ruanda the explorer saw /the only active volcano that has been discovered in Africa, and there is reason to believe that no other will ever be found. We have known since 1891 that there was in this region a smoking mountain, for the natives farther north told Emin Pasha and Dr Stuhlmann that there was a great mountain from which black smoko came, • and that ashes were sometimes sifted over the country, and when there was the most smoke they heard a noise like the bellowing of many cattle. It was not at all probable that these natives could have invented such a story, and it was quite certain that explorera were on the eve of finding, at last, a volcano in the heart of Africa. The prize was reserved for Voa Gotzen. When Speke discovered Victoria Nyanza the natives told him of a mountain, far west of the lake, which they called Mount Mfumbiro. He placed it on his map, and when the mountain was first seen, three years ago, it was found to be the most northern of a chain of six volcanic mountains extending to the south-east. The most southern of these is the fire mountain, Kirunga. Yon Gbtzen saw. it from afar as he approached the mountain from the east Its name is really a phrase of which Kirunga is the most important word, and the whole means “ The place where sacrifices are burned.” It rises above the plain to a height of about il,l2o£t. The - white men saw its smoke rising gently above the top for three days before, pushing through the dense vegetation, they reached the base of the mountain. Then they eagerly pushed up the steep elope and at last stood upon the edge of the crater wall. The crater is about a mile in diameter, and the wall that hems it in is nearly circular. The crest of the encircling wall is several hundred feet above the bottom of the crater. The angle of the slope down to the bottom is about seventy degrees; so steep that it would be difficult of descent, and the spectacle spread before the visitors on the crater bed did not tempt them at all to make any effort to roach it. As near as they could make out throught the steam and yellow smoke, the bottom of the crater was a lake of molten, reddish lava. It looked like marble of a yellow-brown colour, and the only way that they could determine that it was liquid or nearly so was an occasional disturbance of the surface. Rising above the surface of this bright-hued lake was a . large orifice 'descending into the bowels of the mountain. It was over 400 ft in diameter, and out of this immense cavity was pouring a great column of yellow smoke that was almost stifling when the breeze, now and then, enveloped the explorers in its dense volume. They were then compelled to retreat down the side of the mountain to gat beyond the reach of the overpowering fumes. ' At a short distance from the volcano wa« another, about half the size, which appeared to bo in a quiescent state. Voa Gbtzen believed, from disturbance* that were apparent near the western .edge o£ the crater, that another centre of eruption exists there, but the smoke obscured hit view of this part of the crater, and in the time he could spend bn (op of the moantain he was unable to pash through the timber and grass that clothes its sides to the point above where the disturbance appeared to be. ||AN IMPORTANT DItCOTEET. , ; Eight at the southern foot of this mouatain the explorer made another interesting discovery. It is the big lake Kivu, of which Stanley heard vague reports from the natives, which he placed on his' map under the name of Eivo. It is about half way between lakes Tanganyika and Albert Edward, and according to Von Gbtzen it ia nearly as large as tne latter lake. He did not, however, see its southern shores, Ha journeyed for days along it* northern coast, and far to the south he could lea • large island in the central part of the lake, both east and west of which was a water horizon. The natives told him that-the land in view was an island, and that'beyond it the lake still extended to the south for «

about one-third of its entire length. We now are certain that this lake sends its waters through the Euaisi Eiver to Tan* gany ika. The river enters the big lake at its northern end, and the question whence, it comes, which was debated iby Burton, . Livingstone and Stanley, is at last settled. The altitude of lake Kivu is high jabot’® .- that of the large sea to whiohit is tributary, and as its waters descend nearly half , a mile nearer the sea level before they reach Tanganyika, there must be many a fall and rapid in the short course of the; . Euaisi. A NEW EIVEB. West of the big volcano the! expedition spent nearly three months among lofty mountains that form the water-parting here between the Congo and Nile systems. It was an utterly unknown region, so high above the sea that for some time the party - suffered greatly from cold, the mercury falling at night to within three degrees of the freezing point. New people live ia this region of immense forests and giant bamboos. Then the party began the descent of the Lows, a large eastern tributary of the Congo. They traced it from its sources to the Congo, and bav.a thus delineated another large stream on the maps of Africa. On this part of the journey they were near the southern edge of. the great forest which Stanley had traversed over 150 miles to the north. There Js here no such dense jjrowth of vegetation as he described. The foliage is not here so dense as to exclude the raja of the sun. la the more open place* w® -.1 'big towns. ! -v-