IN DARKEST AFRICA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 8 September 1926, Page 7

IN DARKEST AFRICA

AUSTRALIAN GIRL'S THRILLS I! EM AR K A RLE Al.) VENTUR ES LONDON, Aug. 20. Wearing a magic-bangle of giraffe’s hair, the gift oT the chief of the Wambis tribe*. Miss Dorothy Dinliam, a plucky uiuburn-liaircd Mlelboujvne young lady, aged 22, but who looks 18, and who is a well-known short-story writer, under the pseudonym of "Manners Sutton,” has arrived here after exciting experiences in Central Africa.

Miss Dinliam secured literary material and photographs from Capetown, where' her girl companion returned to Australia. She travelled from Johannesburg. over the Kalahari Desert, through Rhodesia, and to Victoria Falls, where she met an American woman scientist, who had been compelled to leave her insane husband, subsequently becoming montallv affected .herself. Despite the woman’s eerie stories of Victoria Forest, on the borders of the Congo, Miss Dinliam determined to’push on to Cairo. She eh,gaged native porters. and reached Elizabethville, the last nut-post, of civilisation, where she was belli up owing to papyrus blocking the Lnalaba River. She proceeded to Kongnla. and thence to Ponthierville. and Stanleyville, where she canoed among the hippopotami and crocodiles, and along the Tl'imbiri River to Bula, where she was turned back by a native epidemic. Miss Dinliam was accompanied by two Basnln boys and 16 native porters, most of whom dumped tbe bacrage and de‘■erled. Owing to Dip guides’ unfamili.irilc with |be country, tbev wandercß f<>r a. forlnigtil in Hi" parklike Victoria Forest, wbicli, according to Tci'cml, nobody lias traversed alive. ‘‘But over tii'-re time is notbing.” slip said. The. Congo was readied at Lisala, where Miss Dinham was hospitably received bv the Belgians, and then sailed in a wood-burning steamer, crowded with natives, and crammed with goats and chickens, which formed the pas>snipers’ diet, to Kinshasa (Congo), where the captain put her in charge of the police,, her knowledge of tlio Swahili language being useless, the natives onlv sneaking Ban gala.

Miss Dinliam collapsed when landing, ami, the Hrilisli Consul came to her rescue, and despatched her, with a white escort, to Matadi, on the. coast, where, canuiTinls had.eaten a white man just prior to her arrival. Miss Dinliam thence sailed to Belgium and then to England. "1 do not like. London.” confessed Miss Dinliam to a. Daily News interviewer. "It is’too tiring. T would return to the Congo immediately if I could.’’ She. wore a white travelling suit on her wanderings, and occasionally wore the daintiest evening frocks at trading stations. She is desirous of crossing Siberia, and South America, and is learning Russian and Spanish. She already knows French.