The Crossing of Africa.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5281, 11 June 1895, Page 1

The Crossing of Africa.

<tfeu> York Sun.)

Lieutenant Count Yon GStzen, a yonng 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 be has made some important and interesting difiQO.varieß.--He. has stood on the crater wall of the only active volcano in . Africa % he has found large lakes that were never heard of before, , and he has traced at least one important river from Bource to mouth.

Yon Gotzen is possessed of considerable private means, and spared no expense in order to m,ake the expedition a success, so that when he left the Indian Ocean in October, 1893, and started inland, be was at the head of one of the largest and best 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 and tbirty-three were soldiers. Among his white comrades were a geologist and a physician, and he had made so little stir ra 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 LARGE BALT LAXB.

Yon Gotzen made his first important discovery after travelling about 300 miles toward Victoria Nyanza, when he suddenly came upon the large salt lake Umburre, which \a one of the most southern of that remarkable chain of dead seas extending hundreds of miles north and south, a considerable distance east of Victoria Nyanza. Here is a very long, wide rift in the earth whose drainage cannot escape to the sea, 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 1 Nyanzs, is the large 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 Ruanda except a few vague facts supplied by Stanley, Stuhlmann and Baumann, who skirted its eastern edge. Yon Gotzen crossed thiß gopulous region, whose inhabitants are a ne-looking race. The King, has the title of Kigeri. He has a dozen residences in various places, at one of which he 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 I Arab did Von Gotzen meet in thiß part of ! Africa.

AFBICI'S QBBAT VOCCANO.

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 einca 1891 that there was in this region a smoking mountain, for the natives further north told Emm Pasha and Dr Stuhlmann that there was a great mountain from which black smoke came, and that ashes were sometimes eif ced over the country, and when, there was the most smoke they heard a noise like the bellowing of many cattle. It wbb not at all probable that these nativeß could have invented stich a story, and it was quite certain tlai explorers were on the eve of ; finding, at last,, a voloanO in the heart of Africa. Tae prize was reserved for Von Gotzan. When Speke discovered Viotoria" Nyanzi 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 Boen, three years ago, ib waa found to be the most northern of a chain of six volcanic mountains extending to the south-east. The most southern of these ia the fire mountain, Kirunga.

Yon G5 zan saw it from afar as he approached the mountain from the ea9t* Its name is really a phrase of which Kirunga is the most important word, and the whole meanß " The place where sacrifices are burned." Ie rises above the plain to a height of abour, 11,120 ft. The white men saw its smoke rwiag 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 slope and at last stood upon the edge of the crater wall.

The crater ia about a mile in diameter, iind Iho wull that hems it id ia 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 I reach it. As near as they could make out thronght 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. Bisiog 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 get beyond the reach of the overpowering fumes.

At a short distance from the volcano was another, about half the size* which appeared to be in a quiescent state. Von Gdtzen believed, from disturbances that were apparent near the western edge of the crater, that another centre of eruption exists there, bnt the "smoke obscured his view of this part of the crater, and in the time he could spend on top of the mountain he was unable to push through the I timber and grass that clothes its sides to the point above where the disturbance appeared to be. ■ ■ 0 . ||AN IMPOBTANT DISCOVERY. Eight at the southern foot of this mountain 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 nnder the name of Rtvo. It is about half way between lakes Tanganyika and Albert Edward, and according to Yon Gtitzen it is nearly as large as tne latter lake. He did not, however, see its southern shores. He journeyed for days along its northern coast, and far to the south he could see a 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 Busisi Biver to Tanganyika. The river enters the big lake at its northern end, and the question whence it comeß, which waß debated by Burton, Livingstone and Stanley, is at last settled. The altitude of lake Kivu is high above that of the large sea to which it 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 Busifti. *

A NIW BIVEE.

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. Few people live in thiß region of immense forests and giaut bambooß. Then the party began the descent of the Lowa, a large eastern tributary of the Congo. They traced it from its sources to the Congo, and have thuß delineated another large stream on the maps of Africa. On thiß 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- is here no auch dense growth of vegetation as he described. The foliage is not here so dense as to exclude the rays of the sun. In the more open places are big towns.