A NOTABLE JOURNEY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2063, 25 April 1907, Page 3

A NOTABLE JOURNEY.

There will soon ho no niystery~abont the geography of Africa. Journeys across Africa are now generally matters of comparatively little moment. “There is almost a tourist route,” remarks a. writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, from Mombasa via the Uganda Railway, Victoria Nyanza, Ruwenzori. and the Pygmy forest to the Congo, thence by that river to Matadi, where the steamer waits tq take the voyager to Antwerp. Arid the Cape-to-Cairo route is becoming hackneyed, and has been accomplished by at least one lady,” Rut to cross from the West Coast to the Red Sea is another matjter. Very few travellers have attempted it. and only one scientific observer, a Ger-

man. has made the journey. Save for the wastes of the Eastern Sahara, the Central Soudan is the leastknown part of Africa. A remarkable journey through this dark remnant of a once dark Continent has been accomplished by Lieutenant Boyd Alexander, of the Rjflc Brigade, who started'ai, the month of the Niger in 1904. and arrived at Port Soudan only the other day. The building of the railway .by which be travelled from the Athara to the Bed Sea, had not been commenced when he started from tho other coast. Lieutenant Alexander finished the journey alone, two of his companions having died on the way, and the third having been obliged to return to Nigeria. The expedition spout their first'year in Northern Nigeria, doing excellent survey and zoological work. They came across a tribe, the women of whom adorned themselves behind with an ornament which resembled a tail. A careful survey of Lake Chad greatly altered tho map of that groat and mysterious place. It appeared to be little more than a vast swamp with two large pools of open water. Heie were found a race of timid folk who build canoes of dried reed stems resembling gondolas in shape. In general the travellers met. with no hos-

tility from the inhabitants. A picturesque incident was the relief of a caravan of 700 pilgrims on their way to Mecca —a six years’, .journey from Timbuktu. t|ic starting placebesieged in a walled town by semiBerber robber O'ibes' from' 'the''Sahara borderland. These freebooters were dispersed by Lieutenant Alexander, helped b.v a force of archers. Thence the expedition consisted of two men, and eventually Lieutenant Alexander was left alone to cross country never before visited bv white men, Ho travelled over 3000 miles through country of which only a third was . wellknown. and among savage tribes with whom he almost invariably kept on friendly terms. (Much knowledge of the highest importance was gained concerning the waterways between the-'NUrcr.jind the Congo. Lieutenant Alexander is now in the front rank of African explorers.