THE DARK CONTINENT MYSTERY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 21 June 1907, Page 4

THE DARK CONTINENT MYSTERY.

""''VANISHED FARMERS. In South Africa today is being discussed the advisability of an expedition t.i discover the k»t Boer trek which marched out into the unknown and was swailowtd up half a century ago. What occurred to the vast caravan from the time it stated, on :U journey is one of the myiteries of th 6 Dark Continent, and the numerous T'ulcli Boots connectad with the voyagcurs still specu late upon their fate. The trek, consisting of a, largo number cf families, went ninth, taking a course that would bring them through the pra sent Rhodesia The old.T natives there speak of white people having journeyed through, their country many years ago; but tffcro is no record of the Boers having ben opposed during thev passage. The intuition of the emigrants was to make for tho lakes, Tanganyika being roughly about two months' tick away, and it is probable that tfey got into tho country i,f tho Masai, since tin; natives about tire NyaiiKis, like the Matabe'lc, speak of a caravan having journeyed tliroi'gli their region in the days of their fatheis.

Mt Rhodes took a very considerable in teivst in this mystery of tiro vefldt, and one of ihc ambitions of his life was to have the missing families traced, and, •! tli.'V v.'crc willing to return, restored to ilic'ir friends in the Transvaal. To this end in 190& he fitted out an expedition to he led by Adroin Ilofmcy r, the pio Briti.sl: clergyman, who had been i/jmoved from the Dutch Church in Cfcipctown for political reasons- Owing to Jig unrest that preceded the war, the expedition only rtaciiMl the neighborhood of Crocodile l'ool, and thus ended the only attempt ever made to find the lost families.

Perhaps 'ho late Sir Henry Stanley came near (inding the trek. In conversation with tho present writer he said that when leading the Emin Pasha expedition to the coast and when skirting west of tin Mountains of the Moon he was informed I y several distinct parlies of Arabs Unit to the south-west of Lake Albert Edward Nynaza was a large lake several days' march in circumference, called Lake Ozo. The lake, which is un known to geographers, is about three' marches in from the fringe <jf the great foi'ist, and near it are the descendants ol white men leading a pastoral life.. It is possible thai an attempt to discover the cptllcnient icported by Mile. Arabs wlill soon be made; and should the peraple turn out to be the descendants of the Dutch families that went out into the unknown to get as far as possible from tlie British flag, one of tho mysteries of j the Dark Continent will be cleared up.