MYSTERY OF THE DARK CONTINENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8446, 21 May 1907, Page 3

MYSTERY OF THE DARK CONTINENT.

VANISHED FARMERS. In South Africa to-day is being discussed the advisability of an expedition to diicover the loßt Boer trek which marched out into the unknown and was swallowed up half a century ago. What occurred to the vast caravan from the time it started on its journey is one of the mysteries of the Dark Continent, and the numerous Dutch Boers connected with the voyageurs still speculate upon their fate. The trek, consisting of a large number of families, went north, says the London Daily Mail, taking a course that would bring them through the present Rhodesia. The older natives there speak of white people having journeyed through their country many years ago; but there is no record of the Boers having been opposed during their passage. MR RHODES' EFFORTS. The intention of the emigrants was to make for the lakes, Tanganyika being roughly about two months' trek away, and it is probable that they got into the country of the Masai, since the natives about the Nyanzas, like the Matabele, speak i of a caravan, having journeyed ! through their region in the days of their fathers. Mr Rhodes took a very considerable interest in this mystery of the veldt, and one of the ambitions of his life was to have the missing families traced, and, if they were willing to return, restored to their friends in the Transvaal. To this end in 1899 he fitted out an expedition to be led by Adrian Hofmeyer, the pro-British clergyman, who had been removed from the Dutch Church in Capetown for political reasons. Owing to the unrest that preceded the war, the expedition only reached the neighbourhood of Crocodile Pool, fand thus ended the only attempt ever made to find the lost fami'ies. UNKNOWN LAKE. Perhaps the late Sir Henry Stinley came near to finding the trek. In conversation with the present writer he said that when leading the Emin Pasha expedition to the coast, and when skirting west of the Mountains of the Moon he was informed by several distinct parties of Arabs that to the south-west of Lake Albert Edward Nyanza was a large lake several days' march in circumference, called Lake Ozo. The lake, which is unknown to geographers, is about three marches in from the fringe of the great forest, and near it are the descendants of white men leading a pastoral life. It is possible that an attempt to discover the settlement • reported by [ the Arabs will soon be made; and i 1 should the people turn out to be the [ descendants of the Dutch families , that went out into the unknown to get as far as possible from the Brit-, ish flag, one of the mysteries of j the Dark Continent will be. clearer! up. (