THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1910. FROM THE CAPE TO CAIRO.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10001, 23 March 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1910. FROM THE CAPE TO CAIRO.

Miss Mary Hall, who is at present on a visit to New Zealand, is thw first and only white woman that has accomplished the great trek from the Cape to Cairo. In an interview with an "Otago Daily Times" representative, this plucky traveller furnished some particulars of her unique achievement. Miss Hall went from Capetown to the Victoria Falls, and then returned to England; but the call of the wild was in her ears, and a year later found her leaving the Cape on her famous trek. She and her party of natives went up the Zambesi river, and crossed above the rapids, and it was then that she be gao to experience a feeling of intense loneliness—one solitary English lady among hordes of savages, with no white face within hundreds of miles. The traveller was carried in a uiachila, a kind of hammock slung on two poles, borne by sixteen natives in four relays. When her caravan came to the great lakes, , Miss Hal] exchanged her hammock tor a boat.

Sa also at the source of the Nile she took boat, and was rowed upon the waters of that wonderful river for ten days, camping on its banks by night. After resting at Nyami, she was rowed on to Gondoroko, from where she took steamer for the 1,100mile journey to unarc.um; ana now-a-days the rest is easy. The Great Lakes impressed Miss Hall with their magnitude. "They are little specks on the map," she remarked, "but when you coiae to think of it, Victoria Nyanza is about the size of Scotland, and Lake Tanganyika is as long as England." In addition to her following of native bearers, Miss Hall was in certain territories given an escort of native troops. Ihese troops, by laying violent hands on a villager I whom they desired to press into their service as a guide when the party had lost their way, nearly led to the annihilat'on of themselves and the traveller. Miss Hall, however, rose to the occasion, and waving back her escort, called on the savage chief, through her interpreter, to do the same, and finally the storm was calmed. The chief was appeased with an apology and a present of salt, and an unpleasant incident ended in very English fashion in Mjss Hall taking the chief's photograph. To her robust constitution and to the fact that she travelled light, this intrepid lady partly attributes her success, and she believes that tfie fact of her carrying no firearms was taken as a proof of her peaceful intent, and thus saved her from the spears of the natives. Out there in the loneliness Miss Hall met with the White Fathers, a well-known Roman Catholic Order. One of the reasons why the Fathers so heartily welcomed ner was because they could at least give the native women ocular proof of the existence of a race of white women.