It is quite a mysterious fact that from the localities reached by Sir Samuel Baker, Ruwenzori ought to have been as visible as St. Paul’s dome from Westminster Bridge. And any person steaming round the Lake Albert, as Gessi Pasha and Mason Bey did, would be within easy view of the snow mountains—provided, of course, that they were not obscured by the dense clouds and depths of mist under which for about 300 days of the year the great mountain range veils its colossal crown.
Then, again, its classical history: the fables that have been woven about it; its relation to the dear old Nile, the time-honoured Nile—the Nile of the Pharaohs, of Joseph, Moses, and the Prophets; its being the source whence so many springs of the Nile issue—its being the creator of the “Sea of Darkness,” Lake Albert Edward, from whose bosom the Semliki—Nile to the West, and the infant Kafur to the East—emerge, to feed the Albert on one hand and the Victoria Nile on the other; the very mountain before whose shrine Alexander and Cæsar would have worshipped—if the poets may be believed; its rare appearance out of the night-black clouds; its sudden and mysterious apparition on a large portion of that “illimitable lake” of a modern traveller; its quaint title—the Mountains of the Moon, so often sought in vain; its massive and rugged grandeur, and immense altitude: all these explain why Ruwenzori demands more than a brief notice. Who that has gazed on the Bernese Oberland for the first time will ever forget the impression? In my twenty-two years of African travel both discovery and spectacle were unique, and its total unexpectedness of appearance, as well as its own interesting character and history, appeal to me to describe as clearly as possible, and with some detail, what we saw.
While proceeding towards Lake Albert, in December, 1887, we obtained a view from Pisgah of a long range of mountains, wooded to the summits, which we estimated to be about 7,000 to 8,000 feet in height. It lay from S.E. to S. On returning from the Lake, the same month, two enormous truncate cones suddenly appeared into view, bearing S. ½ . They might, we believed, be between 10,000 and 12,000 feet high. They were called the Twin Cones, and we thought them remarkable features. The sight of them suggested that in their neighbourhood, or between them and the Gordon Bennett Mountain, would be found an interesting country.
When returning to the Nyanza for the second time in April, 1888, the Twin Cones were invisible; but on the 25th of May, 1888, when scarcely two hours’ march from the Lake beach, lo! a stupendous snowy mountain appeared, bearing 215° magnetic—an almost square-browed central mass—about thirty miles in length, and quite covered with snow; situate between two great ridges of about 5,000 feet less elevation, which extended to about thirty miles on either side of it. On that day it was visible for hours. On surmounting the table-land, the next day or so, it had disappeared. Not a trace of either Twin Cones or Snowy Mountain was in view.
On returning for the third time to the Nyanza, in January, 1889, and during our long stay at Kavalli for two and a half months, it was unseen, until suddenly casting our eyes, as usual, towards that point where it ought to be visible, the entire length of the range burst out of the cloudy darkness, and gratified over a thousand pairs of anxious eyes that fixed their gaze upon the singular and magnificent scene.
The upper part of the range, now divided distinctly into many square-browed peaks, seemed poised aloft in a void of surprising clearness, domed by a dark blue heaven as clear and spotless as crystal, and a broad zone of milk-white mist enfolding it in the middle caused it to resemble a spectral mountain isle sailing in mid-air—to realize a dream of an Isle of the Blest. As the sun descended westerly the misty zone drifted away, and the floating apparition became fixed to nether regions of mountain slopes, and the sharply-cut outlines and broader details might be easily traced through the binoculars. Though we were nearly eighty miles off, we could even see ridgy fringes and tufted clumps of trees, resting on broad ledges, or on mountain spires, or coping some turret-like crag, which leaned over profound depths below. We even agreed that the colour of the bare rock casques fronting the glare of the sun, and which were aligned against the lucent blue beyond, were of a purplish brown. We saw that the side presented to our view was singularly steep and probably unscaleable, and that though the snowy fields seemed to be mere patches, yet many feathery stretches descended far below the summit of a bare ridge which intervened between the central range and the Balegga Hills, twelve miles from us, over whose summit, Ruwenzori, sixty-five miles further, loomed large and grand.
It will then be understood that a transparent atmosphere is very rare in this region, and that had our stay been as short as that of previous travellers, Ruwenzori might have remained longer unknown.
While we were advancing southward along the western flanks of Mazamboni’s, and the Balegga Hills, during the month of May, 1889, the great snowy range was frequently, almost daily, visible—not in its entirety, but by fits and starts, a peak here, a mountain shoulder there, with sometimes only a dim visage of the crowns, and at other times the lower parts only in view. The snow gleamed white out of a dark and cloudy frame, or the flanks, dark as night, loomed like storm-clouds, boding rain and squalls. At rare periods the whole appeared with a brilliant sharp-cut clearness that was very useful to us to map our future route.
Yet all this time we scarcely understood its character, and not until we had crossed the Semliki river, and had traversed a great portion of the dense and tall woods, which thrive in the hothouse atmosphere of the Semliki Valley, had we any intelligent comprehension of it.
The average European reader will perfectly understand the character of the Semliki Valley and the flanking ranges, if I were to say that its average breadth is about the distance from Dover to Calais, and that in length it would cover the distance between Dover and Plymouth, or from Dunkirk to St. Malo in France. For the English side we have the Balegga hills and rolling plateau from 3,000 to 3,500 feet above the valley. On the opposite side we have heights ranging from 3,000 to 15,500 feet above it. Now, Ruwenzori occupies about ninety miles of the eastern line of mountains, and projects like an enormous bastion of an unconquerable fortress, commanding on the north-east the approaches by the Albert Nyanza and Semliki Valley, and on its southern side the whole basin of the Albert Edward Lake. To a passenger on board one of the Lake Albert steamers proceeding south, this great bastion, on a clear day, would seem to be a range running east and west; to a traveller from the south it would appear as barring all passage north. To one looking at it from the Balegga, or western plateau, it would appear as if the slowly rising table-land of Unyoro was but the glacis of the mountain range. Its western face appears to be so precipitous as to be unscaleable, and its southern side to be a series of traverses and ridges descending one below the other to the Albert Edward Lake. While its eastern face presents a rugged and more broken aspect, lesser bastions project out of the range, and is further defended by isolated outlying forts like Gordon Bennett Mountain, 14,000 to 15,000 feet high, and the Mackinnon Mountain of similar height. That would be a fair figurative description of Ruwenzori.