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.