“while looking to the southeast and meditating upon the events of the last month, my eyes were directed by a boy to a mountain said to be covered with salt, and I saw a peculiar shaped cloud of a most beautiful silver colour, which assumed the proportions and appearance of a vast mountain covered with snow. Following its form downward, I became struck with the deep blue-black colour of its base, and wondered if it portended another tornado; then as the sight descended to the gap between the eastern and western plateaux I became for the first time conscious that what I gazed upon was not the image or semblance of a vast mountain, but the solid substance of a real one, with its summit covered with snow.... It now dawned upon me that this must be the Ruwenzori, which was said to be covered with a white metal or substance believed to be a rock, as reported by Kavali’s two slaves.” [Illustration: _Photo by John Fergus._] SIR HENRY STANLEY, G.C.B.] This view was obtained from a distance of seventy miles,--about the distance of the chief snows of Ruwenzori from the south end of Lake Albert Nyanza. The constant haze rising from the Semliki valley no doubt keeps this mountain usually invisible from the waters of the lake. It is, therefore, not so surprising that it was not hitherto seen by the explorers of the Albert Nyanza, as it is that Stanley himself should have camped at the very base of this mountain for some days in 1875, and have been ignorant of its true character as the highest ground and the most completely snow-and-glacier-covered range in the whole of Africa. The name that he has given to it unfortunately does not completely correspond with the native pronunciation; it should be Runsororo. The discovery of this snowy range was soon followed by the realisation of the Semliki River, another geographical name of Stanley’s giving which it is most difficult to trace to any native source. (The Semliki, in fact, is never called by any native tribe “Semliki.” It is known as Dweru, Nyanja, Ituri, Isango, and other Bantu terms indicating _lake_ or _river_. When first discovered by Emin Pasha, a short time before Stanley’s arrival, it was known as the Dweru.) This stream is really the Albertine Nile. Its existence had been surmised by Sir Samuel Baker without much foundation (then) for his theory. Emin Pasha first noted it in 1884 as a feeder of Lake Albert. Stanley, in 1889, traced the Semliki up its course to its point of exit from Lake Albert Edward, which sheet of water he was the first European to discover. Albert Edward is connected by a narrow, winding channel[106] on the northeast with a somewhat extensive, shallow lake, usually known as “Dweru.”[107]