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WONDERS OF NATURE
Rwenzori mountains. Nature miracle
Between the Central African lakes Edward and Albert, where the equator line crosses the border of the Congo and Uganda, there is one of the most mysterious mountain ranges of our planet - the Rwenzori Mountains.
Until 1888, not a single European saw them. And after the famous traveler Henry Stanley discovered them for science, few managed to admire their sparkling snowy peaks. The fact is that three hundred days a year the Rwenzori massif is covered by clouds, and in the remaining two months it only briefly opens at dawn or at sunset to the eyes of travelers passing at its foot. When in 1906 the Italian expedition compiled the first map of these places, it turned out that the Rwenzori Mountains, stretching for one hundred and twenty kilometers from the northeast to the southwest, are the highest mountain range in Africa. As many as nine peaks rise more than four kilometers, and the highest of them - Margherita Peak - reaches five thousand one hundred meters and is the third highest on the continent. (After Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya standing alone south of Rwenzori.) European and Arab geographers have been writing since the time of Ptolemy about the existence of the mysterious Moon Mountains in the center of Africa. It was believed that it was in them that the sources of the Nile were located. However, it took almost two thousand years to confirm this assumption. Moreover, already in the XNUMXth century, five well-equipped expeditions that visited Lake Albert and Edward could not find Rwenzori, although it would seem that from such a distance it is no more difficult than to notice the Eiffel Tower from the Seine embankment. Dense clouds interfered, completely hiding the giant mountain range from researchers. And only perseverance, patience and observation of Stanley allowed him on the third attempt (!) to finally open the elusive ridge. This is how he himself describes this "hunt for Rwenzori": "... Returning from Lake Albert in December 1887, we suddenly noticed that two huge truncated cones appeared on the horizon to the south of us. It seemed to us that their height should be from three to four kilometers. We dubbed them "Twins" and became very interested in them, believing that there must be a very picturesque area in their neighborhood. Returning to the lake in April 1888, we did not see the "Gemini", but on May 25, when we moved two hours from the lake, our eyes suddenly appeared a huge snow-white mountain, with a central massif of fifty kilometers in length; on both sides of this mountain stretched two chains of mountains, a kilometer and a half below it. That day, all this was visible for several hours in a row. But the next day the vision disappeared, there were no traces to be seen, no Twins, no snow ridge. Returning to the Albert for the third time, in January 1889, we stopped at the local village for two and a half months, but saw nothing in all this time. However, one fine day, as usual, looking at the place where the snowy ridge should have been, we waited for it: all the mountain ranges at once stepped out from behind their cloud cover, and dozens of pairs of eyes greedily glared at this wondrous spectacle. The upper part of the ridge, clearly divided into many pyramidal peaks, girdled from below by a wide strip of milky-white fog, against the background of blue skies of extraordinary purity and transparency, seemed to be floating in the air, like that "Island of Bliss", rushing between heaven and earth, about which tells an old legend. As the sun sank to the west, the misty belt vanished, and the ghostly apparition became attached to a chain of mighty foothills. Although we were a hundred kilometers from the mountains, through the binoculars one could see strips of forests and individual tree groups growing either on wide ledges or along the edges of the cliffs of some cliff hanging over a deep abyss. I thought that these must be the Lunar Mountains that Ptolemy once wrote about. One must think that the transparency of the atmosphere is a rare phenomenon in the local area, and if we had visited here in passing, like other travelers, then, in all likelihood, Rwenzori would have remained in obscurity for a long time. By the way, the Semliki River flowing at the foot of these "Mountains of the Moon" flows into Lake Albert, as does the main source of the Nile - the Victoria Nile. From here, already under the name of Albert Nile, the future great river hurries north to meet the Blue Nile. So the ancient geographers were right: one of the sources of the Nile is indeed located in this mountain range. Unlike Kilimanjaro and Kenya, the Rwenzori mountains are not of volcanic origin. This is a huge granite block, raised four kilometers up along a giant fault in the earth's crust, called by geologists the Great African Rift. Along the line of this arcuate fault are the long and deep African lakes Nyasa, Tanganyika, Kivu, Edward and Albert, and on the sides of it rise to a three-kilometer height the mountain ranges of Kitengere, Malimba, Marunga and Mitumba, as well as the cones of the volcanoes Sapitva and Karisimbi. Rwenzori means "Rain Maker" in the language of the Bakongo people living here. Indeed, a high mountain range is a powerful barrier to the winds that bring moisture from the basin of the full-flowing Congo. Climbing up the slopes of Rwenzori, the humid air cools and clouds appear that rain almost every day. At the foot of the Rwenzori stretch vast savannas, overgrown with tall two-meter elephant grass. Here is expanse for buffaloes, elephants and rhinos, herds of antelopes, giraffes and zebras graze here and cheetahs, lions and hyenas hunt for game. From a height of two kilometers, lush rainforests begin, where, in addition to the usual forest inhabitants of equatorial Africa, there are also such rare animals as the pintail squirrel, which uses a sharp bone spike on the lower surface of the tail when climbing trees, or the Rwenzor otter shrew, in contrast to her relatives, preferring to live in rivers and streams and having webbed paws. There is also a huge Cape otter almost one and a half meters long, and a forest boar - the largest of those living in Africa. This meter-high beast weighs up to one hundred and sixty kilograms, and hunting for it is far from a safe occupation. But the three-horned chameleon living on Rwenzori has the most unusual appearance. Superstitious blacks are afraid of him, considering him a messenger of misfortune. The largest bats in the world live in caves and hollows of trees - flying dogs - with a wingspan of more than a meter. And of the dangerous predators, only the leopard climbs high into the mountain forests, instilling fear in the numerous monkeys that inhabit these places. From three to three and a half kilometers on the slopes of Rwenzori there is a belt of strange-looking semi-forests, semi-shrubs, densely hung with lichens. They are formed by thickets of tree-like heather, reaching monstrous size in this humid and hot atmosphere. Here, in general, everything grows to gigantic proportions: grass, flowers, and ferns. Even the earthworms on Rwenzori are a finger thick and a meter or more long. The zone of mountain meadows stretches even higher, where the traveler will meet the main decoration of this fantastic botanical kingdom. The modest flowers of the senetia (ragwort), reaching a height of twenty to thirty centimeters in our country, become real five-meter trees here, striking with the quirkiness of their black stump-trunk topped with a bunch of half-meter leaves. The modest northern lobelia reaches the same enormous size here, turning on the slopes of Rwenzori into a giant green rosette lying on the ground, from which a two-meter, candle-like inflorescence rises. These plant giants that amaze the imagination, unlike anything else, rise among green meadows dotted with flowering violets, cuffs and lilies, and in places animated by mighty thickets of two-meter horsetails. A similar landscape, reminiscent of scenes from films about the conquest of alien worlds, can be found in only two other places on Earth - on the slopes of Kenya and Kilimanjaro. Having risen another half a kilometer, the traveler finds himself above the strip of continuous cloudiness. The bright sun floods with its rays a completely unusual alpine landscape for Africa, as if transferred here from somewhere from Mont Blanc. Above - jagged ridges eaten away by glacial cirques, sharp pyramidal peaks, snow fields sparkling with virgin whiteness and bluish tongues of glaciers. Below - deep troughs of valleys plowed by glaciers and countless mirrors of small and large glacial lakes, which reflect the fanciful "candelabra" of giant senetias and slender "candles" of gigantic lobelias, perfectly complementing this picturesque landscape. The eternal snows and glaciers of the highest peaks of Rwenzori feed many fast streams with cold clear water. Merging, they form a little lower, in the forest belt, swift noisy rivers, rushing down steep rapids channels and rolling a mass of stone fragments along the bottom. Such watercourses are able to cut deep into the slopes of the mountain range. Gorges up to a kilometer deep divide the slopes of Rwenzori into many separate blocks, giving the ridge a ribbed appearance. On the western side, where the massif breaks off to the valley with a steep cliff, the rivers rush down to the plain in foaming streams of waterfalls three hundred or four hundred meters high. However, to admire all this beauty, you will have to climb almost four kilometers. From below, he risks not seeing the mountains at all through the cloudy cloak in which Rwenzori wraps himself. But the difficulties of the ascent are instantly forgotten when the majestic panorama of the transcendental ridge covered with eternal snow opens up to the traveler's gaze. At one time, Stanley described the feelings of a person who saw Rwenzori in this way: “It happens that half an hour before sunset the wind drives the clouds away, and then one peak after another appears in the blue sky, powerful peaks are exposed one after another, snow-white fields and the whole undulating mass shines in its full splendor until dusk thickens and the dark night will cover it with an even darker tent. These short - too short - minutes, when looking at the magnificent "Rain Maker", as the Bakongo call their mist-shrouded mountain, fill the viewer with such a feeling as if he looked into the open sky. Author: B.Wagner
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