The Mountains of Kong !!

Last Saturdays Daily Telegraph 'Review' had an interesting article about an exhibition in London of photos of dioramas and Victorian and Edwardian zoological specimens, photographed by the artist Jim Naughten.   But what caught my attention was mention of the explorer Mungo Park having seen far away mountains whilst charting the course of the River Niger.   The local people told him they were in a kingdom called Kong !   And so these 'mountains' appeared in old maps.   In my confusion I thought perhaps they had something to do with the Congo ? Perhaps the legendary 'Mountains of the Moon .... now known as the Ruwenzori's ?   And then there was the King Kong of Hollywood movies ... 

Milner's Atlas of 1850 shows the (imaginery) mountain range ...

The oldest map of Africa I have is in my late Uncle's school atlas, dated 1923, and to my delight, with the aid of a magnifying glass, I found 'Kong' !!  

(Look how much pink there was on the maps back in the 1920's !   All British !)

And there, more or less in the centre of the image from Uncle's atlas, is Kong, located in what was the Ivory Coast, and is now Côte-d'Ivoire.   I'd better go to Mr Google to find out more ......... 

It seems that Kong (like Timbuktu) was once a major trading market (12th century onwards) for the exchange of northern desert goods, such as salt and cloth, and southern forest exports such as cola nuts, gold, and slaves.   

After many invasions and much destruction, Kong has survived as a small, sleepy town with a population of under 30,000, on the southern edge of the Sahara .... and unheard of by me, until yesterday.  

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As Pliny said, "Ex Africa semper aliquid novi" .... "Always something new out of Africa"