The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-07
Woman Explorer Is About To Take Third Trip To
 Dark Continent

Africa, symbol of mystery, danger, adventure. Land of impenetrable jungles and wild animals. Africa, land of dep, dark forests and long, sinu- ous waterceurses-that was the coun- try which called to Mrs. Della Akeley, Americas foremost woman explorer and big game hunter, back in 1905, and again in 1911. Then she was but one of large party of scientist and explor- CTS, including her husband, and, for a short period, Colonel Roosevelt and Sir Henry Stanley.
 Africa is agani calling her, and once more Mrs, Akeley will penetrate the Budongo Forest and Jubuland; live and travelling up the Congo river, come among little known tribes in the east, out next year by way of the western Congo. On this,> her third trip, she will be accompanied only by "swahi," or Sombali gunbearer and interpreter, and few natives picked up during the course of he rexplorations,
 Africa is calling, but it is a differ ent Africa which beckons to her in 1924, an Africa whose customs and traditions have been somewhat altered by contact with civilization. To what extent they have been altered even Mrs. Akeley will be unable to tell un- til her return. That she is anxious to make the trip one feels instinctively.
 Civilization Advances
 ''For in a dozen years," she explains, "the old things, l believe will have been wiped out. Civilization is rapid ly sweeping over Africa, and even in the sections which I visited on my last trip the missionaries and British gov ernment were doing much to raise standards. want to live among those tribes overlooked by most of the ex- plorers, study them, understand them, and bring back material for lectures on the life f the women and children in East Africa"
 To me she seems ideally fitted for hardships. Beauty she has, yet, but behind it a mind of no uncertain strength and character. Culture and refinement she has, but her quiet dig nifty of manner is not unlike that possessed by many of those pioneer foremothers of ours who migrated from homes of wealth and tradition to help their men blaze new trails in a strange, far-distant land. The greatest strength is not physical, nor is masculinity an index of endurance power.
 Her very feminity will be, and has been in the past, an asset. Among the more primitive tribes q man would find it hard indeed to enter. It is certain that he would not be permit ted to associate. with the native women as Mrs. Akeley intends to do. Her lack of aggressiveness will not be amiss, for the farther away from civilization one travels the more suspectible are the people to gentleness and kindness. Their instinct for self-preservation is still very dominant part of their makeup.
 Danger and risk there will most certainly be, but Mrs. Akeley is in clined to smile little at our idea of an Africa surrounded on all sides by eannibals and vast barbaric spans.
 "Even on my first trip there in 1905," she says, it was possible to secure canned Del Monte peaches, pine apples and fancy chocolate in the little shops and huts scattered all through the more civilized regions. The trad CTS are marvelous-they are everywhere with their foreign luxuries and deli cacies."
 Speaking of canned pineapples, Mrs. Akeley likes to tell a story about the laziness of the East Africans. A na-