!MENTION: Rev. Dr. Donald MacKinnon and Alick Morrison, THE
MACLEODS--THE GENEALOGY OF A CLAN, Section II, Edinburgh, The Clan
MacLeod Society, ND, pp. iii-xxii.
!NEWS CLIPPING: PHILADEPHIA LEDGER, "A Woman''s Pilgrimage"
Miss Olive Mcleod, daughter of Sir Reginal Mcleod, has just left London
on a journey of 4,500 miles to the grave of her sweetheart in Africa.
Miss Mcleod was engaged to be married to Lieut. Boyd Alexander, who
was murdered last April by natives of Wadal, near Lake Chad, in Central
Africa. The brave officer lies buried beside his brother, Capt. Claud
Alexander, at Malford. The intrepid woman who has undertaken to
traverse the 1,000 miles of jungle between the Niger river and the lake
takes with her a white marble cross, which she will place upon the
lonely grave of her lover. It will be the first time that a white woman
has been in that part of Africa, and the personal risk she incurs is
considerable.
Gen. Gordon said he never married because he never found the woman
who would follow him anywhere. Lieut. Alexander had found a woman as
brave as himself, and that the blind Fury came with "the abhorred
shears" as their happiness was about to be consummated is one of the
saddest of recent tragedies.
It was in 1904 that Alexander started on his remarkable journey across
Africa from the Niger to the Nile. He had two white companions -- his
brother and Captain G. E. Gosling, both of whom died of the fever during
the journey. For many months the party remained in the neighborhood of
Lake Chad, often wading waist deep in the mud amidst the reeds in
mapping the outlines of the mysterious "disappearing lake." The explorer
did not emerge from the wilderness at the headquarters at the head
waters of the Nile till 1907. The region known as Wadali is inhapited by
fanatical black Mohammedans, very loosely under the control of French
officials. Alexander was traversing this region on his way to Egypt,
after revisiting Lake Chad when he was killed.
Scientific exploration in the death of Boyd Alexander has suffered the
loss of a man of Stanley''s calibre, a soldier equally brave and modest,
and the world''s sympathy goes out to the woman who was to have been
his wife. -- Philadelphia Ledger.