Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 143
This meant that in the early years of German colonial rule, the Gwoza hills were first under
Kousseri, and then under Garoua. Mora and Madagali remained the most immediate indirect
native authority with the boundary running somewhere across the hills at the level of Gwoza.
This boundary is visible on Moisel’s map as 'Bezirksgrenze' (district boundary), and lists the
different place names concerning the Gwoza hill area. They are geographically not very
correctly positioned, but are fairly detailed, especially those relating to the Dghweɗe area.
Figure 7: View of the Gwoza hills according to Moisel’s map of 1913
Figure7 and Figure 7a illustrate this. Figure 7 is a copy of the original but I marked Moisel's
district boundary with additional white dots to increase visibility. These appear in Figure 7a
as black dots. In Figure 7a we can also see extracts of those place names relevant to the
Gwoza hills. If we examine Figure 7, we can see that some of the place names appear several
times, as is for example the case with 'Kolika'. I have avoided such repetitions in Figure 7a,
and chose the location of the place name which appeared to be the most geographically
correct. Also, in 7a, the outline of the mountains is only a very rudimentary copy from Figure
7, because Moisel does not show the various heights in correct topographical correlation.
Figure 7 also shows the various excursions made by German officers for geographical
exploration in and around the Mandara Mountains. Unfortunately these are difficult to read,
but by examining the original I was able extract those excursions relevant to the Gwoza hills,
and marked them accordingly in Figure 7a. It seems that captain Glauning was the most
travelled German officer in and across the northwestern Mandara Mountains. He not only
visited the Guduf saddle, coming from Madagali via Hiɗkala (Hudugum, Hambagda and
Vile), but in October 1903 made it up to the Tur heights. We presume that he climbed up to
Vizik, most likely crossed over to Moudoukwa, and from there entered the Moskota hills
(now Cameroon), leaving Gvoko to the west. Lieutenant von Stephani was the other German
officer who visited the Gwoza hills, presumably via the southern side of the Guduf saddle,
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