DARKEST AFRICA

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 111, 3 February 1934, Page 18

DARKEST AFRICA

Still Has Stygian Depths

The dim forests of Central Africa, with their tangled, untrodden depths and unknown beasts, are the goal of Commander A. Gatti, the explorer, who leaves London at the end of the year for his eighth expedition to the Dark Continent. His aim is to bring back specimens of rare animals, such as opaki, the bongo and th giant forest nog, and to learn more about the giant gorilla of the mountains. < ‘•Darkest Africa” has not yet disappeared, declares Commander Gatti. Civilisation has only nibbled here and there at the edges of the jungle. Exsplorers and prospectors have travelled |up part of the rivers, and the Belgians (have built a motor-road across the (forest from Rutchuru to Lubero. t But there are still thousands of ’square miles In which no man has yet 'set foot, so far as is known, j Does this last stronghold of primeval nature shelter unknown beasts and prehistoric man-apes behind its gigantic walls of tangled vegetation? Dread tales of strange beings—of men as large and ferocious as gorillas, of monstruous beasts like those of prehistoric days; of animals so strange as to seem the memories of a nightmare,

are told by the little pigmies who live on the fringes of mother forest. All these tales may be myths and superstitions, agrees Commander Gatti. But they may be really descriptions, more or less distorted, of actual facts and beings. ± , Commander Gatti will try to find more clues to these mysteries in the course of his expedition. He will pay special attention to the giant gorilla of the mountains, who may be the source of some of these native legends. In addition, he will try to capture for the London Zoo and other institutions some of the rarest animals in the world. Among these are the okapi, which has the characteristics of the giraffe, the zebra and antelope; the bongo, rarest of antelopes; and the giant forest hog, which grows to an enormous size, very little less than that of a rhinoceros. “Another few weeks,” says Commander Gatti, “and we shall enter their domain, and instead of the friendly warnings of Big Denon to call us io work, reveille will be sounded, by the “thumbless monkeyys” clad in their rich fur suits of silky black and white, repeating their cries from group to group at dawn—the cock's crow of great mother forest.”—Reuter (special to “The Dominion.”)