DARKEST AFRICA

Hokitika Guardian, 10 February 1934, Page 6

DARKEST AFRICA

STILL HAS STYGIAN DEPTHS

LONDON, February 7. The dim ’.forests of Central Africa with their tangled, untrodden depths and unknown beasts, are the goa o Commander A. Gatti, the explorer who leaves London shortly on his eigh h expedition to the Dark Continent. His aim is to bring back specimens of rare animals, such as opak.i, the bongo and the giant forest hog, and to learn more about’ the giant gorilla of the mountains, “Darkest!, Africq” has hot yet disappeared, declares Commander Gatti. Civilisation' has only nibbled here and there at the edges of the jungle; Ex-, plorers arid prospectors have travelled up part of the rivers, and the Belgians have built a motor-road across the forest from Rutchuru -to Lubero.

But there are still thousands of square miles in which no man has yet set foot, so far as is known. 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 ' monstrous beasts like those of prej historic days; of animals so strange as I 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, move or less distorted, of actual’ facts and beings. Commander Gatti will try to fin'd more clues to these mysteries in the course of his expedition. He will pay special attention to the giant gorilla of the mountains, which 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 gir- J affe, the zebra and antelope; the bongo, rarest of antelopes ■ and the giant forest | hog, which grows to an enormous size, I very little less than that of a rhinoceros.

Another few weeks,” says Commander Gatti, “and we shall enter their do-

,main, and instead of / the friendly warnings of Big Denon to call us to work, reveille will be sounded by the “thumbless monkeys’ clad in their rich fur suits of silky black and white, repeating their cries from group to group at dawn—the cock’d crow of great mother forest.”