RIVER MONSTER

Otago Witness, Issue 3500, 12 April 1921, Page 25

RIVER MONSTER

MYSTERY ANIMAL WITH A 10FT NECK. A vivid story of an encounter in a lonely part of the Orange River, South Africa, with a huge creature, the neck of which was arched 10ft above the water of the river as it swam the rapids, was given to a Daily Mail reporter recently by Mr F. U. Cornell, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, who has returned to England lor the first time in 20 years, after travelling in practically unknown parts of South Africa. “I had heard from the natives, during five or six very long trips below the Great Falls, of a monster with a gigantic body, which it kept under water,” Mr Cornell said. “They lived in great fear of this thing with a long neck like a bending tree and a huge head, and which seized their cattle from the banks as it swam. They have believed in this thing for hundreds of vears. They call it ‘kyman,’ or the Great Thing. “Its chief abiding place, they said, was in the Kyman Rook, a huge clefted rock in mid-stream, close to where the Oub or Great Fish River joins tho Orange River. 111 May I visited the rock. I had with me two white companions, W. 11. Brown and N. B. Way, of Capetown, and three Hottentots. “After attempts to throw dynamite charges towards tho rock we lay contentedly smoking under some trees near the river. The heat had made me sleepy, and I was awakened from a doze by tho cries of the natives. They were running along tho. banks towards us, shouting, ‘Kyman, Kvraan !’ They were positively gibbering with fear. “Swimming rapidly against ihe current in the swirling rapids, I caught sight of something huge, black, and sinuous. The object may have been a very gigantic python, but if it, was it was of an incredible size. “It is quite conceivable that this thing has lived hundreds of years. I know from experience Hint big pythons have lived for hundreds of years.’