UNCOVERED MONSTERS

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1779, 6 July 1926, Page 7

UNCOVERED MONSTERS

HIDING IN AMERICAN FORESTS. In liis trans-Atlantic flight Mr Alan Cobham must have seen many strange animals, from the white rhinoceros of Uganda to the rogue elephants of the Rufigi, writes “Fulahin” in the Daily Mail. (But though he has passed over land on which no white or black man’s eye has ever rested, he has apparently discovered no new animals. Yet if blood spoor and rumour are to be believed, there are monsters in the wilds of Africa which have been seen, ■heard, fought with and tracked, but never caught.

In the great swamps of the Nile Valley around Lake No, not only natives but white men assert that they have been the lau, a kind of inland sea serpent. Natives describe it as an enormous snake, 40ft to 100 ft in (length, with a body 6ft in girth, brown and yellow, like a giant cobra. At night they say it makes a loud, booming cry and by day a rumbling noise like a herd of grazing elephants. So great an authority as the late Mr Selous asserted his belief in the chimiset, or Nandi bear. This hideous animal is supposed to live in Kenya forests, from which it raids native villages by night and devours natives. Half man, half bear, it has been tracked by its three toed footprints into the impenetrable depths of the Nandi forests, but no, one has ever seen the animal. The late chief game warden of Kenya is convinced that it exists, awaiting capture and identification.

In the Lakes Bengweolo, Mweru and Tanganyika is said to live a giant pachyderm like a hippopotamus, with a huge horn like that of a rhinoceros. This was believed to be the brontosaurus, and during the war an expedition left Capetown to discover it and a famous American scientific institute sent experts to identify it. It was never found. The giant lizard of King Lewanika is another of Africa’s undiscovered monsters. Ten times as big as a crocodile, it had a snake’s head and stood taller than a man. It was said ito live in South African rivers, and Lewanika, King of the Zulus, had special watch kept for it. He missed seeing it, but he found its track, and in his official report to the British Resident said it was “as large as that of a full sized wagon from which the wheels had .been removed.”

A monster cat, called by natives the nunda,* recently attacked the port of Lindi, in Tanganyika, while the writer was stationed there. Native police were killed* by some animal, guards had! to be doubled, and loaded rifles issued to constables. The nunda seen by many natives was like a domestic tabby, but as big as a .donkey. It was not a lion, judging by its spoor, but it may have been a lion-leopard hybrid. It vanished.

Fantastic as these stories seem, they are credible, if inexplicable, to all who know Africa. The okapi long remained undiscovered. There may be others.