RIVER MONSTER.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17112, 6 April 1921, Page 8

RIVER MONSTER.

MYSTERY AITIMAI. WITH A 10FT NECK. A vivid story of an encounter in a lonely part of .the Orange' river, South Africa, with a huge oreature, the neck of which was arched 10 feet above the water of the river as it swam the rapids, was given to a ''Daily Mail" reporter on the Bth of last month by Mr F. C. Cornell, a Fellow of theltoyal Geographical Society, who has returned to England for the first time in twenty years after travelling in practfcally unknown parts of South Africa. / , "I had heard from the,natives, during live 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 years. They call it 'kyman/ or the Great Thing.

"Its chief abiding place, they said, was in the Kyman ltock, a huge clefted'roek in mid-stream, close to where the Oub or Great Fißh river joins the Orange river. In May I visited the rock. I had with me two white companions, W..H. Bitown and N" B. Way, of Capetown, and three Hottentots. "After attempts to throw dynamite charges towards the rock, we lay contentedly smoking under some trees hear the river. The heat had made me and I was awakened from a doze by the cries of the natives. They were running along the&banks towards us,, shouting 'Kyman, 'Kyman!' They were positively gibbering with fear. Swimming rapidly against the current in the swirling rapids, I caught sight of something 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 that big pythons" have lived for hundreds of years."