AFRICA’S UNDISCOVERED MONSTERS.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 April 1926, Page 3

AFRICA’S UNDISCOVERED MONSTERS.

In his trans-African flight- Me Alan Cobhant must have seen many strange animals, from the white rhinoceros of Uganda to the. rogue elephants of the Rutigi. But though he has passed ove r land on which no white or black man’s eye has ever rested, ho has apparently discovered no new animals,

Yet if blood spoor and rumour arc to be believed, there are monsters m the wilds of Africa which have been seen, heard, fought with and tracked, but never caught, Jn the great swamps of the Nile Valleys around Lake No, not only natives but white men assert that they have seen the lan, a kind of inland sea serpent. Natives describe it as an enormous snake, 40ft to 100 ft in length, with a hoily tilt 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 grazing elephant herd, So great an authority as the late Mr Selous asserted his belief in the cliimisct. or Nandi hear, 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 track* eil by its three-toed footprints into the impenetrable depths of the Nandi forests; but no one. lias ever seen the animal. The late chief game warden of Kenya i- convinced that it exists, awaiting capture and identification. In the Lakes Benguelo. Mwearu. and Tanganyika is -aid to live a giant pachyderm like a hippopotamus with a huge horn like that of a. rhinoceros. This was believed to be tin- brontosaurus, and during the war an expedition left Capetown to discover it, and a famous American scientific institute sent experts to identify if. It was never found.

The giant- lizard of King Lewanika is another of Africa’s undiscovered monsters. Ton times as big as a crocodile, it had a snake's head and stood taller than a man. It was said to live in South African rivers, and Lewanika, King of the Zulus, had special watch kept, for it. He missed seeing it. hut lie found its track, and in his official report, to the British Resilient said it was "as large as that of a lull-sized wagon from which the wheels had been removed.”

A monster eat, called by natives the nonda, recently til tacked the port ot Kindi, in Tanganyika while the writer was staiioued there. Naitve police were killed by some animal; guards had to Ik- doubled and loaded riih.-s issued to constables. The numhi. seen by many natives was like a domestic tabby hut as big as a donkey. It was not a lion, judging by its spuin', but it may have been a lion-leopard hybrid. It vanished.

Fantastic as these stories seem, they re credible, it' inexplicable, to all who now Africa. Tho okapi long remainr undiscovered. There may la; others.