ROOSEVELT HUNTING AMAZING "NEW" CREATURE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 345, 15 March 1911, Page 7

ROOSEVELT HUNTING AMAZING "NEW" CREATURE.

+ —— As the whole world knows, Mr. Roosevelt, ex-President of the United States, went to South Africa to shoot big game ; and it has just leaked out that the big game he was really after was no less than the Njago Gunda, a creature of which none of our readers has probably ever heard. Only a short distance south of the equator, and not far from the -western sea-eoast of Africa, is a large lake commonly known to geography as Lake Fernan Vaz, hut in the native tongue is called Eliwa Nkaini. It is fed by several streams flowing from the south and east of it, including the southern branch of the Ogewe River, and has its outlet at the bar of Fernan Vaz. Its total length is some fifty miles, and its width varies from a mile or so to eight or nine. This charming hike is one of the favourite haunts of tierce amphibians. In many places schools of hippopotami may be seen at any hour of the day. To those who frequent the lake in their canoes those places are well known and easily avoided, but these ugiv beasts roam about under the surface of the water and are often encountered at most unexpected places. With little or no provocation they o:ten attack and sometimes destroy canoes and all their occupants. The people who occupy the basin of this lake are known as the Nkamis. They are not one of the largest tribes of Africa, but arc a people of average native intelligence, and perhaps more than average cleverness in adopting the manners of the few white people who come among them. They were formerly one of the chief slave-tra.*!iu;.' tribes of this coast. As far ba:-k into the past as the memory or" the oldest men and women of this tribe can go, there h:t\ e been, and still are, current among the people authentic accounts of a strange monster of gigantic proportions and great ferocity inhabiting the deep waters and dismal marshes of the lake. It is v called njago gunda—njago meaning elephant, anl gunda is derived from the fact that it is cuqipped in parts with some extraordinary bristles. It has been frequently and recently se;n by many living witnesses, and many deaths of natives caused by it testily to its reality. Numbers of canoes have been smashed into splinters by it, and scores of human victims arc charged to it. For some montlis in succession it has loitered about the mouth of Mpivie Creek a deep inlet of the lake, where, it attacked or chased every canoe that came near its haunts, respiting in the total ruin of many canoes and the cost ot more than twenty lives. All accounts agree that njago gunda is more than twice as large as an adu't male elephant of the ordinary 1-ind. It is somewhat, darker in colour ami much more active and rapid ;'n its movements. Its proboscis is only a little more than half the len: th of its head and near the base of ,t is an oval hole on each side rcscirrHng nostrils. Their functions are not positively known, but they are believed to lie valves through which water is drawn into the nasal civity and ejected through the proboscis. The ears are comparatively small and pointed.

Akove each eye and obliquely above each nostril or valve is an enormous fan shaped tuft, of those stiff bristles, or ngunda, more than a foot in length, the longest of them possibly eighteen inches. Along each side of the proboscis is a thickly set row of them, somewhat shorter than those elsewhere about, the face. From the upper edge and point of each ear projects an array of them, and from the frontal prominence along the sagital ridge and as far as has been seen along the spine is a dense row of them even much larger than those about the face. A TERRIFIC STREAM OF WATER KILLS A MAN. Xiagi) -runda is not only a creature of horrid aspect ; he is quite as ferocious as he looks to be, and is very justly regarded by the natives as the chief terror of the lake. Without the slightest, provocation he tiercely attacks anything that ap- ] roaches him. In doing so he suddenly erects his tufts and rows of hard black bristles, rears his head and proboscis above the surface of the water, and with a long, piercing shriek rushes like a comet upon his helpless prey. When he comes within eight or ten yards of the object of his attack he jets from his short, thick proboscis a terrific stream of water with the force of a (ire-plug. In this manner be instantly capsizes or swamps a canoe and stuns or stifles its occupants. Without pausing f'»r an instant he presses the attack, and with rapid strokes of his deadly proboscis he crushes everything m reach. The volume ef water thrown by

iijago gunda is said to be as thiel-: as the arm of a man and sent with force enough to kill a man at a distance of four or five yards. In the native language it is called ' mV'mVa r n?ngo," meaning " rainbow of water." The bristles act in concert, and during the assault the Send causes them to rise and fall with prrat rapidity, furiously lashing his hard skin and causing a weird swishing sound which ciiills the courage of the bravest of men. The accounts given by the survivors of a recent disaster sufficiently agree, but the minor details arc not enough alike to warrant the suspicion of a concocted story, and the separate versions of this incident, as given by these five men, not only coincide with one another, but the fundamental facts concur with the reports of the few survivors and witnesses of similar attacks of the brute made elsewhere.