STRANGE MONSTERS

Shannon News, 16 July 1926, Page 4

STRANGE MONSTERS

♦- HIDING IN AFRICAN FORESTS. ’\ , 1 AVIATOR’S EXPERIENCES. In his ,trails-Atlantic fiiight Mr Alan Cobham must have seen many strange animals, from the white rhinoceros of Uganda to the rogue elephants of the Rufigi, writes “Fulahin” iii'the “Daily Mg.il.” But though he has passed over land on which no white or black fman’s eye has ever rested, he has ap- [ parcntly 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 Valleys around lAkfi No, not only l natives but white men assert that they i have seen the lav, a kind of inland 'sea serpent, Natives describe it as 'an enormous snake, 40ft. to 100 ft. in j length, with a body 6ft in girth, I 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 elephant*, i So great an authority a,s the late Mr Selous asserted his belief In tho 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 ehief game worden of Kenya is convinced that it exists, awaiting capture and identification. In the Lakes Benweolo, Mweru, and Tanganyika is said to live a giant pachyderm like a hippopotamus, with a huge horn like that of a rhinoceious. This was believed to be the brontosaurus, and during the war an expedition left Capetown to discover it and a famous American scientific institute sept experts to identify it. It was never found.

The giant lizard of King Dewanika 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 to 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, anu in his official report to the British Resident said it was “a 3 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 monkey. It

was not a lion, judging by its spoor, but it may have «been a lion-leopard hybrid. It vanished. Fantastic as these stories seoin, (.hey are credible, if inexplicable, to all who know Africa. The okapi long remained undiscovered. There may be others.