PREHISTORIC CREATURES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 31 March 1926, Page 6

PREHISTORIC CREATURES.

MYSTERIOUS PIT IN AFRICA.

A mysterious limestono pit, nearly a hundred yards in diameter, around which have grown many native legends, including the belief that it contains living “prehistoric” creatures, has been found in the unexplored region in Northern Rhodesia, some miles west of Broken Hill, at Kapopo. The pit is filled with water to within 40ft of the top and all attempts to find a bottom with a sounding line have failed. The sides of the pit are sheer, so that it is impossible for any animal to get out of the pit, or for others amjnals to get at any that may live, in it, From the information received the pit is very close to a similar pit in which Sir Lawrence Wallace, who Was chief surveyor for Northern Rhodesia for many years, with a friend shot and killed an unknown creature which he describes as having a “thin, snake-like head and neck above water, and a. body resembling that of a largo duck below water.” The animal sank immediately, and as tlu>. sides of the pit were sheer, it was impossible to recover the body. As in the case of the newly-discover-ed pit, no bottom could be found even at a depth of 200 ft. Professor G. Elliot Smith, professor of anatomy at London University, told a . representative of the Moving Post that he considered it highly probable that animals still ,ivc in this district which at present are thought to ho extinct. “ft is highly likely,” said Professor Elliot Smith, “that there <jrc animals still alive in . the wild country north of Broken Hill'■which are only known to us in a fossilised state. This country in North-cast Rhodesia is bound to produce a great many..things of extraordinary interest in the future. Tt may be the last refuge of the animals thought by us to be extinct. “No part of Africa is more likely to produce surprises than the .region in the -neighbourhood of the boundary between the Congo State and Northern Rhodesia. A couple of years ago the late Dr Charles Andrews, of the Natural History Museum, showed some fossils from East Africa, at a meeting of the Zoological Society, and said that stories told by natives seemed to .suggest the possibility that representatives of some of ■ thesei “prehistoric” mammals were (or recently had been) still living. Then a quarter of a century ago Sir Harry Johnston reported the discovery in the Okapi of the modem representative' of the fossil animals millions of years old found at Pikernii, in Greece. “It is possible that the pit may have been formed out of the limestone in the same way as the subterranean caves at Broken Hill.” The news of the discovery of the pit was contained in a letter from a former colleague, who is now stationed near Broken Hill, to Mr Frank Worthington, who was for many, years Secretary for Native Affairs in Northern Rhodesia, and has a wide knowledge of the natives and their •superstititions. His colleague states in his letter that he was led to make the expedition because commissioners in Northern Rhodesia have ahvgv.s been stmek by the fact that the natives have lived iu_ terror of a groat pit which they claimed was to be found in this district. The natives said that some years ago the members of a whole community tied themselves together and committed suicide over the site of the pit, and that it had since been haunted. This legend is fully described in Air Edwin Smith’s books, ‘The Ila-spcaking Peoples,’ Air AVorthington’s colleague, therefore, decided to investigate tho rumour of tho existence of this pit for himself, and, accompanied by a few loyal natives (fur the majority shun the neighbourhood of the pit with horror), ho penetrated into the wild region round Kapopo, wliich has been little explored by white wdm, and discovered the “For bidden Pit.” Air Worthington attaches all the more importance to the discovery as Lewenika, late paramount chief of the Rarotse trible, told him now lie had .seen a great boast not far from this region. Lewenika was well-known to Air Worthington, and would not willingly mislead him. Aloreover, he has an intimate knowledge of all tho animals to he found in that- part of the country. The creature that Lewenika saw was some considerab'e distance from tho neighbourhood of the Forbidden Pit it-sclf, but iiis description is interesting. Tie saw a great creature in a mash wliich he took to be a dead hippopotamus, from its bloated appearance. On approaching it, it swirled round in the water and disappeared, but he found its spoor. These Lewenika described as like the two ruts left by waggon wheels, showing that it trailed its feet. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in an interview, said: “It is quite likely that beasts hitherto believed to be extinct should be found in that locality. I have not the slightest doubt, for instance, that the Pantagouian expedition only just missed the giant sloth. In a'l my travels 1 have never seen anything of

Hint sort.. except once, when my wife nnd T were in an Italian ship approaching .Athens, when we both distinctly saw. far down in the clear water, a ceratnro about four feet long, which was like nothing so much as a skinned dog with flippers, or a tortoise without its .shell. “It was probably a. plesiosaurus, a. kind of marine crocodilo. Incidentally 1 have no doubt of tho sea serpent. Thirty or forty people have seen specimens at the same time, and it is pure folly to disbelieve flic existence of such creraturo about four feet long, which bottom, rather like eels, and only come near the surface when they are thrown up bv some seismic disturbance.” Asked as to tho inspiration of "The Lost World,’ Sir Arthur said that it was the result of reading about a great mountain in British Guiana called Rorima, with precipitous cliff-like, sides and covered at the top with .strange, and luxuriant vegetation utterly foreign to the flora, of the plateau beneath. It had probably been thrown up by some volcanic disturbance. * “If there was strange flora,” said Sir Arthur, “I asked myself if there might not also bo strange fauna, and that is how I came, to write 'The Lost AVorld." However, I believe Borima has been climbed since, but fortunately nothing unusual was found at the top.”