THE OK API: THE NEWLY DISCOVERED BEAST LIVING 

 IN CENTRAL AFRICA/^ 



By Sir Harry H. Johnston, K. C. B., 



Special CouDiiissioner for Uganda, British East Africa; the discoverer of the Okapi. 



The author of this article remembers having- encountered in his 

 childhood — say, in the later, sixties — a book about strange beasts in 

 Central Africa which was said to ))e based on information derived 

 from early Dutch and Portuguese works. The publication of this 

 book was more or less incited at the time b}^ Du Chaillu's discoveries 

 of the g'orilhi and other strange creatures on the west coast of Africa, 

 and its purport was to show that there were in all probability' other 

 wonderful things yet to be discovered in the Central African forests. 

 Among these suggested wonders was a recurrence of the mvth of the 

 unicorn. Passages from the works of the aforesaid Dutch and Portu- 

 guese writers were quoted to show that a strange, horse- like animal 

 of striking markings in black and white existed in the very depths of 

 these equatorial forests. The accounts agreed in saying that the bod}^ 

 of the animal was horse-like, but details as to its horn or hoi-ns were 

 very vague. The compiler of this book, however, believed that these 

 stories pointed to the existence of a horned horse in Central Africa. 



Somehow these stories — Avhich may have had a slight substratum of 

 truth — lingered in the writer's memory, and were revived at the time 

 Stanley published his account of the Emin Pasha expedition, In Darkest 

 Africa. A note in the appendix of this book states that the Kongo 

 dwarfs knew an animal of ass-like appearance which existed in their 

 forests, and which they caught in pitfalls. The occurrence of an}^- 

 thing like a horse or ass — animals .so partial to treeless, grassy plains — 

 in the depths of the mightiest forest of the world seemed to me so 

 strange that I determined to. make further inquiries on the subject 

 whenever fate should lead me in th<^ direction of the great Kongo 

 forest. Fate was very kind to me in the matter. In the tirst place, 

 soon after I arrived in Uganda, I was obliged to intervene to prevent 

 a too-enterprising German carrying off by force a troop of Kongo 



"Reprinted, by permission, from McClnre's Magazine, September, 1901, pages 

 497-501. 



661 



