THE OKAPI; THE NEWLY DISCOVERED BEAST LIVING 

 IN CENTRAL AFRICA. ;> 





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

 Special Commissioner for Uganda, British East Africa; the discoverer ofth Okapi. 



The author of this article remembers having encountered in his 

 childhood-say, in the later, sixties-a book about strange beaste in 

 Central Africa which was said to be based on information deuved 

 from early Dutch and Portuguese works. The publication of tins 

 oTok was more or less incited at the time by Du Chaillu's discovery 

 of the gorilla 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 Centra Africa n fores s 

 Ymong these suggested wonders was a recurrence of the myth <»f tin 

 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 body 

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

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

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



Somehow these stories- which may have had a slight ******* 

 truth-lingered in the writer's memory, and were revived at the tun 

 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 

 tests, and which they caught in pitfalls The occurrence ; o ^any- 

 thing 1 ke a horse or ass-animals so partial to treeless. grass 3 plains 

 in the depths of the mightiest forest of the world seemed to n *» 

 strange that I determined to make further inquiries on the subject 

 wWver fate should lead me in the direction of f^rf Kongo 

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

 Rafter I arrived in Uganda, 1 was obliged to intervene to p^vent 

 a too-enterprising German carrymg_oflTbyJ*rc^^ 

 "T^i^bT^ Magazine, September, 1901, pages 



497-501. 661 



