378 



ZOOLOGY 



Portuguese works. The publication of this book 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 dis- 

 covered in the C'entral African forests. Amongst these suggested wonders 

 was a recurrence of the myth of the unicorn. Passages from the works 

 of the aforesaid Dutch and Portuguese writers were quoted to show 

 that a strange, horse-like animal, of striking markings in black and white, 

 existed in the depths of these eipiatorial forests. The accounts agreed in 







232. Ol.l> MALI-: OF FIVK-HOKNEI) GIRAFFE 



saying that the body of the animal was horse-like, but details as to its 

 horn or horns were very vague. The compiler of the book (the late 

 Philip Gosse, I think) believed that these stories pointed to the existence 

 of a horned horse in Central Africa. 



Hiomehow these stories — which 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 an ap})endix of this book states that the Congo Dwarfs 

 knew an animal of horse-like appearance which existed in their forests, 

 and which they caught in pitfalls. The occurrence of anything like a horse 



