152 THE WEST SIDE OF RUWENZORI 



bright and smooth, where they had scratched their 

 huge sides, or, nearer the ground, where the buffaloes 

 had rubbed their horns. Although there are so 

 many — you see the bushes swaying and hear them 

 crashing away perhaps within a few yards of you, 

 and hear them trumpeting at night — the beasts 

 themselves are very seldom seen. 



It was in this part of the forest that the okapi 

 was first discovered a few years ago, and it is 

 probable that they are more plentiful, or, to be 

 more accurate, less scarce, in the Semliki and Ituri 

 Forests than elsewhere. Travelling in haste as 

 we were, we had not the remotest chance of seeing 

 one ; indeed, it seems very doubtful whether any 

 European has yet seen, much less shot, an okapi 

 in the wild state. A Congo official informed me 

 positively that he had shot three, but his detailed 

 accounts of the big horns (!) of one of them showed 

 how little faith can be placed in such statements, 

 and probably most okapi-hunting stories are equally 

 valueless. The okapi is an excessively shy animal, 

 and it inhabits the densest parts of the forest, where 

 it is impossible for a white man, move he never 

 so silently, to approach the animal without being 

 first seen or heard. The Pygmies, who can climb 

 trees like a squirrel and can pass through the 

 thickest jungle without disturbing a twig, shoot 

 them occasionally with spears or arrows, and 

 occasionally catch them in traps, and it is through 

 them that most of the okapis now in Europe have 



