THE STORY OF THE WAPI 



On the Semliki River, near the borders of the great Congo forest, I 

 first heard of and later saw one of the queerest animals in the known world. 

 The natives called it the wapi, but a naturalist of the present day, who has 

 learned much about it, has given it the name of okapi. 



A little to the east end of the middle of Africa is a chain of lakes running 

 nearly north and south. The great Lake Tanganyika is the southernmost, 

 north of this is Lake Kivu, whose waters flow south into Tanganyika, and 

 then passing over a high volcanic range we come to the lake known as the 

 Albert Edward Nyanza, stretching northward from the shores of which 

 are Mountains of the Moon, the Rewrenzori range. Keeping in the valley 

 to the west of this range the traveler passes along the Semliki River, whose 

 waters flow northward, and eventually reaches the Albert Nyanza, the source 

 of the Nile. 



The region of the Semliki River is in many respects a most remarkable 

 one= A few miles east from its banks are snow mountains 25,000 feet 

 high. At no great distance on the west are sources of the Aruwimi, the 

 great tributary of the Congo River. To its west, also, for hundreds of miles, 

 stretch the northeastern extensions of the great Congo forest. Along the 

 shores of the Semliki the British protectorate of Uganda and the Congo Free 

 State meet one another. It is here that Stanley and I saw the distant 



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