The Eastern Congo 



find within recent times to compare with Sir Harry Johnston's 

 discovery of this unique animal in the years 1900-1901.* 



* The first hint which set my imagination reflecting on the possible existence 

 of some large, strangely-marked ruminant in the heart of Central Africa, in the 

 Congo basin, was derived in my boyhood from a book on strange beasts which 

 might be even yet discovered in the unknown parts of the world, most probably 

 of all in the Congo basin and the unmapped regions between the Cameroons 

 and the East Coast. The book was written by Philip Gosse, the father of Mr. 

 Edmund Gosse ; and I think it was given to me as a school prize. It described 

 amongst other creatures a unicorn, attributed to the inner regions of Central 

 Africa, some brightly-marked and coloured creature about the size of a horse ; 

 and its descriptions were based on the stories of Dutch, English and Portuguese 

 explorers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When I first met Stanley 

 on the Lower Congo in 1882, and still more when I spent some weeks with him 

 on the Upper Congo in 1883, we talked about this book of Philip Gosse's, and 

 he spoke with great stress on the most likely region in all Africa for the occurrence 

 of marvels in land-features, in human races, and in the existence of strange 

 mammals and birds. This he described as " the region of the Blue Mountains," 

 the country immediately south of the Albert Nyanza, west of Uganda, and on 

 the fringe of his newly-discovered Congo basin. " If ever I get the chance of a 

 free choice of exploration, it is to that region I will return. It holds, I believe^ 

 the greatest marvels of Africa." Four to five years later he got the chance. He 

 directed his steps thither in his attempt to relieve Emin Pasha. He discovered 

 Ruwenzori and the Semliki, Lake Edward, and the vast forest of the north-east 

 Congo basin. He also found traces of the okapi — " a large donkey " — and 

 recorded them in a foot-note in his book. About that time the work of W'ilhehn 

 Junker, a Russo-German explorer of the Bahr-al-ghazal, was published, and in 

 it appeared a few paragraphs indicating that he had actually seen a skin or 

 two of this strange ruminant (the okapi) in the neighbourhood of the Nepoko 

 River. Soon after I was appointed Special Commissioner to proceed to Uganda 

 I paid a visit to Stanley to say good-bye, and we talked of the strange fauna 

 that might inhabit the wonderful forests of north-east Congoland. At his 

 house in Whitehall Terrace we once more discussed what his large " donkey " 

 of north-east Congoland might be, and I promised him to make it my endeavour 

 to find out. Early in my residence in Uganda I was thrown much into contact 

 with Congo pygmies ; they eagerly confirmed Stanley's stories and eventually 

 led me to the discovery of this forest-dwelling giraffe. I think it quite possible 

 that the okapi, like the forest hog, also mentioned by Mr. Barns, may have 

 extended its range right across Central Equatorial Africa at one time, to the 

 hinterland of the Cameroons, and so have furnished the natives with accounts 

 of a unicorn-like beast in the dense forest which were transmitted to the Dutch 

 explorers and geographers of Western Equatorial Africa in the eighteenth 

 century. George Grenfell, the great missionary-explorer of Congoland, in- 

 dependently discovered the opaki near the Nepoko River a year after I had 

 found it near the Semliki. But this fact did not become known for several 

 vears, till his journals came under my inspection after his death. — H. H. J. 



