50 
ON SOME UNIDENTIFIED BEASTS 
A few days later I heard that Mr. Hickes, engineer in charge 
of the construction, Magadi Railway, had seen it, and he has 
kindly sent an account of it which is given separately. 
What can it be ? Some sceptics are inclined to think that 
the beast is only the hairy ant bear, Orycteropus, but most 
of the persons who have seen it are well acquainted with the 
ant bear, and it is an almost unique phenomenon for an ant 
bear to be seen about in broad daylight. 
There is a certain amount of variation in the accounts, 
but that is to be expected, and of course the beast seen near 
the Magadi Railway may not be the same as that seen on the 
Uasin-Gishu. 
The circle is, however, narrowing and it cannot be long 
before one of these creatures is bagged. My only hope is that 
it may fall into the hands of some one who will measure and 
photograph it and preserve its skin and skeleton for description 
by a qualified zoologist, for there is a story that one has been 
shot by a Boer, but that he left it and later on could not 
find it. 
The greatest rarity which has not yet been bagged would 
appear to be the extraordinary creature which is said to inhabit 
certain of the rivers running into Lake Victoria and the 
lake itself. The evidence which I have been able to collect 
regarding this beast is as follows : 
The natives both on the Uganda and Kavirondo sides of 
the lake have stories of a lake monster which the Baganda 
call the Lukwata. The Ja-Luo fishermen describe how it 
sometimes appears and attacks a fishing canoe, and so forth. 
For a long time I believed that these stories referred to large 
pythons which crop up occasionally in their folk-lore stories, 
but have come to the conclusion that there is something else 
not yet described. 
Mr. W. Grant, late Provincial Commissioner, Jinja, once 
had his attention called to a beast which was swimming down 
the Napoleon Gulf with its head out of the water, but it was 
unfortunately too far away to describe. The late Sir Clement 
Hill was proceeding from Kisumu to Entebbe in a steam launch 
some years ago, and when off Homa Mountain a beast appeared 
out of the water and tried to seize a native sitting on the bow 
