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 
487 
