288 
ON SAFARI 
epithet must be admitted—to me, those forests are 
impenetrable. 
The bongo is a big beast, one of the heaviest of the 
antelopes, standing 4 ft. at the shoulder and carrying 
massive upright horns approaching a yard in length. 
These, from their flattened, abruptly twisted form and 
curve, clearly demonstrate the owner’s affinity with the 
bushbucks; and the bongo, in systematic classification, 
stands between that genus and the inyalas, or harnessed 
antelopes. The existence of this animal was first made 
known to science by Du Chaillu, who brought home a 
skin from the Gaboon in West Africa ; and a mounted 
specimen, a splendid bull, obtained by Mr. Isaacs, 
formerly Commissioner at Eldama Ravine, may be seen 
in the galleries of South Kensington. This animal was 
followed persistently by native hunters with dogs and 
spears till eventually, so densely grew the jungle, that 
not even a bongo could further go. There it was over¬ 
taken and killed. Other specimens have been obtained 
by the same means; but I believe that Mr. Isaacs did 
not himself succeed in shooting a bongo. A female has, 
however, recently been shot by Capt. Stigand, of the 
King’s African Rifles, in the Kikuyu Forest between 
Limoru and Escarpment—thus extending the known 
range of the bongo to the eastward of the great Rift 
Valley—but leaving the bull bongo as yet unshot. 
Curious, yet not luminously intelligent, is the popular 
interest displayed in such subjects. Some little time 
ago the discovery of the okapi in the Congo forests 
aroused almost an enthusiasm. Hardly a man, woman 
or child but knew all about the okapi; yet here in 
British territory we have two great unknown animals 
quite as interesting, but it is doubtful if one reader in 
a hundred will ever have heard of them ! 
Situtunga.— Tragelaphus speJcei. 
A water-loving antelope, confined to dense swamps 
and beds of papyrus, chiefly, it appears, in the region of 
Victoria Nyanza and upon one of the Sesse Islands in 
