A Kingdom of Darkness
TuE Kari, the evergreen equatorial rain forest, crosses all Central Africa to reach the shores of the Atlantic. Only the outskirts of this kingdom of darkness, mystery and terror have been penetrated by natives or white men. The interior has been touched as yet by no one—not even by the Mambuti, the pygmies, the true sons of the forest. They have not the courage to go further than a certain distance. If a white man attempts to persuade them to advance they run away in panic. And if the white man enters it alone he is lost. Even on the edge he feels himself cut off from all the rest of the earth in time as well as in space, as if he had intruded upon a world that has remained unchanged since the year one.
Under persistent efforts a few secrets of that interior have been revealed, a few of the animals discovered: animals of a strange 'kind, some having assumed dwarfed proportions such as the pygmy antelope, the pygmy elephant and the pygmy buffalo, while some have doubled their size such as the giant gorilla, the giant aardvark and the giant hog. Some are living fossils, moving monuments of the Pliocene period, such as the horned chameleon, the giant earth-pig, the hylochoerus, and the okwapi, whose head is indistinguishable from the Sarnotheriutn, extinct for fifteen million years.
• It is to the okwapi that we owe this fine volume by Commander Gatti, who undertook his eighth expedition in order to find out the habits of this remarkable animal, and take one home with him. And certainly it would seem that he has the right to call it the Aristocrat of the Forest : with the legs of a zebra, the body of an "antelope, the gait of a
giraffe, with four _stomachs and a prehistoric head, ,it is justified in the pride with which it washes itself continuously by day and by night lest one inch of its superb coat or white tegs should be soiled. Fastidious, cold, courageous, aloof, it is a confirmed Solitary, an untiring wanderer whose home is where its bed may be and whose bed is anywhere. Absolutely indistinguishable in the foliage, with eyes that can look in inherent directions simultaneously, with a skin that no thorn can puncture, with legs that are harder than wood, a head that is a battering ram, and hoofs- that are cannon balls, it recognises no superior and accepts no enemy.
Inspired by the aristocracy of. this animal, Commander Gatti has considerably added to his reputation as writer and explorer with this book. His accounts of the equatorial hurricanes and the equatorial insects are fascinating, while a certain journey he took in a car over a mountain road which was continually falling into the abyss as they drove along it, sounds like an incredible piece of Hollywood without Holly- wood. A travel book depends, more than any other kind, upon the personality of the author. The reader of Great Mother Forest cannot avoid being charmed by the author and convinced by him.
Previous page
