The Dingonek , tall tale or unknown creature?
The Dingonek is said to be a walrus-like creature found in the parts of Africa, Kenya in particular. John Alfred Jordan, an explorer claimed to have shot at this unidentified creature in the River Maggori in Kenya in 1907( some reports say 1909). Jordan claimed this scale-covered creature was 18
feet(6 metres) long and had reptilian claws, a spotted back, a long
tail, and a big head out of which grew large, curved, walrus-like tusks.
Locals of the area also describe
it as having a scorpion-like tail and that it would kill any hippos,
crocodiles, or fishermen that happened to wander into its territory.
There is what is said to be a first hand account from Edgar Beecher Bronson in his 1910 book. :
There is what is said to be a first hand account from Edgar Beecher Bronson in his 1910 book. :
Nights about the camp fires with Jordan
were never dull. Some incident of the day or turn of the talk always
served to start him on some stirring tale of weird bush happenings. That
night he was particularly interesting, notwithstanding a heavy
electrical storm was on and we were tightly shut in my tent, with no
light but the dull flicker of our pipes. "Wonder how long it will be
before the last of all the strange animal and reptilian types native to
Africa have been taken and classified?" he mused. "What do you mean?" I
asked. "Are there many types left which have been seen but remain
untaken?" "God only knows how many," he replied. "Why, it is only four
years ago I killed my bongo and got the first perfect bongo skin ever
taken. Before that Deputy Commissioner Isaac had gotten a piece of a
bongo hide from the Wanderobo and had sent it to the British Museum, but
mine was the first whole skin ever seen by a white man, and not so very
many have been shot since."My word, but they are beauties!—bright red
as an impala, white of jaw, with nine white stripes over sides, back,
and quarters, short of leg but heavier of body than a roan, with horns
curved and shaped like a bush buck's but tipped white as ivory. Mine was
a corker, nine feet, six inches from nose to tail tip, with twenty-nine
and onehalf-inch horns. And it's hard to get, the beggars are; never
see them outside the heaviest forest or afoot except at nights or at
dawn or in the dusk. Indeed, I only got mine after putting out a lot of
Wanderobo for days and days to beat up the forest."What did I do with
him? Nothing, just nothing. Helpful Government did it all for me. A new
species unincluded in the game license, when I got to the Eldama, Ravine
Boma, Collector Foaker seized skin and head, under instructions from
Provincial Commissioner Hobley, and they were sold at public auction at
Mombasa for £50, a little later reselling at £250."Odd ones! Why,
there's the Okapi, sort of a cross between a giraffe and a—I don't know
what—perhaps a 'what is i"Then there's that infernal horror of a
reptilian 'bounder' that comes up the Maggori River out of the lake the
Lumbwa have christened Dingonek. And it's real prize money that beauty
would fetch, five or ten thousand quid at least, and you bet I've got my
Wanderobo and Lumbwa always on the lookout for one when the Maggori is
in flood. "Ever see one? Did I? Rather! Mataia, the boy there, and
Mosoni were with me. It was only about a year ago. Mataia vows he has
seen two since; can't tell whether he really saw them or dreamed he
did—like as not the latter, for I know Dingonek were trying to crawl
into my blankets for weeks after we saw that 'bounder.'"How was it?
Well, we were on the march approaching the Maggori, and I had stayed
back with the porters and sheep and had sent the Lumbwa ahead to look
for a drift we could cross—river was up and booming and chances poor.
Presently I heard the bush smashing and up raced my Lumbwa, wide-eyed
and gray as their black skins could get, with the yarn that they had
seen a frightful strange beast on the river bank, which at sight of them
had plunged into the water—as they described it, some sort of cross
between a sea serpent, a leopard, and a whale. Thinking they had gone
crazy or were pulling my leg, I told them I'd believe them if they could
show me, but not before. After a long shauri [palaver] among
themselves, back they finally ventured, returning in half an hour to say
that IT lay full length exposed on the water in midstream. "Down to the
Maggori I hurried, and there their 'bounder' lay, right-oh! "Holy
saints, but he was a sight—fourteen or fifteen feet long, head big as
that of a lioness but shaped and marked like a leopard, two long white
fangs sticking down straight out of his upper jaw, back broad as a
hippo, scaled like an armadillo, but colored and marked like a leopard,
and a broad fin tail, with slow, lazy swishes of which he was easily
holding himself level in the swift current, headed up stream.t.' Hyde
Baker killed two in the Congo country less than three years ago, and one
or two Germans have taken them; that 's all. Gad! but he was a hideous
old haunter of a nightmare, was that beast-fish, that made you want an
aeroplane to feel safe of him; for while he lay up stream of me, I had
been brought down to the river bank precisely where he had taken water,
and there all about me in the soft mud and loam were the imprints of
feet wide of diameter as a hippo's but clawed like a reptile's, feet you
knew could carry him ashore and claws you could be bally well sure no
man could ever get loose from once they had nipped him. "Blast that
blighter's fangs, but they looked long enough to go clean through a man.
"He had not seen or heard me, and how long I stood and watched him I
don't know. Anyway, when I began to fear he would shift or turn and see
me, I gave him a .303 hard-nose behind his leopard ear—and then hell
split for fair! "Straight up out of the water he sprang, straight as if
standing on his blooming tail—must have jumped off it, I fancy. "Me?
Well, I never quit sprinting until I was atop of the bank and deep in
the bush—fancier burst of speed than any wounded bull elephant ever got
out of me, my word for that! "That
was one time when my presence of mind didn't succeed in getting away
with me from the starting post, and when, finally, it overtook me, and I
bunched nerve enough to stop and listen, the bush ahead of me was still
smashing with flying Lumbwa, but all was silent astern. "His legs? What
were they like? Blest if I know! The same second that he stood up on
his tail, I got too busy with my own legs to study his. "Gory wonder,
was that fellow; a .303, where placed, should have killed anything, for
he was less than ten yards from me when I shot, but though we watched
waters and shores over a range of several miles for two days, no sight
did we get of him or his tracks. "Ask Mataia, Mosoni, or the lad there
what they saw." I did so, through my own interpreter, Salem, and got from each a voluble description of beast and incident differing in no essential details from Jordan's
description. Moreover, were it necessary, which I do not myself regard
it, the strongest corroboration is obtainable of the existence in
Victoria Nyanza of a reptile or serpent of huge size, untaken and
unclassed. While in Uganda with ex-Collector James Martin in November
last, he told me it was a well-known fact that at intervals in the past,
usually long intervals, a great water serpent or reptile was seen on or
near the north shore of the lake, which was worshipped by the natives,
who believed its coming a harbinger of heavy crops and large increase of
their flocks and herds. Again, in December, while dining with the
Senior Deputy Commissioner, C. W. Hobley, C. M. G., at his residence in
Nairobi, the very night before starting on this safari, in speaking of
the origin of the sleeping sickness Mr. Hobley told me that the Baganda,
Wasoga, and Kavirondo of the north shore of the lake had from time
immemorial sacrificed burnt offerings of cattle and sheep to a lake
reptile of great size and terrible appearance they called Luquata, which
occasionally appeared along or near the shore; that since the last
coming of Luquata was just shortly before the first outbreak of the
sleeping sickness, the natives firmly believe that the muzungu have
killed Luquata with the purpose and as the means of making them victims
of the dread plague. Of the existence in the lake of such an unclassed
reptile, Mr. Hobley considered there was no question”
Edgar Beecher Bronson did exist and did go to Africa(see
link to obituary below) but how much of the book is tall tales I cannot
comment. It was well known that often books were written to titillate
the readership with tales of daring do. However ,(I cannot confirm
this),at the Brackfontein
Ridge in South Africa is said to be a cave painting of an unknown
creature that fits the description of the dingonek, including
walrus-like tusks. So a story born of a myth, a misidentification of a known creature or an unknown creature of terrifying aspect? We may never know.
ADVENTURE
PACKED THE LIFE OF EDGAR BEECHER BRONSON; Daredevil Hunter and Writer
Who Died Last Week Had Thrilling Experiences in Many Lands. February 11,
1917, Sunday:
Bronson, Edgar Beecher. 1910. In Closed Territory. Chicago: A. C. McClurg.
