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Philip Henry Gosse was a naturalist who helped to popularize the Natural Sciences. He's credited
with coining the term aquarium, and stocked the first public aquarium in the London Zoo,
in 1853. In 1860, he wrote a book called the Romance of Natural History, where he noted that
many new mammal species had been discovered in the 19th century, and speculated that more were yet to
come. That speculation would inspire a famous explorer, artist, and colonial administrator,
and in 1901, that inspiration would lead to one of the most extraordinary events of the
20th century. The discovery of a large mammal, some of which could be more than 700 pounds,
previously unknown to science. It is a story of a mystery, and one scientist's determination to
solve that mystery, that takes us to the deepest parts of darkest Africa,
to find one of the world's most unique species. It is a story that deserves to be remembered.
Henry Hamilton Johnston was born in Kennington Park, South London, in 1858.
It isn't clear exactly when Harry Johnston read Gosse's, the Romance of Natural History,
but was part of what spurred his interest in animals. Especially Gosse's chapter on,
The Unknown, where Gosse asked, “what may we not expect of the vast, the uncouth, the terrible of
the creatures which may yet lurk, unsuspected, in the teeming wilds of Central Africa?” And Gosse
then went on to make an astounding assertion. “It is highly probable”, Gosse speculated,
“that an animal of ancient renown, and one in which England has a peculiar interest
resides in the region just indicated. I refer to one of the supporters of Britain's Shield,
the famed unicorn.” Gosse's justification for that wild speculation was that various European
scientists had heard accounts of a horned, horse-like creature, living in Central Africa.
Gosse’s description enthralled Johnston,
and inspired his imagination. As a young man he developed an interest in natural history,
and a talent for art. And that led him down a unique career path,
taking commissions from scientists to do drawings to illustrate their scientific books, and papers.
Johnston studied languages at King's College, and his passions led him to travel, where he often
accompanied, and later led expeditions, using his artistic skills to capture the expedition's
discoveries, in an age when photography was rare. He developed a reputation as an explorer,
and as a scientist, but also concluded treaties, and was a central figure in
negotiating European Spheres of Influence on the African continent, in the 19th century. In 1883,
his travels allowed him to meet the famed Explorer Henry Morton Stanley, the explorer who
had famously tracked down the missing Dr. David Livingstone, in 1871. Stanley would later play
a role in Johnson's most famous discovery. In 1888, Stanley published a book called,
In Darkest Africa. The book was Stanley's account of the disastrous mission to relieve Emin Pasha,
that is the topic of another episode of five minutes of history. In the book, Stanley makes
an account of African pygmies, a reference to a diminutive peoples of Central Africa,
from tribes such as the Aka, Kafwi, and Mbuti, where adult men are on average,
less than 150 centimeters, or 4 foot 11 inches tall. While Stanley was not, in fact, the first
European to encounter the pygmy peoples, he noted something unique in a footnote to his book. The
pygmies that he encountered mentioned an otherwise unknown sort of African donkey, or zebra,
that lived in the dense forests of Central Africa that they called, the Atty. As there would be no
grassland there on which a horse could forage, Stanley speculated that the animal must survive
by foraging on leaves. This account confounded Johnston. Wild horses of all types lived on the
plains, and none fed upon leaves. Could these be the unicorns to which Gosse had alluded in
1860? Johnston wrote in a magazine article, that he “Determined to make further inquiries
on the subject, whenever fate should lead me in the direction of the great Congo forest.”
Fate would lead him there in 1899, when Johnston's was sent to the British Protectorate of Uganda,
to negotiate an end to ongoing conflict with local chiefs. It
was there that Harry Johnston, would make his first encounter with the pygmy peoples.
A German, across the border in the Belgian Congo, had kidnapped some pygmies, apparently intent
upon taking them to Europe to exhibit them. He had been chased by Belgian authorities,
but had escaped into British Uganda. The Belgian authorities appealed to Johnston,
who had the man arrested. The German was tried, and required to pay a fine,
the pygmies were released into Harry Johnston's custody. Johnston promised to return the kidnapped
natives, members of the Mbuti tribe, back to their own lands. But while they were with him,
he took the opportunity to talk to them about the Atty that Livingstone had mentioned.
To Johnston's joy the Mbuti were familiar with the animal,
which they described as being striped like a zebra, but having a solid brown upper
body. And most surprisingly, they said that the animal had more than one hoof.
That was telling to Johnston, because if the animal indeed had cloven hooves,
it could not be a horse, since all modern horses hooves are a single
piece. “Could it be,” he thought, “a remnant of ancient horses long thought to be extinct,
who had toes on their feet?” That would be an amazing discovery indeed!
On the expedition to return the natives to their homes, Johnston met some Belgian officers,
who told him that some of their native troops had recently killed an Atty. Johnston was
able to procure from them two bandoliers, straps that are used to carry ammunition,
that have been made from the animal's skin. They were indeed striped like a zebra,
but little more could be determined from these small strips of hide. On the way,
the Mbuti pointed out tracks, and Johnston was surprised to find that they were neither
the tracks of a single hoofed horse, nor of a toed horse ancestor, but the cloven hooves of
an antelope. He thought that the tracks must be from something else, one of many forest antelope.
That was though, as close as he got. After returning the Mbuti to their homes,
the expedition was struck by malaria, and had to return to Uganda. But the Belgian officers
remembered his interest. The next time their native soldiers killed one of the animals,
they sent the skin and skull to Johnston, and from those Johnston concluded that
the find was even more astounding than he imagined. The animal was neither a horse,
nor a unicorn. It was, rather obviously, a type of giraffe. The animal species that he discovered,
officially recognized in 1901 as Okapi Johnstoni, was the Okapi. A forest living relative of the
giraffe. That was an amazing discovery, as the giraffe was thought to be the last
surviving member of the Giraffidae family, and no other species of that family had been
thought to exist since the Mycenae Epic, which ended more than 5 million years ago.
The Okapi has been described as one of the most unique large mammals on earth,
and it was the last major mammal to be discovered on the continent of Africa. It is related to the
giraffe but the relationship is very distant, with a 2016 study determining that the closest
common ancestor between the two goes back more than 11 and a half million years. The Okapi
is sometimes included among the small class of creatures that are called living fossils, because
its closest relative exists only in the fossil record. And it is very similar to Samotherium,
a giraffe that is only known to have lived during the Mycenae Epic. A shy and solitary creature,
it is by some accounts the ninth rarest creature on earth, with less than 20,000 thought to exist
in the wild. It's solitary nature, well-developed camouflage, and range in some of the most remote
and inaccessible parts of the earth, kept it from the eyes of science clear until the 20th century.
Today the Okapi is threatened by habitat destruction, and poaching. While it is
protected by law, it's range in the Ituri forest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
is an area of political instability and violence. In 2012 poachers,
upset that rangers of the Okapi wildlife reserve were preventing them poaching
elephants, took over the headquarters of the reserve, murdered six guards and civilians,
and slaughtered 13 okapi that were kept there as part of a breeding program. But the Okapi does
do well in captivity, and while still rare, can be seen in many zoos around the world
where they maintain a reserve population to keep the species from going extinct.
Sir Harry Johnston wrote more than a dozen books about his adventures as an explorer,
artist, and colonial administrator in Africa. And while he displayed many of
the paternalistic attitudes of Europeans towards native Africans of his time,
he was one of few colonial administrators who argued that colonial administration's should get
to know the culture of the subjugated people's, and was one of the first colonial administrators
to employ native Africans in colonial service, as clerks and skilled staff. He passed away in 1927,
with perhaps his most memorable accomplishment being, the extraordinary creature that bears
his name. The Unicorn that he had sought since childhood, the rare and beautiful Okapi Johnstoni.
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