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Agogwe
Also Agogure and Agogue.
Allegedly,
another mysterious primate,
this time from
Tanzania, East Africa. The Agogwe
is described as a small 2 to 5 feet tall rust colored woolly-haired biped, with
a rounded forehead and small canines, having yellow-reddish
skin under its coat and feet with an opposable thumb.
In
Zimbabwe and the Congo region,
the creature is known as Kakundakαri and Kilomba, in
Senegal it goes by the name of
Fating' ho, and in the
Ivory Coast a
similar man-beast is called Sehitι. Encounters with these
cryptid
hominids are supposedly very
rare, with most of the reported sightings coming from the first half of the
twentieth century.
A much talked about sighting took place
around 1900, when a British captain named William Hitchens
was on an official lion hunt in the area of the
Ussure
and
Simbiti forests, on the
side of the
Wembare
plains. While stalking a man-eating lion in a forest clearing, he witnessed as
he would later describe in an article entitled "African Mystery Beast" for the London
magazine
Discovery
in December of 1937 "two small, brown, furry creatures come
from the dense forest on one side of the glade and disappear into the thickets
on the other. They were like little men, about 4 feet high, walking upright, but
clad in russet hair."
Captain Hitchens'
fear laden accompanying native hunter mumbled out that these were the agogwe,
a race of little furry men "whom one does not see once in a lifetime." The
officer made desperate efforts to follow and find the small primates, but was
unsuccessful because of the impenetrability of the forest.
Subsequent to the publication of this article, as to support the
British officer's story, a certain Cuthbert Burgoyne sent a letter to the same
magazine in 1938, stating that he and his wife had seen something similar while
coasting Portuguese East Africa in a Japanese cargo boat in 1927:
"We were sufficiently near to land to see objects clearly with a glass of 12
magnifications. There were a sloping beach with light bush above upon which
several dozen baboons were hunting for and picking up shell fish or crabs,
to judge by their movements. Two pure white baboons were amongst them. These
are very rare but I had heard of them previously. As we watched, two little
brown men walked together out of the bush and down among the baboons. They
were certainly not any known monkey and they must have been akin or they
would have disturbed the baboons. They were too far away to see in detail,
but these small human-like animals were probably between 4 and 5 feet tall,
quite upright and graceful in figure. At the time I was thrilled as they
were quite evidently no beast of which I had heard or read. Later a friend
and big game hunter told me he was in Portuguese East Africa with his wife
and three hunters, and saw a mother, father, and child, of apparently
similar animal species, walk across the further side of a bush clearing. The
natives loudly forbade him to shoot."
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