The Terror of the Coastlands
The mngwa, according to natives in the fishing villages strung along the East African coast, is a gigantic cat, striped like a tabby, but as large as a donkey and far more ferocious and fearsome than any lion. It can be said that such a beast is "impossible"; but, having trekked many a long mile in its reputed haunts and helped to patch up more than one of its mangled victims, I am convinced that some beast answering to the mngwa's description does lurk in the dense jungle which fringes parts of this coast. Patches of this dark jungle-growth have not been trodden by human foot for centuries, as may be judged from the fact that a large town of ruined stone mansions has stood in the bush not an afternoon's car-drive north of Mombasa, for over five hundred years, and was utterly unheard of until rediscovered about four years ago. What other secrets does this jungle-belt hold ? The natives swear that it is haunted; and so it may be, by strange beasts. In any event, the mngwa, as a beast distinct from the lion and leopard, has been known to the coastal natives for more than six centuries. A 13th-century song of one of their famous hunter-sultans contains the lines:
"I do not dally in the towns, but press into the forest, to be devoured by the mngwa! And if the mngwa seizes me, devouring my flesh, that is the fortune of the hunt!"
Down the years the beast figures in stories, and any native on the coast to-day can tell horrible tales of the mngwa's ferocity and periodical raids. All that is not to be lightheartedly dismissed as "nonsense." Not long ago a man was brought in to me at Mchinga (a small Tanganyika coastal village), on a litter and terribly mauled by some great beast. He said it was a mngwa, and as he himself was a brave and skilful native hunter, who had often tracked down lions, leopards and other "killers" with me and other white men, why should we suppose that in this case he mistook a lion or a leopard for some other beast? He had nothing to gain by telling me lies; on the contrary, as a hunter he depended for his livelihood on being absolutely truthful and trustworthy. On another occasion, at Lindi, another Tanganyika town, a mngwa took to prowling the village at night, killed several villagers and, finally, a policeman on point at the market. For nights the whole town lived in fear, and although we doubled the police-guards we had difficulty in getting the men to go on duty. But I have seen those same men rout a lion out of a bush-patch with sticks! They swore that this beast was not a lion, nor a leopard, but a mngwa. We made every effort to waylay it, but, unfortunately, were not successful; nor did we get a lion, as we might reasonably have done had it been one.