Your True Tales
August 2005 – Page 30

South African Cryptids
by Quagga

I am from the Free State Province in the central parts of South Africa. In the northeastern corner of my province is the Riemland ("thong land"), because of the rich wildlife that used to roam there and were hunted out to make tanned skins and leather ropes.

There is a small river known as the Sterkspruit ("strong little river") and a village, Lindley (after the American missionary Rev. Daniel Lindley), is situated near it. Many tales have been told of creatures that can be found in a isolated valley full of thorn trees and thick shrub nearby. This includes things like the water baboon (said to be something similar to Australopithecus africanus, "a smallish creature that walks on two legs, with reddish fur and an almost apelike face"); mompies (pronounced mom-pees) the river monster, as far as I could understand "a large amphibious dragon covered with slime, obtained after catching fish in stagnant pools, with a long blue-green head and mouth lined with long slender teeth, a large hump on its back and a long scaly, lizard-like tail" (which almost matches a description of a spinosaur); and the blessie ("bald one"), "a 15- 50?) foot brown-coloured water snake that guards a pile of diamonds in a deep pool beneath a tiny waterfall and snatches cattle and small children wandering too close to its lair."

There are also rumours of a remaining black-maned Cape lion (said to be extinct for almost 100 years), still roaming the mountains near Lesotho. In 2004, I was attacked by a large cat on a farm in that area and it could not have been a leopard, which attacks silently and grabs you with all four of its paws. This big cat rushes out of a thorn bush, made a roar not unlike that of a male lion and knocked me off my feet with only its front paws (luckily I rolled down a hill and could get away safely). Folklore has it that this last mountain lion is a man-eater (which would explain why I was attacked), has huge paws which if it were to step on a small fire, can put it out, and cannot be killed through penetration by any metal object.

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