Creature record / 1921
A forest glade in Tanganyika. Capt. William Hichens is waiting for a man-eating lion. A local hunter waits too. Then two figures step out of the dense forest. Small. Brown. Furry. They walk upright, like little men about 4 feet high, clad in russet hair. They cross the glade and disappear into the thickets on the other side. The hunter gazes in mingled fear and amazement. Agogwe, the hunter says. The little furry men whom one does not see once in a lifetime. Hichens told the story in the journal Discovery in December 1937. It is the first recorded agogwe sighting, and every account since begins here.
Tanganyika, East Africa. Capt. William Hichens worked there as a colonial administrator, a Swahili scholar who also ran the Azania Press. According to one biographical source, Hichens became Administrative Officer-in-Charge of Iramba District in 1921. Then came an assignment. An official lion hunt in the Ussure and Simibit forests, on the western side of the Wembare plains. The quarry was a man-eater.