Stephenson, John Edward (1937) Chirupula's Tale: A Bye-Way in African History, Geoffrey Bles, pp. 211-212

 ... on such journeys in Africa–at any rate in those days–there was generally something of interest to be gleaned, and I remember that it was on my return from Kapopo to Mkushi [in early 1901] that I first became interested in that grand mystery of mysteries, the Chipekwe. It happened in this way.

One day before I had left Kapopo, Jones received an excited note from Louis De Fries, relating a curious adventure. De Fries was at that time trading not far from Kapopo and in the neighbourhood there was a lake–a rather remarkable and mysterious lake, of immense depth–known to the map-makers as Lake Choa.

Well, early one evening, it seems, Louis De Fries was out for a stroll along the shore, when he saw some large object floating on top of the water. He made out a head–but it wasn't, certainly, a crocodile: he made out the ears–they certainly weren't the ears of a hippo: and stranger still, he could see quite distinctly what appeared to be a large horn. It looked almost like a rhino: but of course it couldn't be a rhino. He seized his rifle, fired–and missed: and the animal sank immediately out of sight. What could it be? Had Jones ever heard of anything like it?

No; Jones hadn't. Nor had I. But Kapopo, the Mombwera headman, when confronted by De Fries's description, knew immediately. "Oh! that," he said, "why, that's the Chipekwe!"

And what is the Chipekwe? Well, the Chipekwe is the water-rhino–and a very mysterious beast, withal. Rarely seen by man, it is held to inhabit the deepest, darkest pools: it stands about four feet high and it has a long white horn affixed to its nose, and therewith it slays hippos, which it presently devours. It is seldom seen by natives, and as for Europeans–why, De Fries is the only white man who has ever clapped eyes on it.

Mashiri said he had seen a bull-hippo stabbed behind the shoulder, which his father said had been killed by a chipekwe. Makowero said he had seen the spoor in the mud of the Luapula River some years previously, and it had three toes, and was like a rhino's spoor, except that the middle toe, instead of being moon-shaped, was sharply pointed. Mboshya's nephew said a little chipekwe had floated up in the Lower Lunsemfwa; and the people burnt it, as they held it to be uncanny. Mwana Kapiri said he had heard of a chipekwe being found dead on the banks of the Kafué, away in Chinama's country–but, of course, he hadn't seen it.

Then there was Kalowa, the Muhammedan elephant fundi. He said that near Ujiji, in far away Tanganyika Lake itself, he had seen a hippo which was being chased by a chipekwe. Some of his friends had killed it–or, at least, they might have killed it: but as the incident happened some sixty years ago, now he came to think of it, he couldn't be sure on that point. However, the more I questioned all and sundry, the more I was confidently assured that the chipekwe indubitably existed. Everyone, I found, believed in it. Everyone, that is, except John Lanigan O'Kee[f]fe's cook. When I asked him he snorted, and replied that there was no such creature! The ignorant ones mistook two bull hippos fighting–that was what caused the terrific scars in hippos' hides. After all, did not the name denote a fierce bull? Peke yake, he said, meant, in Ki-Swahili, "by himself"; "chipekwe" was only an ignorant perversion of those words, and just meant an old bullhippo that lived by itself–a "rogue," that would go for any other beast.

But even John Lanigan O'Keef[f]e's cook couldn't account for the chipekwe's horn!