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The Land of Footprints

by Stewart Edward White · English · Gutenberg #1378 · 560,794 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Land of Footprints

Author: Stewart Edward White


        
Release date: July 1, 1998 [eBook #1378]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1378

Credits: Produced by Aaron Cannon, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS ***

THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS

by Stewart Edward White

1913




I. ON BOOKS OF ADVENTURE

Books of sporting, travel, and adventure in countries little known to
the average reader naturally fall in two classes-neither, with a very
few exceptions, of great value. One class is perhaps the logical result
of the other.

Of the first type is the book that is written to make the most of far
travels, to extract from adventure the last thrill, to impress the
awestricken reader with a full sense of the danger and hardship the
writer has undergone. Thus, if the latter takes out quite an ordinary
routine permit to go into certain districts, he makes the most of
travelling in “closed territory,” implying that he has obtained an
especial privilege, and has penetrated where few have gone before him.
As a matter of fact, the permit is issued merely that the authorities
may keep track of who is where. Anybody can get one. This class of
writer tells of shooting beasts at customary ranges of four and five
hundred yards. I remember one in especial who airily and as a matter
of fact killed all his antelope at such ranges. Most men have shot
occasional beasts at a quarter mile or so, but not airily nor as
a matter of fact: rather with thanksgiving and a certain amount of
surprise. The gentleman of whom I speak mentioned getting an eland at
seven hundred and fifty yards. By chance I happened to mention this to a
native Africander.

“Yes,” said he, “I remember that; I was there.”

This interested me-and I said so.

“He made a long shot,” said I.

“A GOOD long shot,” replied the Africander.

“Did you pace the distance?”

He laughed. “No,” said he, “the old chap was immensely delighted. 'Eight
hundred yards if it was an inch!' he cried.”

“How far was it?”

“About three hundred and fifty. But it was a long shot, all right.”

And it was! Three hundred and fifty yards is a very long shot. It is
over four city blocks-New York size. But if you talk often enough and
glibly enough of “four and five hundred yards,” it does not sound like
much, does it?

The same class of writer always gets all the thrills. He speaks of
“blanched cheeks,” of the “thrilling suspense,” and so on down the gamut
of the shilling shocker. His stuff makes good reading; there is no
doubt of that. The spellbound public likes it, and to that extent it has
fulfilled its mission. Also, the reader believes it to the letter-why
should he not? Only there is this curious result: he carries away in
his mind the impression of unreality, of a country impossible to
be understood and gauged and savoured by the ordinary human mental
equipment. It is interesting, just as are historical novels, or the
copper-riveted heroes of modern fiction, but it has no real relation
with human life. In the last analysis the inherent untruth of the
thing forces itself on him. He believes, but he does not apprehend; he
acknowledges the fact, but he cannot grasp its human quality. The affair
is interesting, but it is more or less concocted of pasteboard for his
amusement. Thus essential truth asserts its right.

All this, you must understand, is probably not a deliberate attempt
to deceive. It is merely the recrudescence under the stimulus of a
brand-new environment of the boyish desire to be a hero. When a man
jumps back into the Pleistocene he digs up some of his ancestors'
cave-qualities. Among these is the desire for personal adornment. His
modern development of taste precludes skewers in the ears and polished
wire around the neck; so he adorns himself in qualities instead. It is
quite an engaging and diverting trait of character. The attitude of mind
it both presupposes and helps to bring about is too complicated for my
brief analysis. In itself it is no more blameworthy than the small boy's
pretence at Indians in the back yard; and no more praiseworthy than
infantile decoration with feathers.

In its results, however, we are more concerned. Probably each of us has
his mental picture that passes as a symbol rather than an idea of the
different continents. This is usually a single picture-a deep river,
with forest, hanging snaky vines, anacondas and monkeys for the east
coast of South America, for example. It is built up in youth by chance
reading and chance pictures, and does as well as a pink place on the
map to stand for a part of the world concerning which we know nothing at
all. As time goes on we extend, expand, and modify this picture in the
light of what knowledge we may acquire. So the reading of many books
modifies and expands our first crude notions of Equatorial Africa. And
the result is, if we read enough of the sort I describe above, we build
the idea of an exciting, dangerous, extra-human continent, visited by
half-real people of the texture of the historical-fiction hero, who have
strange and interesting adventures which we could not possibly imagine
happening to ourselves.

This type of book is directly responsible for the second sort. The
author of this is deadly afraid of being thought to brag of his
adventures. He feels constantly on him the amusedly critical eye of the
old-timer. When he comes to describe the first time a rhino dashed in
his direction, he remembers that old hunters, who have been so charged
hundreds of times, may read the book. Suddenly, in that light, the
adventure becomes pitifully unimportant. He sets down the fact that “we
met a rhino that turned a bit nasty, but after a shot in the shoulder
decided to leave us alone.” Throughout he keeps before his mind's eye
the imaginary audience of those who have done. He writes for them,
to please them, to convince them that he is not “swelled head,” nor
“cocky,” nor “fancies himself,” nor thinks he has done, been, or seen
anything wonderful. It is a good, healthy frame of mind to be in; but
it, no more than the other type, can produce books that leave on the
minds of the general public any impression of a country in relation to a
real human being.

As a matter of fact, the same trouble is at the bottom of both failures.
The adventure writer, half unconsciously perhaps, has been too much
occupied play-acting himself into half-forgotten boyhood heroics. The
more modest man, with even more self-consciousness, has been thinking of
how he is going to appear in the eyes of the expert. Both have thought
of themselves before their work. This aspect of the matter would
probably vastly astonish the modest writer.

If, then, one is to formulate an ideal toward which to write, he might
express it exactly in terms of man and environment. Those readers
desiring sheer exploration can get it in any library: those in search
of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty of it at any book-stall.
But the majority want something different from either of these. They
want, first of all, to know what the country is like-not in vague and
grandiose “word paintings,” nor in strange and foreign sounding words
and phrases, but in comparison with something they know. What is it
nearest like-Arizona? Surrey? Upper New York? Canada? Mexico? Or is it
totally different from anything, as is the Grand Canyon? When you look
out from your camp-any one camp-how far do you see, and what do you
see?-mountains in the distance, or a screen of vines or bamboo near
hand, or what? When you get up in the morning, what is the first thing
to do? What does a rhino look like, where he lives, and what did you do
the first time one came at you? I don't want you to tell me as though I
were either an old hunter or an admiring audience, or as though you were
afraid somebody might think you were making too much of the matter. I
want to know how you REALLY felt. Were you scared or nervous? or did you
become cool? Tell me frankly just how it was, so I can see the thing as
happening to a common everyday human being. Then, even at second-hand
and at ten thousand miles distance, I can enjoy it actually, humanly,
even though vicariously, speculating a bit over my pipe as to how I
would have liked it myself.

Obviously, to write such a book the author must at the same time sink
his ego and exhibit frankly his personality. The paradox in this is only
apparent. He must forget either to strut or to blush with diffidence.
Neither audience should be forgotten, and neither should be exclusively
addressed. Never should he lose sight of the wholesome fact that old
hunters are to read and to weigh; never should he for a moment slip
into the belief that he is justified in addressing the expert alone. His
attitude should be that many men know more and have done more than he,
but that for one reason or another these men are not ready to transmit
their knowledge and experience.

To set down the formulation of an ideal is one thing: to fulfil it is
another. In the following pages I cannot claim a fulfilment, but only an
attempt. The foregoing dissertation must be considered not as a promise,
but as an explanation. No one knows better than I how limited my
African experience is, both in time and extent, bounded as it is by East
Equatorial Africa and a year. Hundreds of men are better qualified than
myself to write just this book; but unfortunately they will not do it.




II. AFRICA

In looking back on the multitudinous pictures that the word Africa
bids rise in my memory, four stand out more distinctly than the
others. Strangely enough, these are by no means all pictures of average
country-the sort of thing one would describe as typical. Perhaps, in a
way, they symbolize more the spirit of the country to me, for certainly
they represent but a small minority of its infinitely varied aspects.
But since we must make a start somewhere, and since for some reason
these four crowd most insistently in the recollection it might be well
to begin with them.

Our camp was pitched under a single large mimosa tree near the edge of
a deep and narrow ravine down which a stream flowed. A semicircle of low
mountains hemmed us in at the distance of several miles. The other side
of the semicircle was occupied by the upthrow of a low rise blocking
off an horizon at its nearest point but a few hundred yards away. Trees
marked the course of the stream; low scattered bushes alternated with
open plain. The grass grew high. We had to cut it out to make camp.

Nothing indicated that we were otherwise situated than in a very
pleasant, rather wide grass valley in the embrace of the mountains. Only
a walk of a few hundred yards atop the upthrow of the low rise revealed
the fact that it was in reality the lip of a bench, and that beyond
it the country fell away in sheer cliffs whose ultimate drop was some
fifteen hundred feet. One could sit atop and dangle his feet over
unguessed abysses.

For a week we had been hunting for greater kudu. Each day Memba Sasa and
I went in one direction, while Mavrouki and Kongoni took another line.
We looked carefully for signs, but found none fresher than the month
before. Plenty of other game made the country interesting; but we were
after a shy and valuable prize, so dared not shoot lesser things. At
last, at the end of the week, Mavrouki came in with a tale of eight
lions seen in the low scrub across the stream. The kudu business was
about finished, as far as this place went, so we decided to take a look
for the lions.

We ate by lantern and at the first light were ready to start. But at
that moment, across the slope of the rim a few hundred yards away,
appeared a small group of sing-sing. These are a beautiful big beast,
with widespread horns, proud and wonderful, like Landseer's stags, and
I wanted one of them very much. So I took the Springfield, and dropped
behind the line of some bushes. The stalk was of the ordinary sort.
One has to remain behind cover, to keep down wind, to make no quick
movements. Sometimes this takes considerable manoeuvring; especially, as
now, in the case of a small band fairly well scattered out for feeding.
Often after one has succeeded in placing them all safely behind the
scattered cover, a straggler will step out into view. Then the hunter
must stop short, must slowly, oh very, very slowly, sink down out of
sight; so slowly, in fact, that he must not seem to move, but rather to
melt imperceptibly away. Then he must take up his progress at a lower
plane of elevation. Perhaps he needs merely to stoop; or he may crawl
on hands and knees; or he may lie flat and hitch himself forward by his
toes, pushing his gun ahead. If one of the beasts suddenly looks
very intently in his direction, he must freeze into no matter what
uncomfortable position, and so remain an indefinite time. Even a
hotel-bred child to whom you have rashly made advances stares no longer
nor more intently than a buck that cannot make you out.

I had no great difficulty with this lot, but slipped up quite
successfully to within one hundred and fifty yards. There I raised my
head behind a little bush to look. Three does grazed nearest me, their
coats rough against the chill of early morning. Up the slope were two
more does and two funny, fuzzy babies. An immature buck occupied the
extreme left with three young ladies. But the big buck, the leader, the
boss of the lot, I could not see anywhere. Of course he must be about,
and I craned my neck cautiously here and there trying to make him out.

Suddenly, with one accord, all turned and began to trot rapidly away to
the right, their heads high. In the strange manner of animals, they had
received telepathic alarm, and had instantly obeyed. Then beyond and
far to the right I at last saw the beast I had been looking for. The old
villain had been watching me all the time!

The little herd in single file made their way rapidly along the face
of the rise. They were headed in the direction of the stream. Now, I
happened to know that at this point the stream-canyon was bordered by
sheer cliffs. Therefore, the sing-sing must round the hill, and not
cross the stream. By running to the top of the hill I might catch a
glimpse of them somewhere below. So I started on a jog trot, trying to
hit the golden mean of speed that would still leave me breath to shoot.
This was an affair of some nicety in the tall grass. Just before I
reached the actual slope, however, I revised my schedule. The reason was
supplied by a rhino that came grunting to his feet about seventy yards
away. He had not seen me, and he had not smelled me, but the general
disturbance of all these events had broken into his early morning nap.
He looked to me like a person who is cross before breakfast, so I ducked
low and ran around him. The last I saw of him he was still standing
there, quite disgruntled, and evidently intending to write to the
directors about it.

Arriving at the top, I looked eagerly down. The cliff fell away at an
impossible angle, but sheer below ran out a narrow bench fifty yards
wide. Around the point of the hill to my right-where the herd had gone-a
game trail dropped steeply to this bench. I arrived just in time to see
the sing-sing, still trotting, file across the bench and over its edge,
on some other invisible game trail, to continue their descent of the
cliff. The big buck brought up the rear. At the very edge he came to a
halt, and looked back, throwing his head up and his nose out so that the
heavy fur on his neck stood forward like a ruff. It was a last glimpse
of him, so I held my little best, and pulled trigger.

This happened to be one of those shots I spoke of-which the perpetrator
accepts with a thankful and humble spirit. The sing-sing leaped high in
the air and plunged over the edge of the bench. I signalled the camp-in
plain sight-to come and get the head and meat, and sat down to wait. And
while waiting, I looked out on a scene that has since been to me one of
my four symbolizations of Africa.

The morning was dull, with gray clouds through which at wide intervals
streamed broad bands of misty light. Below me the cliff fell away clear
to a gorge in the depths of which flowed a river. Then the land began
to rise, broken, sharp, tumbled, terrible, tier after tier, gorge
after gorge, one twisted range after the other, across a breathlessly
immeasurable distance. The prospect was full of shadows thrown by the
tumult of lava. In those shadows one imagined stranger abysses. Far down
to the right a long narrow lake inaugurated a flatter, alkali-whitened
country of low cliffs in long straight lines. Across the distances
proper to a dozen horizons the tumbled chaos heaved and fell. The eye
sought rest at the bounds usual to its accustomed world-and went on.
There was no roundness to the earth, no grateful curve to drop this
great fierce country beyond a healing horizon out of sight. The
immensity of primal space was in it, and the simplicity of primal
things-rough, unfinished, full of mystery. There was no colour. The
scene was done in slate gray, darkening to the opaque where a tiny
distant rain squall started; lightening in the nearer shadows to reveal
half-guessed peaks; brightening unexpectedly into broad short bands
of misty gray light slanting from the gray heavens above to the sombre
tortured immensity beneath. It was such a thing as Gustave Dore might
have imaged to serve as an abiding place for the fierce chaotic spirit
of the African wilderness.

I sat there for some time hugging my knees, waiting for the men to come.
The tremendous landscape seemed to have been willed to immobility. The
rain squalls forty miles or more away did not appear to shift their
shadows; the rare slanting bands of light from the clouds were as
constant as though they were falling through cathedral windows. But
nearer at hand other things were forward. The birds, thousands of them,
were doing their best to cheer things up. The roucoulements of doves
rose from the bushes down the face of the cliffs; the bell bird uttered
his clear ringing note; the chime bird gave his celebrated imitation of
a really gentlemanly sixty-horse power touring car hinting you out of
the way with the mellowness of a chimed horn; the bottle bird poured
gallons of guggling essence of happiness from his silver jug. From
the direction of camp, evidently jumped by the boys, a steinbuck loped
gracefully, pausing every few minutes to look back, his dainty legs
tense, his sensitive ears pointed toward the direction of disturbance.

And now, along the face of the cliff, I make out the flashing of much
movement, half glimpsed through the bushes. Soon a fine old-man baboon,
his tail arched after the dandified fashion of the baboon aristocracy
stepped out, looked around, and bounded forward. Other old men followed
him, and then the young men, and a miscellaneous lot of half-grown
youngsters. The ladies brought up the rear, with the babies. These rode
their mothers' backs, clinging desperately while they leaped along, for
all the world like the pathetic monkey “jockeys” one sees strapped to
the backs of big dogs in circuses. When they had approached to within
fifty yards, remarked “hullo!” to them. Instantly they all stopped.
Those in front stood up on their hind legs; those behind clambered to
points of vantage on rocks and the tops of small bushes: They all took
a good long look at me. Then they told me what they thought about me
personally, the fact of my being there, and the rude way I had startled
them. Their remarks were neither complimentary nor refined. The old
men, in especial, got quite profane, and screamed excited billingsgate.
Finally they all stopped at once, dropped on all fours, and loped away,
their ridiculous long tails curved in a half arc. Then for the first
time I noticed that, under cover of the insults, the women and children
had silently retired. Once more I was left to the familiar gentle bird
calls, and the vast silence of the wilderness beyond.

The second picture, also, was a view from a height, but of a totally
different character. It was also, perhaps, more typical of a greater
part of East Equatorial Africa. Four of us were hunting lions with
natives-both wild and tame-and a scratch pack of dogs. More of that
later. We had rummaged around all the morning without any results; and
now at noon had climbed to the top of a butte to eat lunch and look
abroad.

Our butte ran up a gentle but accelerating slope to a peak of big
rounded rocks and slabs sticking out boldly from the soil of the hill.
We made ourselves comfortable each after his fashion. The gunbearers
leaned against rocks and rolled cigarettes. The savages squatted on
their heels, planting their spears ceremonially in front of them. One
of my friends lay on his back, resting a huge telescope over his crossed
feet. With this he purposed seeing any lion that moved within ten miles.
None of the rest of us could ever make out anything through the fearsome
weapon. Therefore, relieved from responsibility by the presence of this
Dreadnaught of a 'scope, we loafed and looked about us. This is what we
saw:

Mountains at our backs, of course-at some distance; then plains in long
low swells like the easy rise and fall of a tropical sea, wave after
wave, and over the edge of the world beyond a distant horizon. Here and
there on this plain, single hills lay becalmed, like ships at sea; some
peaked, some cliffed like buttes, some long and low like the hulls of
battleships. The brown plain flowed up to wash their bases, liquid as
the sea itself, its tides rising in the coves of the hills, and ebbing
in the valleys between. Near at hand, in the middle distance, far away,
these fleets of the plain sailed, until at last hull-down over the
horizon their topmasts disappeared. Above them sailed too the phantom
fleet of the clouds, shot with light, shining like silver, airy as
racing yachts, yet casting here and there exaggerated shadows below.

The sky in Africa is always very wide, greater than any other skies.
Between horizon and horizon is more space than any other world contains.
It is as though the cup of heaven had been pressed a little flatter;
so that while the boundaries have widened, the zenith, with its flaming
sun, has come nearer. And yet that is not a constant quantity either. I
have seen one edge of the sky raised straight up a few million miles, as
though some one had stuck poles under its corners, so that the western
heaven did not curve cup-wise over to the horizon at all as it did
everywhere else, but rather formed the proscenium of a gigantic stage.
On this stage they had piled great heaps of saffron yellow clouds, and
struck shafts of yellow light, and filled the spaces with the lurid
portent of a storm-while the twenty thousand foot mountains below,
crouched whipped and insignificant to the earth.

We sat atop our butte for an hour while H. looked through his 'scope.
After the soft silent immensity of the earth, running away to infinity,
with its low waves, and its scattered fleet of hills, it was with
difficulty that we brought our gaze back to details and to things near
at hand. Directly below us we could make out many different-hued specks.
Looking closely, we could see that those specks were game animals. They
fed here and there in bands of from ten to two hundred, with valleys and
hills between. Within the radius of the eye they moved, nowhere crowded
in big herds, but everywhere present. A band of zebras grazed the side
of one of the earth waves, a group of gazelles walked on the skyline,
a herd of kongoni rested in the hollow between. On the next rise was a
similar grouping; across the valley a new variation. As far as the eye
could strain its powers it could make out more and ever more beasts. I
took up my field glasses, and brought them all to within a sixth of the
distance. After amusing myself for some time in watching them, I swept
the glasses farther on. Still the same animals grazing on the hills and
in the hollows. I continued to look, and to look again, until even
the powerful prismatic glasses failed to show things big enough to
distinguish. At the limit of extreme vision I could still make out game,
and yet more game. And as I took my glasses from my eyes, and realized
how small a portion of this great land-sea I had been able to examine;
as I looked away to the ship-hills hull-down over the horizon, and
realized that over all that extent fed the Game; the ever-new wonder of
Africa for the hundredth time filled my mind-the teeming fecundity of
her bosom.

“Look here,” said H. without removing his eye from the 'scope, “just
beyond the edge of that shadow to the left of the bushes in the
donga-I've been watching them ten minutes, and I can't make 'em out yet.
They're either hyenas acting mighty queer, or else two lionesses.”

We snatched our glasses and concentrated on that important detail.

To catch the third experience you must have journeyed with us across the
“Thirst,” as the natives picturesquely name the waterless tract of two
days and a half. Our very start had been delayed by a breakage of some
Dutch-sounding essential to our ox wagon, caused by the confusion of a
night attack by lions: almost every night we had lain awake as long as
we could to enjoy the deep-breathed grumbling or the vibrating roars of
these beasts. Now at last, having pushed through the dry country to
the river in the great plain, we were able to take breath from our mad
hurry, and to give our attention to affairs beyond the limits of mere
expediency. One of these was getting Billy a shot at a lion.

Billy had never before wanted to shoot anything except a python. Why a
python we could not quite fathom. Personally, I think she had some vague
idea of getting even for that Garden of Eden affair. But lately, pythons
proving scarcer than in that favoured locality, she had switched to a
lion. She wanted, she said, to give the skin to her sister. In vain
we pointed out that a zebra hide was very decorative, that lions go to
absurd lengths in retaining possession of their own skins, and other
equally convincing facts. It must be a lion or nothing; so naturally we
had to make a try.

There are several ways of getting lions, only one of which is at all
likely to afford a steady pot shot to a very small person trying to
manipulate an over-size gun. That is to lay out a kill. The idea is to
catch the lion at it in the early morning before he has departed for
home. The best kill is a zebra: first, because lions like zebra; second,
because zebra are fairly large; third, because zebra are very numerous.

Accordingly, after we had pitched camp just within a fringe of mimosa
trees and of red-flowering aloes near the river; had eaten lunch, smoked
a pipe and issued necessary orders to the men, C. and I set about the
serious work of getting an appropriate bait in an appropriate place.

The plains stretched straight away from the river bank to some
indefinite and unknown distance to the south. A low range of mountains
lay blue to the left; and a mantle of scrub thornbush closed the view to
the right. This did not imply that we could see far straight ahead, for
the surface of the plain rose slowly to the top of a swell about two
miles away. Beyond it reared a single butte peak at four or five times
that distance.

We stepped from the fringe of red aloes and squinted through the dancing
heat shimmer. Near the limit of vision showed a very faint glimmering
whitish streak. A newcomer to Africa would not have looked at it twice:
nevertheless, it could be nothing but zebra. These gaudily marked beasts
take queer aspects even on an open plain. Most often they show pure
white; sometimes a jet black; only when within a few hundred yards does
one distinguish the stripes. Almost always they are very easily made
out. Only when very distant and in heat shimmer, or in certain half
lights of evening, does their so-called “protective colouration” seem to
be in working order, and even then they are always quite visible to the
least expert hunter's scrutiny.

It is not difficult to kill a zebra, though sometimes it has to be done
at a fairly long range. If all you want is meat for the porters, the
matter is simple enough. But when you require bait for a lion, that; is
another affair entirely. In the first place, you must be able to stalk
within a hundred yards of your kill without being seen; in the second
place, you must provide two or three good lying-down places for your
prospective trophy within fifteen yards of the carcass-and no more than
two or three; in the third place, you must judge the direction of the
probable morning wind, and must be able to approach from leeward. It is
evidently pretty good luck to find an accommodating zebra in just such
a spot. It is a matter of still greater nicety to drop him absolutely in
his tracks. In a case of porters' meat it does not make any particular
difference if he runs a hundred yards before he dies. With lion bait
even fifty yards makes all the difference in the world.

C. and I talked it over and resolved to press Scallywattamus into
service. Scallywattamus is a small white mule who is firmly convinced
that each and every bush in Africa conceals a mule-eating rhinoceros,
and who does not intend to be one of the number so eaten. But we had
noticed that at times zebra would be so struck with the strange sight of
Scallywattamus carrying a man, that they would let us get quite close.
C. was to ride Scallywattamus while I trudged along under his lee ready
to shoot.

We set out through the heat shimmer, gradually rising as the plain
slanted. Imperceptibly the camp and the trees marking the river's course
fell below us and into the heat haze. In the distance, close to the
stream, we made out a blurred, brown-red solid mass which we knew for
Masai cattle. Various little Thompson's gazelles skipped away to the
left waggling their tails vigorously and continuously as Nature long
since commanded “Tommies” to do. The heat haze steadied around the dim
white line, so we could make out the individual animals. There were
plenty of them, dozing in the sun. A single tiny treelet broke the plain
just at the skyline of the rise. C. and I talked low-voiced as we went
along. We agreed that the tree was an excellent landmark to come to,
that the little rise afforded proper cover, and that in the morning the
wind would in all likelihood blow toward the river. There were perhaps
twenty zebra near enough to the chosen spot. Any of them would do.

But the zebra did not give a hoot for Scallywattamus. At five hundred
yards three or four of them awoke with a start, stared at us a minute,
and moved slowly away. They told all the zebra they happened upon that
the three idiots approaching were at once uninteresting and dangerous.
At four hundred and fifty yards a half dozen more made off at a trot. At
three hundred and fifty yards the rest plunged away at a canter-all
but one. He remained to stare, but his tail was up, and we knew he
only stayed because he knew he could easily catch up in the next twenty
seconds.

The chance was very slim of delivering a knockout at that distance, but
we badly needed meat, anyway, after our march through the Thirst, so I
tried him. We heard the well-known plunk of the bullet, but down went
his head, up went his heels, and away went he. We watched him in vast
disgust. He cavorted out into a bare open space without cover of any
sort, and then flopped over. I thought I caught a fleeting grin of
delight on Mavrouki's face; but he knew enough instantly to conceal his
satisfaction over sure meat.

There were now no zebra anywhere near; but since nobody ever thinks
of omitting any chances in Africa, I sneaked up to the tree and took
a perfunctory look. There stood another, providentially absent-minded,
zebra!

We got that one. Everybody was now happy. The boys raced over to the
first kill, which soon took its dismembered way toward camp. C. and I
carefully organized our plan of campaign. We fixed in our memories the
exact location of each and every bush; we determined compass direction
from camp, and any other bearings likely to prove useful in finding so
small a spot in the dark. Then we left a boy to keep carrion birds off
until sunset; and returned home.

We were out in the morning before even the first sign of dawn. Billy
rode her little mule, C. and I went afoot, Memba Sasa accompanied us
because he could see whole lions where even C.'s trained eye could not
make out an ear, and the syce went along to take care of the mule. The
heavens were ablaze with the thronging stars of the tropics, so we found
we could make out the skyline of the distant butte over the rise of the
plains. The earth itself was a pool of absolute blackness. We could not
see where we were placing our feet, and we were continually bringing up
suddenly to walk around an unexpected aloe or thornbush. The night
was quite still, but every once in a while from the blackness came
rustlings, scamperings, low calls, and once or twice the startled
barking of zebra very near at hand. The latter sounded as ridiculous as
ever. It is one of the many incongruities of African life that Nature
should have given so large and so impressive a creature the petulant
yapping of an exasperated Pomeranian lap dog. At the end of three
quarters of an hour of more or less stumbling progress, we made out
against the sky the twisted treelet that served as our landmark. Billy
dismounted, turned the mule over to the syce, and we crept slowly
forward until within a guessed two or three hundred yards of our kill.

Nothing remained now but to wait for the daylight. It had already begun
to show. Over behind the distant mountains some one was kindling the
fires, and the stars were flickering out. The splendid ferocity of the
African sunrise was at hand. Long bands of slate dark clouds lay close
along the horizon, and behind them glowed a heart of fire, as on a small
scale the lamplight glows through a metal-worked shade. On either side
the sky was pale green-blue, translucent and pure, deep as infinity
itself. The earth was still black, and the top of the rise near at hand
was clear edged. On that edge, and by a strange chance accurately in
the centre of illumination, stood the uncouth massive form of a shaggy
wildebeeste, his head raised, staring to the east. He did not move;
nothing of that fire and black world moved; only instant by instant it
changed, swelling in glory toward some climax until one expected at any
moment a fanfare of trumpets, the burst of triumphant culmination.

Then very far down in the distance a lion roared. The wildebeeste,
without moving, bellowed back an answer or a defiance. Down in the
hollow an ostrich boomed. Zebra barked, and several birds chirped
strongly. The tension was breaking not in the expected fanfare and burst
of triumphal music, but in a manner instantly felt to be more fitting
to what was indeed a wonder, but a daily wonder for all that. At one and
the same instant the rim of the sun appeared and the wildebeeste, after
the sudden habit of his kind, made up his mind to go. He dropped his
head and came thundering down past us at full speed. Straight to the
west he headed, and so disappeared. We could hear the beat of his hoofs
dying into the distance. He had gone like a Warder of the Morning whose
task was finished. On the knife-edged skyline appeared the silhouette of
slim-legged little Tommies, flirting their rails, sniffing at the
dewy grass, dainty, slender, confiding, the open-day antithesis of the
tremendous and awesome lord of the darkness that had roared its way to
its lair, and to the massive shaggy herald of morning that had thundered
down to the west.




III. THE CENTRAL PLATEAU

Now is required a special quality of the imagination, not in myself, but
in my readers, for it becomes necessary for them to grasp the logic of
a whole country in one mental effort. The difficulties to me are very
real. If I am to tell you it all in detail, your mind becomes confused
to the point of mingling the ingredients of the description. The
resultant mental picture is a composite; it mixes localities wide
apart; it comes out, like the snake-creeper-swamp-forest thing of
grammar-school South America, an unreal and deceitful impression. If,
on the other hand, I try to give you a bird's-eye view-saying, here
is plain, and there follows upland, and yonder succeed mountains and
hills-you lose the sense of breadth and space and the toil of many
days. The feeling of onward outward extending distance is gone; and that
impression so indispensable to finite understanding-“here am I, and what
is beyond is to be measured by the length of my legs and the toil of
my days.” You will not stop long enough on my plains to realize their
physical extent nor their influence on the human soul. If I mention them
in a sentence, you dismiss them in a thought. And that is something the
plains themselves refuse to permit you to do. Yet sometimes one must
become a guide-book, and bespeak his reader's imagination.

The country, then, wherein we travelled begins at the sea. Along the
coast stretches a low rolling country of steaming tropics, grown with
cocoanuts, bananas, mangoes, and populated by a happy, half-naked race
of the Swahilis. Leaving the coast, the country rises through hills.
These hills are at first fertile and green and wooded. Later they turn
into an almost unbroken plateau of thorn scrub, cruel, monotonous,
almost impenetrable. Fix thorn scrub in your mind, with rhino trails,
and occasional openings for game, and a few rivers flowing through palms
and narrow jungle strips; fix it in your mind until your mind is filled
with it, until you are convinced that nothing else can exist in the
world but more and more of the monotonous, terrible, dry, onstretching
desert of thorn.

Then pass through this to the top of the hills inland, and journey over
these hills to the highland plains.

Now sense and appreciate these wide seas of and the hills and ranges
of mountains rising from them, and their infinite diversity of
country-their rivers marked by ribbons of jungle, their scattered-bush
and their thick-bush areas, their grass expanses, and their great
distances extending far over exceedingly wide horizons. Realize how many
weary hours you must travel to gain the nearest butte, what days of toil
the view from its top will disclose. Savour the fact that you can spend
months in its veriest corner without exhausting its possibilities. Then,
and not until then, raise your eyes to the low rising transverse range
that bands it to the west as the thorn desert bands it to the east.

And on these ranges are the forests, the great bewildering forests.
In what looks like a grove lying athwart a little hill you can lose
yourself for days. Here dwell millions of savages in an apparently
untouched wilderness. Here rises a snow mountain on the equator. Here
are tangles and labyrinths, great bamboo forests lost in folds of the
mightiest hills. Here are the elephants. Here are the swinging vines,
the jungle itself.

Yet finally it breaks. We come out on the edge of things and look down
on a great gash in the earth. It is like a sunken kingdom in itself,
miles wide, with its own mountain ranges, its own rivers, its own
landscape features. Only on either side of it rise the escarpments which
are the true level of the plateau. One can spend two months in this
valley, too, and in the countries south to which it leads. And on its
farther side are the high plateau plains again, or the forests, or the
desert, or the great lakes that lie at the source of the Nile.

So now, perhaps, we are a little prepared to go ahead. The guide-book
work is finished for good and all. There is the steaming hot low coast
belt, and the hot dry thorn desert belt, and the varied immense plains,
and the high mountain belt of the forests, and again the variegated wide
country of the Rift Valley and the high plateau. To attempt to tell
you seriatim and in detail just what they are like is the task of an
encyclopaedist. Perhaps more indirectly you may be able to fill in the
picture of the country, the people, and the beasts.





IV. THE FIRST CAMP

Our very first start into the new country was made when we piled out
from the little train standing patiently awaiting the good pleasure
of our descent. That feature strikes me with ever new wonder-the
accommodating way trains of the Uganda Railway have of waiting for you.
One day, at a little wayside station, C. and I were idly exchanging
remarks with the only white man in sight, killing time until the engine
should whistle to a resumption of the journey. The guard lingered about
just out of earshot. At the end of five minutes C. happened to catch his
eye, whereupon he ventured to approach.

“When you have finished your conversation,” said he politely, “we are
all ready to go on.”

On the morning in question there were a lot of us to disembark-one
hundred and twenty-two, to be exact-of which four were white. We were
not yet acquainted with our men, nor yet with our stores, nor with the
methods of our travel. The train went off and left us in the middle of
a high plateau, with low ridges running across it, and mountains in the
distance. Men were squabbling earnestly for the most convenient loads to
carry, and as fast as they had gained undisputed possession, they marked
the loads with some private sign of their own. M'ganga, the headman,
tall, fierce, big-framed and bony, clad in fez, a long black overcoat,
blue puttees and boots, stood stiff as a ramrod, extended a rigid right
arm and rattled off orders in a high dynamic voice. In his left hand he
clasped a bulgy umbrella, the badge of his dignity and the symbol of his
authority. The four askaris, big men too, with masterful high-cheekboned
countenances, rushed here and there seeing that the orders were carried
out. Expostulations, laughter, the sound of quarrelling rose and fell.
Never could the combined volume of it all override the firecracker
stream of M'ganga's eloquence.

We had nothing to do with it all, but stood a little dazed, staring at
the novel scene. Our men were of many tribes, each with its own cast
of features, its own notions of what befitted man's performance of his
duties here below. They stuck together each in its clan. A fine free
individualism of personal adornment characterized them. Every man
dressed for his own satisfaction solely. They hung all sorts of things
in the distended lobes of their ears. One had succeeded in inserting a
fine big glittering tobacco tin. Others had invented elaborate topiary
designs in their hair, shaving their heads so as to leave strange tufts,
patches, crescents on the most unexpected places. Of the intricacy of
these designs they seemed absurdly proud. Various sorts of treasure
trove hung from them-a bunch of keys to which there were no locks,
discarded hunting knives, tips of antelope horns, discharged brass
cartridges, a hundred and one valueless trifles plucked proudly from
the rubbish heap. They were all clothed. We had supplied each with a
red blanket, a blue jersey, and a water bottle. The blankets they were
twisting most ingeniously into turbans. Beside these they sported a
great variety of garments. Shooting coats that had seen better days, a
dozen shabby overcoats-worn proudly through the hottest noons-raggety
breeches and trousers made by some London tailor, queer baggy homemades
of the same persuasion, or quite simply the square of cotton cloth
arranged somewhat like a short tight skirt, or nothing at all as the
man's taste ran. They were many of them amusing enough; but somehow they
did not look entirely farcical and ridiculous, like our negroes
putting on airs. All these things were worn with a simplicity of quiet
confidence in their entire fitness. And beneath the red blanket turbans
the half-wild savage faces peered out.

Now Mahomet approached. Mahomet was my personal boy. He was a Somali
from the Northwest coast, dusky brown, with the regular clear-cut
features of a Greek marble god. His dress was of neat khaki, and he
looked down on savages; but, also, as with all the dark-skinned races,
up to his white master. Mahomet was with me during all my African stay,
and tested out nobly. As yet, of course, I did not know him.

“Chakula taiari,” said he.

That is Swahili. It means literally “food is ready.” After one has
hunted in Africa for a few months, it means also “paradise is opened,”
 “grief is at an end,” “joy and thanksgiving are now in order,” and
similar affairs. Those two words are never forgotten, and the veriest
beginner in Swahili can recognize them without the slightest effort.

We followed Mahomet. Somehow, without orders, in all this confusion, the
personal staff had been quietly and efficiently busy. Drawn a little to
one side stood a table with four chairs. The table was covered with a
white cloth, and was set with a beautiful white enamel service. We
took our places. Behind each chair straight as a ramrod stood a neat
khaki-clad boy. They brought us food, and presented it properly on the
left side, waiting like well-trained butlers. We might have been in
a London restaurant. As three of us were Americans, we felt a trifle
dazed. The porters, having finished the distribution of their loads,
squatted on their heels and watched us respectfully.

And then, not two hundred yards away, four ostriches paced slowly across
the track, paying not the slightest attention to us-our first real
wild ostriches, scornful of oranges, careless of tourists, and rightful
guardians of their own snowy plumes. The passage of these four solemn
birds seemed somehow to lend this strange open-air meal an exotic
flavour. We were indeed in Africa; and the ostriches helped us to
realize it.

We finished breakfast and arose from our chairs. Instantly a half dozen
men sprang forward. Before our amazed eyes the table service, the chairs
and the table itself disappeared into neat packages. M'ganga arose to
his feet.

“Bandika!” he cried.

The askaris rushed here and there actively.

“Bandika! bandika! bandika!” they cried repeatedly.

The men sprang into activity. A struggle heaved the varicoloured
multitude-and, lo! each man stood upright, his load balanced on his
head. At the same moment the syces led up our horses, mounted and headed
across the little plain whence had come the four ostriches. Our African
journey had definitely begun.

Behind us, all abreast marched the four gunbearers; then the four syces;
then the safari single file, an askari at the head bearing proudly his
ancient musket and our banner, other askaris flanking, M'ganga bringing
up the rear with his mighty umbrella and an unsuspected rhinoceros-hide
whip. The tent boys and the cook scattered along the flank anywhere, as
befitted the free and independent who had nothing to do with the serious
business of marching. A measured sound of drumming followed the beating
of loads with a hundred sticks; a wild, weird chanting burst from the
ranks and died down again as one or another individual or group felt
moved to song. One lot had a formal chant and response. Their leader, in
a high falsetto, said something like,

“Kuna koma kuno,”

and all his tribesmen would follow with a single word in a deep gruff
tone,

“Za-la-nee!”

All of which undoubtedly helped immensely.

The country was a bully country, but somehow it did not look like
Africa. That is to say, it looked altogether too much like any amount
of country at home. There was nothing strange and exotic about it. We
crossed a little plain, and up over a small hill, down into a shallow
canyon that seemed to be wooded with live oaks, across a grass valley
or so, and around a grass hill. Then we went into camp at the edge of
another grass valley, by a stream across which rose some ordinary low
cliffs.

That is the disconcerting thing about a whole lot of this country-it
is so much like home. Of course, there are many wide districts exotic
enough in all conscience-the jungle beds of the rivers, the bamboo
forests, the great tangled forests themselves, the banana groves down
the aisles of which dance savages with shields-but so very much of it is
familiar. One needs only church spires and a red-roofed village or so
to imagine one's self in Surrey. There is any amount of country
like Arizona, and more like the uplands of Wyoming, and a lot of it
resembling the smaller landscapes of New England. The prospects of the
whole world are there, so that somewhere every wanderer can find the
countryside of his own home repeated. And, by the same token, that is
exactly what makes a good deal of it so startling. When a man sees a
file of spear-armed savages, or a pair of snorty old rhinos, step out
into what has seemed practically his own back yard home, he is even more
startled than if he had encountered them in quite strange surroundings.

We rode into the grass meadow and picked camp site. The men trailed in
and dumped down their loads in a row.

At a signal they set to work. A dozen to each tent got them up in a
jiffy. A long file brought firewood from the stream bed. Others carried
water, stones for the cook, a dozen other matters. The tent boys rescued
our boxes; they put together the cots and made the beds, even before the
tents were raised from the ground. Within an incredibly short space of
time the three green tents were up and arranged, each with its bed made,
its mosquito bar hung, its personal box open, its folding washstand
ready with towels and soap, the table and chairs unlimbered. At a
discreet distance flickered the cook campfire, and at a still discreeter
distance the little tents of the men gleamed pure white against the
green of the high grass.





V. MEMBA SASA

I wish I could plunge you at once into the excitements of big game in
Africa, but I cannot truthfully do so. To be sure, we went hunting that
afternoon, up over the low cliffs, and we saw several of a very lively
little animal known as the Chandler's reedbuck. This was not supposed to
be a game country, and that was all we did see. At these we shot several
times-disgracefully. In fact, for several days we could not shoot
at all, at any range, nor at anything. It was very sad, and very
aggravating. Afterward we found that this is an invariable experience to
the newcomer. The light is new, the air is different, the sizes of the
game are deceiving. Nobody can at first hit anything. At the end of five
days we suddenly began to shoot our normal gait. Why, I do not know.

But in this afternoon tramp around the low cliffs after the elusive
reedbuck, I for the first time became acquainted with a man who
developed into a real friend.

His name is Memba Sasa. Memba Sasa are two Swahili words meaning “now a
crocodile.” Subsequently, after I had learned to talk Swahili, I tried
to find out what he was formerly, before he was a crocodile, but did not
succeed.

He was of the tribe of the Monumwezi, of medium height, compactly
and sturdily built, carried himself very erect, and moved with a
concentrated and vigorous purposefulness. His countenance might be
described as pleasing but not handsome, of a dark chocolate brown, with
the broad nose of the negro, but with a firm mouth, high cheekbones, and
a frowning intentness of brow that was very fine. When you talked to
him he looked you straight in the eye. His own eyes were shaded by
long, soft, curling lashes behind which they looked steadily and
gravely-sometimes fiercely-on the world. He rarely smiled-never merely
in understanding or for politeness' sake-and never laughed unless there
was something really amusing. Then he chuckled from deep in his chest,
the most contagious laughter you can imagine. Often we, at the other end
of the camp, have laughed in sympathy, just at the sound of that deep
and hearty ho! ho! ho! of Memba Sasa. Even at something genuinely
amusing he never laughed much, nor without a very definite restraint. In
fact, about him was no slackness, no sprawling abandon of the native
in relaxation; but always a taut efficiency and a never-failing
self-respect.

Naturally, behind such a fixed moral fibre must always be some moral
idea. When a man lives up to a real, not a pompous, dignity some ideal
must inform it. Memba Sasa's ideal was that of the Hunter.

He was a gunbearer; and he considered that a good gunbearer stood quite
a few notches above any other human being, save always the white man,
of course. And even among the latter Memba Sasa made great differences.
These differences he kept to himself, and treated all with equal
respect. Nevertheless, they existed, and Memba Sasa very well knew that
fact. In the white world were two classes of masters: those who hunted
well, and those who were considered by them as their friends and equals.
Why they should be so considered Memba Sasa did not know, but he trusted
the Hunter's judgment. These were the bwanas, or masters. All the rest
were merely mazungos, or, “white men.” To their faces he called them
bwana, but in his heart he considered them not.

Observe, I say those who hunted well. Memba Sasa, in his profession as
gunbearer, had to accompany those who hunted badly. In them he took
no pride; from them he held aloof in spirit; but for them he did his
conscientious best, upheld by the dignity of his profession.

For to Mamba Sasa that profession was the proudest to which a black
man could aspire. He prided himself on mastering its every detail, in
accomplishing its every duty minutely and exactly. The major virtues of
a gunbearer are not to be despised by anybody; for they comprise great
physical courage, endurance, and loyalty: the accomplishments of a
gunbearer are worthy of a man's best faculties, for they include the
ability to see and track game, to take and prepare properly any sort of
a trophy, field taxidermy, butchering game meat, wood and plainscraft,
the knowledge of how properly to care for firearms in all sorts of
circumstances, and a half hundred other like minutiae. Memba Sasa knew
these things, and he performed them with the artist's love for details;
and his keen eyes were always spying for new ways.

At a certain time I shot an egret, and prepared to take the skin. Memba
Sasa asked if he might watch me do it. Two months later, having killed
a really gaudy peacocklike member of the guinea fowl tribe, I handed
it over to him with instructions to take off the breast feathers before
giving it to the cook. In a half hour he brought me the complete skin,
I examined it carefully, and found it to be well done in every respect.
Now in skinning a bird there are a number of delicate and unusual
operations, such as stripping the primary quills from the bone, cutting
the ear cover, and the like. I had explained none of them; and yet Memba
Sasa, unassisted, had grasped their method from a single demonstration
and had remembered them all two months later! C. had a trick in making
the second skin incision of a trophy head that had the effect of giving
a better purchase to the knife. Its exact description would be out of
place here, but it actually consisted merely in inserting the point of
the knife two inches away from the place it is ordinarily inserted. One
day we noticed that Memba Sasa was making his incisions in that manner.
I went to Africa fully determined to care for my own rifle. The modern
high-velocity gun needs rather especial treatment; mere wiping out will
not do. I found that Memba Sasa already knew all about boiling water,
and the necessity for having it really boiling, about subsequent metal
sweating, and all the rest. After watching him at work I concluded,
rightly, that he would do a lot better job than I.

To the new employer Memba Sasa maintained an attitude of strict
professional loyalty. His personal respect was upheld by the necessity
of every man to do his job in the world. Memba Sasa did his. He cleaned
the rifles; he saw that everything was in order for the day's march; he
was at my elbow all ways with more cartridges and the spare rifle; he
trailed and looked conscientiously. In his attitude was the stolidity
of the wooden Indian. No action of mine, no joke on the part of his
companions, no circumstance in the varying fortunes of the field gained
from him the faintest flicker of either approval, disapproval, or
interest. When we returned to camp he deposited my water bottle
and camera, seized the cleaning implements, and departed to his own
campfire. In the field he pointed out game that I did not see, and
waited imperturbably the result of my shot.

As I before stated, the result of that shot for the first five days was
very apt to be nil. This, at the time, puzzled and grieved me a lot.
Occasionally I looked at Memba Sasa to catch some sign of sympathy,
disgust, contempt, or-rarely-triumph at a lucky shot. Nothing. He gently
but firmly took away my rifle, reloaded it, and handed it back; then
waited respectfully for my next move. He knew no English, and I no
Swahili.

But as time went on this attitude changed. I was armed with the new
Springfield rifle, a weapon with 2,700 feet velocity, and with a
marvellously flat trajectory. This commanding advantage, combined with
a very long familiarity with firearms, enabled me to do some fairish
shooting, after the strangeness of these new conditions had been
mastered. Memba Sasa began to take a dawning interest in me as a
possible source of pride. We began to develop between us a means of
communication. I set myself deliberately to learn his language, and
after he had cautiously determined that I really meant it, he took the
greatest pains-always gravely-to teach me. A more human feeling sprang
up between us.

But we had still the final test to undergo-that of danger and the tight
corner.

In close quarters the gunbearer has the hardest job in the world. I have
the most profound respect for his absolute courage. Even to a man
armed and privileged to shoot and defend himself, a charging lion is an
awesome thing, requiring a certain amount of coolness and resolution to
face effectively. Think of the gunbearer at his elbow, depending not
on himself but on the courage and coolness of another. He cannot do one
solitary thing to defend himself. To bolt for the safety of a tree is
to beg the question completely, to brand himself as a shenzi forever;
to fire a gun in any circumstances is to beg the question also, for
the white man must be able to depend absolutely on his second gun in
an emergency. Those things are outside consideration, even, of any
respectable gunbearer. In addition, he must keep cool. He must see
clearly in the thickest excitement; must be ready unobtrusively to pass
up the second gun in the position most convenient for immediate use, to
seize the other and to perform the finicky task of reloading correctly
while some rampageous beast is raising particular thunder a few yards
away. All this in absolute dependence on the ability of his bwana to
deal with the situation. I can confess very truly that once or twice
that little unobtrusive touch of Memba Sasa crouched close to my elbow
steadied me with the thought of how little right I-with a rifle in
my hand-had to be scared. And the best compliment I ever received I
overheard by chance. I had wounded a lion when out by myself, and
had returned to camp for a heavier rifle and for Memba Sasa to do the
trailing. From my tent I overheard the following conversation between
Memba Sasa and the cook:

“The grass is high,” said the cook. “Are you not afraid to go after a
wounded lion with only one white man?”

“My one white man is enough,” replied Memba Sasa.

It is a quality of courage that I must confess would be quite beyond
me-to depend entirely on the other fellow, and not at all on myself.
This courage is always remarkable to me, even in the case of the
gunbearer who knows all about the man whose heels he follows. But
consider that of the gunbearer's first experience with a stranger. The
former has no idea of how the white man will act; whether he will get
nervous, get actually panicky, lose his shooting ability, and generally
mess things up. Nevertheless, he follows his master in, and he stands
by. If the hunter fails, the gunbearer will probably die. To me it is
rather fine: for he does it, not from the personal affection and loyalty
which will carry men far, but from a sheer sense of duty and pride of
caste. The quiet pride of the really good men, like Memba Sasa, is easy
to understand.

And the records are full of stories of the white man who has not made
good: of the coward who bolts, leaving his black man to take the brunt
of it, or who sticks but loses his head. Each new employer must be
very closely and interestedly scrutinized. In the light of subsequent
experience, I can no longer wonder at Memba Sasa's first detached and
impersonal attitude.

As time went on, however, and we grew to know each other better, this
attitude entirely changed. At first the change consisted merely in
dropping the disinterested pose as respects game. For it was a pose.
Memba Sasa was most keenly interested in game whenever it was an object
of pursuit. It did not matter how common the particular species might
be: if we wanted it, Memba Sasa would look upon it with eager ferocity;
and if we did not want it, he paid no attention to it at all. When we
started in the morning, or in the relaxation of our return at night, I
would mention casually a few of the things that might prove acceptable.

“To-morrow we want kongoni for boys' meat, or zebra; and some meat for
masters-Tommy, impala, oribi,” and Memba Sasa knew as well as I did what
we needed to fill out our trophy collection. When he caught sight of one
of these animals his whole countenance changed. The lines of his face
set, his lips drew back from his teeth, his eyes fairly darted fire in
the fixity of their gaze. He was like a fine pointer dog on birds, or
like the splendid savage he was at heart.

“M'palla!” he hissed; and then after a second, in a restrained fierce
voice, “Na-ona? Do you see?”

If I did not see he pointed cautiously. His own eyes never left the
beast. Rarely he stayed put while I made the stalk. More often he glided
like a snake at my heels. If the bullet hit, Memba Sasa always exhaled
a grunt of satisfaction-“hah!”-in which triumph and satisfaction mingled
with a faint derision at the unfortunate beast. In case of a trophy he
squatted anxiously at the animal's head while I took my measurements,
assisting very intelligently with the tape line. When I had finished, he
always looked up at me with wrinkled brow.

“Footie n'gapi?” he inquired. This means literally, “How many feet?”,
footie being his euphemistic invention of a word for the tape. I would
tell him how many “footie” and how many “inchie” the measurement proved
to be. From the depths of his wonderful memory he would dig up the
measurements of another beast of the same sort I had killed months back,
but which he had remembered accurately from a single hearing.

The shooting of a beast he always detailed to his few cronies in camp:
the other gunbearers, and one or two from his own tribe. He always used
the first person plural, “we” did so and so; and took an inordinate
pride in making out his bwana as being an altogether superior person to
any of the other gunbearer's bwanas. Over a miss he always looked
sad; but with a dignified sadness as though we had met with undeserved
misfortune sent by malignant gods. If there were any possible
alleviating explanation, Memba Sasa made the most of it, provided our
fiasco was witnessed. If we were alone in our disgrace, he buried the
incident fathoms deep. He took an inordinate pride in our using the
minimum number of cartridges, and would explain to me in a loud tone
of voice that we had cartridges enough in the belt. When we had not
cartridges enough, he would sneak around after dark to get some more. At
times he would even surreptitiously “lift” a few from B.'s gunbearer!

When in camp, with his “cazi” finished, Memba Sasa did fancy work! The
picture of this powerful half-savage, his fierce brows bent over a tiny
piece of linen, his strong fingers fussing with little stitches, will
always appeal to my sense of the incongruous. Through a piece of linen
he punched holes with a porcupine quill. Then he “buttonhole” stitched
the holes, and embroidered patterns between them with fine white thread.
The result was an openwork pattern heavily encrusted with beautiful fine
embroidery. It was most astounding stuff, such as you would expect from
a French convent, perhaps, but never from an African savage. He did a
circular piece and a long narrow piece. They took him three months to
finish, and then he sewed them together to form a skull cap. Billy,
entranced with the lacelike delicacy of the work, promptly captured it;
whereupon Memba Sasa philosophically started another.

By this time he had identified himself with my fortunes. We had become
a firm whose business it was to carry out the affairs of a single
personality-me. Memba Sasa, among other things, undertook the dignity.
When I walked through a crowd, Memba Sasa zealously kicked everybody out
of my royal path. When I started to issue a command, Memba Sasa finished
it and amplified it and put a snapper on it. When I came into camp,
Memba Sasa saw to it personally that my tent went up promptly and
properly, although that was really not part of his “cazi” at all. And
when somewhere beyond my ken some miserable boy had committed a crime, I
never remained long in ignorance of that fact.

Perhaps I happened to be sitting in my folding chair idly smoking a
pipe and reading a book. Across the open places of the camp would stride
Memba Sasa, very erect, very rigid, moving in short indignant jerks,
his eye flashing fire. Behind him would sneak a very hang-dog boy. Memba
Sasa marched straight up to me, faced right, and drew one side, his
silence sparkling with honest indignation.

“Just look at THAT!” his attitude seemed to say, “Could you believe such
human depravity possible? And against OUR authority?”

He always stood, quite rigid, waiting for me to speak.

“Well, Memba Sasa?” I would inquire, after I had enjoyed the show a
little.

In a few restrained words he put the case before me, always briefly,
always with a scornful dignity. This shenzi has done so-and-so.

We will suppose the case fairly serious. I listened to the man's story,
if necessary called a few witnesses, delivered judgment. All the while
Memba Sasa stood at rigid attention, fairly bristling virtue, like
the good dog standing by at the punishment of the bad dogs. And in his
attitude was a subtle triumph, as one would say: “You see! Fool with my
bwana, will you! Just let anybody try to get funny with US!” Judgment
pronounced-we have supposed the case serious, you remember-Memba Sasa
himself applied the lash. I think he really enjoyed that; but it was a
restrained joy. The whip descended deliberately, without excitement.

The man's devotion in unusual circumstances was beyond praise. Danger
or excitement incite a sort of loyalty in any good man; but humdrum,
disagreeable difficulty is a different matter.

One day we marched over a country of thorn-scrub desert. Since two days
we had been cut loose from water, and had been depending on a small
amount carried in zinc drums. Now our only reasons for faring were a
conical hill, over the horizon, and the knowledge of a river somewhere
beyond. How far beyond, or in what direction, we did not know. We had
thirty men with us, a more or less ragtag lot, picked up anyhow in the
bazaars. They were soft, ill-disciplined and uncertain. For five or six
hours they marched well enough. Then the sun began to get very hot, and
some of them began to straggle. They had, of course, no intention of
deserting, for their only hope of surviving lay in staying with us; but
their loads had become heavy, and they took too many rests. We put a
good man behind, but without much avail. In open country a safari can
be permitted to straggle over miles, for always it can keep in touch by
sight; but in this thorn-scrub desert, that looks all alike, a man fifty
yards out of sight is fifty yards lost. We would march fifteen or twenty
minutes, then sit down to wait until the rearmost men had straggled in,
perhaps a half hour later. And we did not dare move on until the tale of
our thirty was complete. At this rate progress was very slow, and as the
fierce equatorial sun increased in strength, became always slower still.
The situation became alarming. We were quite out of water, and we had no
idea where water was to be found. To complicate matters, the thornbrush
thickened to a jungle.

My single companion and I consulted. It was agreed that I was to push on
as rapidly as possible to locate the water, while he was to try to hold
the caravan together. Accordingly, Memba Sasa and I marched ahead. We
tried to leave a trail to follow; and we hoped fervently that our guess
as to the stream's course would prove to be a good one. At the end
of two hours and a half we found the water-a beautiful jungle-shaded
stream-and filled ourselves up therewith. Our duty was accomplished, for
we had left a trail to be followed. Nevertheless, I felt I should like
to take back our full canteens to relieve the worst cases. Memba Sasa
would not hear of it, and even while I was talking to him seized the
canteens and disappeared.

At the end of two hours more camp was made, after a fashion; but still
four men had failed to come in. We built a smudge in the hope of guiding
them; and gave them up. If they had followed our trail, they should have
been in long ago; if they had missed that trail, heaven knows where they
were, or where we should go to find them. Dusk was falling, and, to tell
the truth, we were both very much done up by a long day at 115 degrees
in the shade under an equatorial sun. The missing men would climb trees
away from the beasts, and we would organize a search next day. As we
debated these things, to us came Memba Sasa.

“I want to take 'Winchi,'” said he. “Winchi” is his name for my
Winchester 405.

“Why?” we asked.

“If I can take Winchi, I will find the men,” said he.

This was entirely voluntary on his part. He, as well as we, had had a
hard day, and he had made a double journey for part of it. We gave him
Winchi and he departed. Sometime after midnight he returned with the
missing men.

Perhaps a dozen times all told he volunteered for these special
services; once in particular, after a fourteen-hour day, he set off
at nine o'clock at night in a soaking rainstorm, wandered until two
o'clock, and returned unsuccessful, to rouse me and report gravely
that he could not find them. For these services he neither received nor
expected special reward. And catch him doing anything outside his strict
“cazi” except for US.

We were always very ceremonious and dignified in our relations on such
occasions. Memba Sasa would suddenly appear, deposit the rifle in its
place, and stand at attention.

“Well, Memba Sasa?” I would inquire.

“I have found the men; they are in camp.”

Then I would give him his reward. It was either the word “assanti,” or
the two words “assanti sana,” according to the difficulty and importance
of the task accomplished. They mean simply “thank you” and “thank you
very much.”

Once or twice, after a particularly long and difficult month or so, when
Memba Sasa has been almost literally my alter ego, I have called him up
for special praise. “I am very pleased with you, Memba Sasa,” said I.
“You have done your cazi well. You are a good man.”

He accepted this with dignity, without deprecation, and without the
idiocy of spoken gratitude. He agreed perfectly with everything I
said! “Yes” was his only comment. I liked it.

On our ultimate success in a difficult enterprise Memba Sasa set great
store; and his delight in ultimate success was apparently quite apart
from personal considerations. We had been hunting greater kudu for five
weeks before we finally landed one. The greater kudu is, with the bongo,
easily the prize beast in East Africa, and very few are shot. By a piece
of bad luck, for him, I had sent Memba Sasa out in a different direction
to look for signs the afternoon we finally got one. The kill was made
just at dusk. C. and I, with Mavrouki, built a fire and stayed, while
Kongoni went to camp after men. There he broke the news to Memba Sasa
that the great prize had been captured, and he absent. Memba Sasa was
hugely delighted, nor did he in any way show what must have been a great
disappointment to him. After repeating the news triumphantly to every
one in camp, he came out to where we were waiting, arrived quite out of
breath, and grabbed me by the hand in heartiest congratulation.

Memba Sasa went in not at all for personal ornamentation, any more than
he allowed his dignity to be broken by anything resembling emotionalism.
No tattoo marks, no ear ornaments, no rings nor bracelets. He never even
picked up an ostrich feather for his head. On the latter he sometimes
wore an old felt hat; sometimes, more picturesquely, an orange-coloured
fillet. Khaki shirt, khaki “shorts,” blue puttees, besides his knife
and my own accoutrements: that was all. In town he was all white clad, a
long fine linen robe reaching to his feet; and one of the lacelike skull
caps he was so very skilful at making.

That will do for a preliminary sketch. If you follow these pages, you
will hear more of him; he is worth it.





VI. THE FIRST GAME CAMP

In the review of “first” impressions with which we are concerned, we
must now skip a week or ten days to stop at what is known in our diaries
as the First Ford of the Guaso Nyero River.

These ten days were not uneventful. We had crossed the wide and
undulating plains, had paused at some tall beautiful falls plunging
several hundred feet into the mysteriousness of a dense forest on
which we looked down. There we had enjoyed some duck, goose and snipe
shooting; had made the acquaintance of a few of the Masai, and had
looked with awe on our first hippo tracks in the mud beside a tiny
ditchlike stream. Here and there were small game herds. In the light of
later experience we now realize that these were nothing at all; but at
the time the sight of full-grown wild animals out in plain sight was
quite wonderful. At the close of the day's march we always wandered out
with our rifles to see what we could find. Everything was new to us,
and we had our men to feed. Our shooting gradually improved until we had
overcome the difficulties peculiar to this new country and were doing as
well as we could do anywhere.

Now, at the end of a hard day through scrub, over rolling bold hills,
and down a scrub brush slope, we had reached the banks of the Guaso
Nyero.

At this point, above the junction of its principal tributary rivers,
it was a stream about sixty or seventy feet wide, flowing swift between
high banks. A few trees marked its course, but nothing like a jungle.
The ford was in swift water just above a deep still pool suspected
of crocodiles. We found the water about waist deep, stretched a rope
across, and forcibly persuaded our eager boys that one at a time was
about what the situation required. On the other side we made camp on
an open flat. Having marched so far continuously, we resolved to settle
down for a while. The men had been without sufficient meat; and we
desired very much to look over the country closely, and to collect a few
heads as trophies.

Perhaps a word might not come amiss as to the killing of game. The case
is here quite different from the condition of affairs at home. Here
animal life is most extraordinarily abundant; it furnishes the main food
supply to the traveller; and at present is probably increasing slightly,
certainly holding its own. Whatever toll the sportsman or traveller take
is as nothing compared to what he might take if he were an unscrupulous
game hog. If his cartridges and his shoulder held out, he could easily
kill a hundred animals a day instead of the few he requires. In that
sense, then, no man slaughters indiscriminately. During the course of
a year he probably shoots from two hundred to two hundred and fifty
beasts, provided he is travelling with an ordinary sized caravan. This,
the experts say, is about the annual toll of one lion. If the traveller
gets his lion, he plays even with the fauna of the country; if he
gets two or more lions, he has something to his credit. This probably
explains why the game is still so remarkably abundant near the road and
on the very outskirts of the town.

We were now much in need of a fair quantity of meat, both for immediate
consumption of our safari, and to make biltong or jerky. Later, in like
circumstances, we should have sallied forth in a businesslike fashion,
dropped the requisite number of zebra and hartebeeste as near camp as
possible, and called it a job. Now, however, being new to the game, we
much desired good trophies in variety. Therefore, we scoured the
country far and wide for desirable heads; and the meat waited upon the
acquisition of the trophy.

This, then, might be called our first Shooting Camp. Heretofore we had
travelled every day. Now the boys settled down to what the native porter
considers the height of bliss: a permanent camp with plenty to eat. Each
morning we were off before daylight, riding our horses, and followed by
the gunbearers, the syces, and fifteen or twenty porters. The country
rose from the river in a long gentle slope grown with low brush and
scattered candlestick euphorbias. This slope ended in a scattered range
of low rocky buttes. Through any one of the various openings between
them, we rode to find ourselves on the borders of an undulating grass
country of low rounded hills with wide valleys winding between them. In
these valleys and on these hills was the game.

Daylight of the day I would tell about found us just at the edge of the
little buttes. Down one of the slopes the growing half light revealed
two oryx feeding, magnificent big creatures, with straight rapier horns
three feet in length. These were most exciting and desirable, so off
my horse I got and began to sneak up on them through the low tufts
of grass. They fed quite calmly. I congratulated myself, and slipped
nearer. Without even looking in my direction, they trotted away.
Somewhat chagrined, I returned to my companions, and we rode on.

Then across a mile-wide valley we saw two dark objects in the tall
grass; and almost immediately identified these as rhinoceroses, the
first we had seen. They stood there side by side, gazing off into space,
doing nothing in a busy morning world. After staring at them through our
glasses for some time, we organized a raid. At the bottom of the valley
we left the horses and porters; lined up, each with his gunbearer at his
elbow; and advanced on the enemy. B. was to have the shot According to
all the books we should have been able, provided we were downwind
and made no noise, to have approached within fifty or sixty yards
undiscovered. However, at a little over a hundred yards they both turned
tail and departed at a swift trot, their heads held well up and their
tails sticking up straight and stiff in the most ridiculous fashion.
No good shooting at them in such circumstances, so we watched them go,
still keeping up their slashing trot, growing smaller and smaller in the
distance until finally they disappeared over the top of a swell.

We set ourselves methodically to following them. It took us over an hour
of steady plodding before we again came in sight of them. They were this
time nearer the top of a hill, and we saw instantly that the curve of
the slope was such that we could approach within fifty yards before
coming in sight at all. Therefore, once more we dismounted, lined up in
battle array, and advanced.

Sensations? Distinctly nervous, decidedly alert, and somewhat
self-congratulatory that I was not more scared. No man can predicate how
efficient he is going to be in the presence of really dangerous game.
Only the actual trial will show. This is not a question of courage at
all, but of purely involuntary reaction of the nerves. Very few men are
physical cowards. They will and do face anything. But a great many men
are rendered inefficient by the way their nervous systems act under
stress. It is not a matter for control by will power in the slightest
degree. So the big game hunter must determine by actual trial whether it
so happens that the great excitement of danger renders his hand shaky or
steady. The excitement in either case is the same. No man is ever “cool”
 in the sense that personal danger is of the same kind of indifference
to him as clambering aboard a street car. He must always be lifted
above himself, must enter an extra normal condition to meet extra normal
circumstances. He can always control his conduct; but he can by no
means always determine the way the inevitable excitement will affect his
coordinations. And unfortunately, in the final result it does not matter
how brave a man is, but how closely he can hold. If he finds that his
nervous excitement renders him unsteady, he has no business ever to
tackle dangerous game alone. If, on the other hand, he discovers that
IDENTICALLY THE SAME nervous excitement happens to steady his front
sight to rocklike rigidity-a rigidity he could not possibly attain in
normal conditions-then he will probably keep out of trouble.

To amplify this further by a specific instance: I hunted for a short
time in Africa with a man who was always eager for exciting encounters,
whose pluck was admirable in every way, but whose nervous reaction so
manifested itself that he was utterly unable to do even decent shooting
at any range. Furthermore, his very judgment and power of observation
were so obscured that he could not remember afterward with any accuracy
what had happened-which way the beast was pointing, how many there were
of them, in which direction they went, how many shots were fired, in
short all the smaller details of the affair. He thought he remembered.
After the show was over it was quite amusing to get his version of
the incident. It was almost always so wide of the fact as to be little
recognizable. And, mind you, he was perfectly sincere in his belief, and
absolutely courageous. Only he was quite unfitted by physical make-up
for a big game hunter; and I was relieved when, after a short time, his
route and mine separated.

Well, we clambered up that slope with a fine compound of tension,
expectation, and latent uneasiness as to just what was going to happen,
anyway. Finally, we raised the backs of the beasts, stooped, sneaked a
little nearer, and finally at a signal stood upright perhaps forty yards
from the brutes.

For the first time I experienced a sensation I was destined many times
to repeat-that of the sheer size of the animals. Menagerie rhinoceroses
had been of the smaller Indian variety; and in any case most menagerie
beasts are more or less stunted. These two, facing us, their little eyes
blinking, looked like full-grown ironclads on dry land. The moment we
stood erect B. fired at the larger of the two. Instantly they turned and
were off at a tearing run. I opened fire, and B. let loose his second
barrel. At about two hundred and fifty yards the big rhinoceros suddenly
fell on his side, while the other continued his flight. It was all
over-very exciting because we got excited, but not in the least
dangerous.

The boys were delighted, for here was meat in plenty for everybody. We
measured the beast, photographed him, marvelled at his immense size, and
turned him over to the gunbearers for treatment. In half an hour or so a
long string of porters headed across the hills in the direction of
camp, many miles distant, each carrying his load either of meat, or the
trophies. Rhinoceros hide, properly treated, becomes as transparent as
amber, and so from it can be made many very beautiful souvenirs, such as
bowls, trays, paper knives, table tops, whips, canes, and the like.
And, of course, the feet of one's first rhino are always saved for cigar
boxes or inkstands.

Already we had an admiring and impatient audience. From all directions
came the carrion birds. They circled far up in the heavens; they shot
downward like plummets from a great height with an inspiring roar of
wings; they stood thick in a solemn circle all around the scene of the
kill; they rose with a heavy flapping when we moved in their direction.
Skulking forms flashed in the grass, and occasionally the pointed ears
of a jackal would rise inquiringly.

It was by now nearly noon. The sun shone clear and hot; the heat shimmer
rose in clouds from the brown surface of the hills. In all directions
we could make out small gameherds resting motionless in the heat of the
day, the mirage throwing them into fantastic shapes. While the final
disposition was being made of the defunct rhinoceros I wandered over the
edge of the hill to see what I could see, and fairly blundered on a herd
of oryx at about a hundred and fifty yards range. They looked at me a
startled instant, then leaped away to the left at a tremendous speed.
By a lucky shot, I bowled one over. He was a beautiful beast, with his
black and white face and his straight rapierlike horns nearly three feet
long, and I was most pleased to get him. Memba Sasa came running at the
sound of the shot. We set about preparing the head.

Then through a gap in the hills far to the left we saw a little black
speck moving rapidly in our direction. At the end of a minute we could
make it out as the second rhinoceros. He had run heaven knows how
many miles away, and now he was returning; whether with some idea of
rejoining his companion or from sheer chance, I do not know. At any
rate, here he was, still ploughing along at his swinging trot. His
course led him along a side hill about four hundred yards from where
the oryx lay. When he was directly opposite I took the Springfield and
fired, not at him, but at a spot five or six feet in front of his
nose. The bullet threw up a column of dust. Rhino brought up short with
astonishment, wheeled to the left, and made off at a gallop. I dropped
another bullet in front of him. Again he stopped, changed direction, and
made off. For the third time I hit the ground in front of him. Then he
got angry, put his head down and charged the spot.

Five more shots I expended on the amusement of that rhinoceros; and
at the last had run furiously charging back and forth in a twenty-yard
space, very angry at the little puffing, screeching bullets, but quite
unable to catch one. Then he made up his mind and departed the way he
had come, finally disappearing as a little rapidly moving black speck
through the gap in the hills where we had first caught sight of him.

We finished caring for the oryx, and returned to camp. To our surprise
we found we were at least seven or eight miles out.

In this fashion days passed very quickly. The early dewy start in the
cool of the morning, the gradual grateful warming up of sunrise, and
immediately after, the rest during the midday heats under a shady tree,
the long trek back to camp at sunset, the hot bath after the toilsome
day-all these were very pleasant. Then the swift falling night, and the
gleam of many tiny fires springing up out of the darkness; with each its
sticks full of meat roasting, and its little circle of men, their skins
gleaming in the light. As we sat smoking, we would become aware that
M'ganga, the headman, was standing silent awaiting orders. Some one
would happen to see the white of his eyes, or perhaps he might smile so
that his teeth would become visible. Otherwise he might stand there an
hour, and no one the wiser, for he was respectfully silent, and exactly
the colour of the night.

We would indicate to him our plans for the morrow, and he would
disappear. Then at a distance of twenty or thirty feet from the front
of our tents a tiny tongue of flame would lick up. Dark figures could be
seen manipulating wood. A blazing fire sprang up, against which we could
see the motionless and picturesque figure of Saa-sita (Six o'Clock), the
askari of the first night watch, leaning on his musket. He was a most
picturesque figure, for his fancy ran to original headdresses, and at
the moment he affected a wonderful upstanding structure made of marabout
wings.

At this sign that the night had begun, we turned in. A few hyenas
moaned, a few jackals barked: otherwise the first part of the night was
silent, for the hunters were at their silent business, and the hunted
were “layin' low and sayin' nuffin'.”

Day after day we rode out, exploring the country in different
directions. The great uncertainty as to what of interest we would find
filled the hours with charm. Sometimes we clambered about the cliffs of
the buttes trying to find klipspringers; again we ran miles pursuing the
gigantic eland. I in turn got my first rhinoceros, with no more danger
than had attended the killing of B.'s. On this occasion, however, I had
my first experience of the lightning skill of the first-class gunbearer.
Having fired both barrels, and staggered the beast, I threw open the
breech and withdrew the empty cartridges, intending, of course, as my
next move to fish two more out of my belt. The empty shells were hardly
away from the chambers, however, when a long brown arm shot over
my right shoulder and popped two fresh cartridges in the breech. So
astonished was I at this unexpected apparition, that for a second or so
I actually forgot to close the gun.





VII. ON THE MARCH

After leaving the First Game Camp, we travelled many hours and miles
over rolling hills piling ever higher and higher until they broke
through a pass to illimitable plains. These plains were mantled with the
dense scrub, looking from a distance and from above like the nap of soft
green velvet. Here and there this scrub broke in round or oval patches
of grass plain. Great mountain ranges peered over the edge of a horizon.
Lesser mountain peaks of fantastic shapes-sheer Yosemite cliffs, single
buttes, castles-had ventured singly from behind that same horizon
barricade. The course of a river was marked by a meandering line of
green jungle.

It took us two days to get to that river. Our intermediate camp was
halfway down the pass. We ousted a hundred indignant straw-coloured
monkeys and twice as many baboons from the tiny flat above the water
hole. They bobbed away cursing over their shoulders at us. Next day we
debouched on the plains. They were rolling, densely grown, covered with
volcanic stones, swarming with game of various sorts. The men marched
well. They were happy, for they had had a week of meat; and each carried
a light lunch of sun-dried biltong or jerky. Some mistaken individuals
had attempted to bring along some “fresh” meat. We found it advisable to
pass to windward of these; but they themselves did not seem to mind.

It became very hot; for we were now descending to the lower elevations.
The marching through long grass and over volcanic stones was not easy.
Shortly we came out on stumbly hills, mostly rock, very dry, grown with
cactus and discouraged desiccated thorn scrub. Here the sun reflected
powerfully and the bearers began to flag.

Then suddenly, without warning, we pitched over a little rise to the
river.

No more marvellous contrast could have been devised. From the blasted
barren scrub country we plunged into the lush jungle. It was not a very
wide jungle, but it was sufficient. The trees were large and variegated,
reaching to a high and spacious upper story above the ground tangle.
From the massive limbs hung vines, festooned and looped like great
serpents. Through this upper corridor flitted birds of bright hue or
striking variegation. We did not know many of them by name, nor did
we desire to; but were content with the impression of vivid flashing
movement and colour. Various monkeys swung, leaped and galloped slowly
away before our advance; pausing to look back at us curiously, the ruffs
of fur standing out all around their little black faces. The lower half
of the forest jungle, however, had no spaciousness at all, but a certain
breathless intimacy. Great leaved plants as tall as little trees, and
trees as small as big plants, bound together by vines, made up the “deep
impenetrable jungle” of our childhood imagining. Here were rustlings,
sudden scurryings, half-caught glimpses, once or twice a crash as some
greater animal made off. Here and there through the thicket wandered
well beaten trails, wide, but low, so that to follow them one would have
to bend double. These were the paths of rhinoceroses. The air smelt warm
and moist and earthy, like the odour of a greenhouse.

We skirted this jungle until it gave way to let the plain down to the
river. Then, in an open grove of acacias, and fairly on the river's
bank, we pitched our tents.

These acacia trees were very noble big chaps, with many branches and a
thick shade. In their season they are wonderfully blossomed with white,
with yellow, sometimes even with vivid red flowers. Beneath them was
only a small matter of ferns to clear away.

Before us the sodded bank rounded off ten feet the river itself. At this
point far up in its youth it was a friendly river. Its noble width ran
over shallows of yellow sand or of small pebbles. Save for unexpected
deep holes one could wade across it anywhere. Yet it was very wide, with
still reaches of water, with islands of gigantic papyrus, with sand bars
dividing the current, and with always the vista for a greater or lesser
distance down through the jungle along its banks. From our canvas chairs
we could look through on one side to the arid country, and on the other
to this tropical wonderland.

Yes, at this point in its youth it was indeed a friendly river in every
sense of the word. There are three reasons, ordinarily, why one cannot
bathe in the African rivers. In the first place, they are nearly all
disagreeably muddy; in the second place, cold water in a tropical
climate causes horrible congestions; in the third place they swarm
with crocodiles and hippos. But this river was as yet unpolluted by the
alluvial soil of the lower countries; the sun on its shallows had warmed
its waters almost to blood heat; and the beasts found no congenial
haunts in these clear shoals. Almost before our tents were up the men
were splashing. And always my mental image of that river's beautiful
expanse must include round black heads floating like gourds where the
water ran smoothest.

Our tents stood all in a row facing the stream, the great trees at
their backs. Down in the grove the men had pitched their little white
shelters. Happily they settled down to ease. Settling down to ease, in
the case of the African porter, consists in discarding as many clothes
as possible. While on the march he wears everything he owns; whether
from pride or a desire to simplify transportation I am unable to say. He
is supplied by his employer with a blanket and jersey. As supplementals
he can generally produce a half dozen white man's ill-assorted garments:
an old shooting coat, a ragged pair of khaki breeches, a kitchen
tablecloth for a skirt, or something of the sort. If he can raise an
overcoat he is happy, especially if it happen to be a long, thick WINTER
overcoat. The possessor of such a garment will wear it conscientiously
throughout the longest journey and during the hottest noons. But when he
relaxes in camp, he puts away all these prideful possessions and turns
out in the savage simplicity of his red blanket. Draped negligently,
sometimes very negligently, in what may be termed semi-toga fashion,
he stalks about or squats before his little fire in all the glory of a
regained savagery. The contrast of the red with his red bronze or black
skin, the freedom and grace of his movements, the upright carriage of
his fine figure, and the flickering savagery playing in his eyes are
very effective.

Our men occupied their leisure variously and happily. A great deal of
time they spent before their tiny fires roasting meat and talking. This
talk was almost invariably of specific personal experiences. They bathed
frequently and with pleasure. They slept. Between times they fashioned
ingenious affairs of ornament or use: bows and arrows, throwing clubs,
snuff-boxes of the tips of antelope horns, bound prettily with bright
wire, wooden swords beautifully carved in exact imitation of the
white man's service weapon, and a hundred other such affairs. At this
particular time also they were much occupied in making sandals against
the thorns. These were flat soles of rawhide, the edges pounded to make
them curl up a trifle over the foot, fastened by thongs; very ingenious,
and very useful. To their task they brought song. The labour of Africa
is done to song; weird minor chanting starting high in the falsetto to
trickle unevenly down to the lower registers, or where the matter is one
of serious effort, an antiphony of solo and chorus. From all parts
of the camp come these softly modulated chantings, low and sweet,
occasionally breaking into full voice as the inner occasion swells,
then almost immediately falling again to the murmuring undertone of more
concentrated attention.

The red blanket was generally worn knotted from one shoulder or bound
around the waist Malay fashion. When it turned into a cowl, with a
miserable and humpbacked expression, it became the Official Badge of
Illness. No matter what was the matter that was the proper thing to
do-to throw the blanket over the head and to assume as miserable a
demeanour as possible. A sore toe demanded just as much concentrated
woe as a case of pneumonia. Sick call was cried after the day's work was
finished. Then M'ganga or one of the askaris lifted up his voice.

“N'gonjwa! n'gonjwa!” he shouted; and at the shout the red cowls
gathered in front of the tent. Three things were likely to be the
matter: too much meat, fever, or pus infection from slight wounds. To
these in the rainy season would be added the various sorts of colds.
That meant either Epsom salts, quinine, or a little excursion with
the lancet and permanganate. The African traveller gets to be heap big
medicine man within these narrow limits.

All the red cowls squatted miserably, oh, very miserably, in a row.
The headman stood over them rather fiercely. We surveyed the lot
contemplatively, hoping to heaven that nothing complicated was going to
turn up. One of the tent boys hovered in the background as dispensing
chemist.

“Well,” said F. at last, “what's the matter with you?”

The man indicated pointed to his head and the back of his neck and
groaned. If he had a slight headache he groaned just as much as
though his head were splitting. F. asked a few questions, and took
his temperature. The clinical thermometer is in itself considered big
medicine, and often does much good.

“Too much meat, my friend,” remarked F. in English, and to his boy in
Swahili, “bring the cup.”

He put in this cup a triple dose of Epsom salts. The African requires
three times a white man's dose. This, pathologically, was all that was
required: but psychologically the job was just begun. Your African can
do wonderful things with his imagination. If he thinks he is going to
die, die he will, and very promptly, even though he is ailing of the
most trivial complaint. If he thinks he is going to get well, he is
very apt to do so in face of extraordinary odds. Therefore the white
man desires not only to start his patient's internal economy with Epsom
salts, but also to stir his faith. To this end F. added to that triple
dose of medicine a spoonful of Chutney, one of Worcestershire sauce,
a few grains of quinine, Sparklets water and a crystal or so of
permanganate to turn the mixture a beautiful pink. This assortment the
patient drank with gratitude-and the tears running down his cheeks.

“He will carry a load to-morrow,” F. told the attentive M'ganga.

The next patient had fever. This one got twenty grains of quinine in
water.

“This man carries no load to-morrow,” was the direction, “but he must
not drop behind.”

Two or three surgical cases followed. Then a big Kavirondo rose to his
feet.

“Nini?” demanded F.

“Homa-fever,” whined the man.

F. clapped his hand on the back of the other's neck.

“I think,” he remarked contemplatively in English, “that you're a liar,
and want to get out of carrying your load.”

The clinical thermometer showed no evidence of temperature.

“I'm pretty near sure you're a liar,” observed F. in the pleasantest
conversational tone and still in English, “but you may be merely a poor
diagnostician. Perhaps your poor insides couldn't get away with that
rotten meat I saw you lugging around. We'll see.”

So he mixed a pint of medicine.

“There's Epsom salts for the real part of trouble,” observed F., still
talking to himself, “and here's a few things for the fake.”

He then proceeded to concoct a mixture whose recoil was the exact
measure of his imagination. The imagination was only limited by the
necessity of keeping the mixture harmless. Every hot, biting, nauseous
horror in camp went into that pint measure.

“There,” concluded F., “if you drink that and come back again to-morrow
for treatment, I'll believe you ARE sick.”

Without undue pride I would like to record that I was the first to think
of putting in a peculiarly nauseous gun oil, and thereby acquired a
reputation of making tremendous medicine.

So implicit is this faith in white man's medicine that at one of the
Government posts we were approached by one of the secondary chiefs of
the district. He was a very nifty savage, dressed for calling, with his
hair done in ropes like a French poodle's, his skin carefully oiled and
reddened, his armlets and necklets polished, and with the ceremonial
ball of black feathers on the end of his long spear. His gait was the
peculiar mincing teeter of savage conventional society. According to
custom, he approached unsmiling, spat carefully in his palm, and shook
hands. Then he squatted and waited.

“What is it?” we asked after it became evident he really wanted
something besides the pleasure of our company.

“N'dowa-medicine,” said he.

“Why do you not go the Government dispensary?” we demanded.

“The doctor there is an Indian; I want REAL medicine, white man's
medicine,” he explained.

Immensely flattered, of course, we wanted further to know what ailed
him.

“Nothing,” said he blandly, “nothing at all; but it seemed an excellent
chance to get good medicine.”

After the clinic was all attended to, we retired to our tents and the
screeching-hot bath so grateful in the tropics. When we emerged, in
our mosquito boots and pajamas, the daylight was gone. Scores of little
blazes licked and leaped in the velvet blackness round about, casting
the undergrowth and the lower branches of the trees into flat planes
like the cardboard of a stage setting. Cheerful, squatted figures sat in
silhouette or in the relief of chance high light. Long switches of
meat roasted before the fires. A hum of talk, bursts of laughter, the
crooning of minor chants mingled with the crackling of thorns. Before
our tents stood the table set for supper. Beyond it lay the pile of
firewood, later to be burned on the altar of our safety against beasts.
The moonlight was casting milky shadows over the river and under the
trees opposite. In those shadows gleamed many fireflies. Overhead were
millions of stars, and a little breeze that wandered through upper
branches.

But in Equatorial Africa the simple bands of velvet black, against the
spangled brightnesses that make up the visual night world, must give way
in interest to the other world of sound. The air hums with an undertone
of insects; the plain and hill and jungle are populous with voices
furtive or bold. In daytime one sees animals enough, in all conscience,
but only at night does he sense the almost oppressive feeling of the
teeming life about him. The darkness is peopled. Zebra bark, bucks blow
or snort or make the weird noises of their respective species; hyenas
howl; out of an immense simian silence a group of monkeys suddenly break
into chatterings; ostriches utter their deep hollow boom; small things
scurry and squeak; a certain weird bird of the curlew or plover sort
wails like a lonesome soul. Especially by the river, as here, are the
boomings of the weirdest of weird bullfrogs, and the splashings and
swishings of crocodile and hippopotamus. One is impressed with the
busyness of the world surrounding him; every bird or beast, the hunter
and the hunted, is the centre of many important affairs. The world
swarms.

And then, some miles away a lion roars, the earth and air vibrating to
the sheer power of the sound. The world falls to a blank dead silence.
For a full minute every living creature of the jungle or of the veldt
holds its breath. Their lord has spoken.

After dinner we sat in our canvas chairs, smoking. The guard fire in
front of our tent had been lit. On the other side of it stood one of our
askaris leaning on his musket. He and his three companions, turn about,
keep the flames bright against the fiercer creatures.

After a time we grew sleepy. I called Saa-sita and entrusted to him my
watch. On the crystal of this I had pasted a small piece of surgeon's
plaster. When the hour hand reached the surgeon's plaster, he must wake
us up. Saa-sita was a very conscientious and careful man. One day I took
some time hitching my pedometer properly to his belt: I could not wear
it effectively myself because I was on horseback. At the end of the
ten-hour march it registered a mile and a fraction. Saa-sita explained
that he wished to take especial care of it, so he had wrapped it in a
cloth and carried it all day in his hand!

We turned in. As I reached over to extinguish the lantern I issued my
last command for the day.

“Watcha kalele, Saa-sita,” I told the askari; at once he lifted up
his voice to repeat my words. “Watcha kalele!” Immediately from the
Responsible all over camp the word came back-from gunbearers, from
M'ganga, from tent boys-“kalele! kalele! kalele!”

Thus commanded, the boisterous fun, the croon of intimate talk, the
gently rising and falling tide of melody fell to complete silence. Only
remained the crackling of the fire and the innumerable voices of the
tropical night.





VIII. THE RIVER JUNGLE

We camped along this river for several weeks, poking indefinitely and
happily around the country in all directions to see what we could see.
Generally we went together, for neither B. nor myself had been tried out
as yet on dangerous game-those easy rhinos hardly counted-and I think we
both preferred to feel that we had backing until we knew what our nerves
were going to do with us. Nevertheless, occasionally, I would take Memba
Sasa and go out for a little purposeless stroll a few miles up or down
river. Sometimes we skirted the jungle, sometimes we held as near as
possible to the river's bank, sometimes we cut loose and rambled through
the dry, crackling scrub over the low volcanic hills of the arid country
outside.

Nothing can equal the intense interest of the most ordinary walk in
Africa. It is the only country I know of where a man is thoroughly and
continuously alive. Often when riding horseback with the dogs in my
California home I have watched them in envy of the keen, alert interest
they took in every stone, stick, and bush, in every sight, sound, and
smell. With equal frequency I have expressed that envy, but as something
unattainable to a human being's more phlegmatic make-up. In Africa one
actually rises to continuous alertness. There are dozy moments-except
you curl up in a safe place for the PURPOSE of dozing; again just like
the dog! Every bush, every hollow, every high tuft of grass, every deep
shadow must be scrutinized for danger. It will not do to pass carelessly
any possible lurking place. At the same time the sense of hearing
must be on guard; so that no break of twig or crash of bough can go
unremarked. Rhinoceroses conceal themselves most cannily, and have a
deceitful habit of leaping from a nap into their swiftest stride. Cobras
and puff adders are scarce, to be sure, but very deadly. Lions will
generally give way, if not shot at or too closely pressed; nevertheless
there is always the chance of cubs or too close a surprise. Buffalo lurk
daytimes in the deep thickets, but occasionally a rogue bull lives where
your trail will lead. These things do not happen often, but in the long
run they surely do happen, and once is quite enough provided the beast
gets in.

At first this continual alertness and tension is rather exhausting; but
after a very short time it becomes second nature. A sudden rustle the
other side a bush no longer brings you up all standing with your heart
in your throat; but you are aware of it, and you are facing the possible
danger almost before your slower brain has issued any orders to that
effect.

In rereading the above, I am afraid that I am conveying the idea that
one here walks under the shadow of continual uneasiness. This is not in
the least so. One enjoys the sun, and the birds and the little things.
He cultivates the great leisure of mind that shall fill the breadth of
his outlook abroad over a newly wonderful world. But underneath it all
is the alertness, the responsiveness to quick reflexes of judgment and
action, the intimate correlations to immediate environment which must
characterize the instincts of the higher animals. And it is good to live
these things.

Along the edge of that river jungle were many strange and beautiful
affairs. I could slip along among the high clumps of the thicker bushes
in such a manner as to be continually coming around unexpected bends. Of
such maneouvres are surprises made. The graceful red impalla were here
very abundant. I would come on them, their heads up, their great ears
flung forward, their noses twitching in inquiry of something they
suspected but could not fully sense. When slightly alarmed or suspicious
the does always stood compactly in a herd, while the bucks remained
discreetly in the background, their beautiful, branching, widespread
horns showing over the backs of their harems. The impalla is, in my
opinion, one of the most beautiful and graceful of the African bucks, a
perpetual delight to watch either standing or running. These beasts are
extraordinarily agile, and have a habit of breaking their ordinary fast
run by unexpectedly leaping high in the air. At a distance they give
somewhat the effect of dolphins at sea, only their leaps are higher and
more nearly perpendicular. Once or twice I have even seen one jump over
the back of another. On another occasion we saw a herd of twenty-five or
thirty cross a road of which, evidently, they were a little suspicious.
We could not find a single hoof mark in the dust! Generally these beasts
frequent thin brush country; but I have three or four times seen them
quite out in the open flat plains, feeding with the hartebeeste and
zebra. They are about the size of our ordinary deer, are delicately
fashioned, and can utter the most incongruously grotesque of noises by
way of calls or ordinary conversation.

The lack of curiosity, or the lack of gallantry, of the impalla bucks
was, in my experience, quite characteristic. They were almost always the
farthest in the background and the first away when danger threatened.
The ladies could look out for themselves. They had no horns to save;
and what do the fool women mean by showing so little sense, anyway! They
deserve what they get! It used to amuse me a lot to observe the utter
abandonment of all responsibility by these handsome gentlemen. When it
came time to depart, they departed. Hang the girls! They trailed along
after as fast as they could.

The waterbuck-a fine large beast about the size of our caribou, a
well-conditioned buck resembling in form and attitude the finest
of Landseer's stags-on the other hand, had a little more sense of
responsibility, when he had anything to do with the sex at all. He was
hardly what you might call a strictly domestic character. I have hunted
through a country for several days at a time without seeing a single
mature buck of this species, although there were plenty of does, in
herds of ten to fifty, with a few infants among them just sprouting
horns. Then finally, in some small grassy valley, I would come on the
Men's Club. There they were, ten, twenty, three dozen of them, having
the finest kind of an untramelled masculine time all by themselves.
Generally, however, I will say for them, they took care of their own
peoples. There would quite likely be one big old fellow, his harem of
varying numbers, and the younger subordinate bucks all together in a
happy family. When some one of the lot announced that something was
about, and they had all lined up to stare in the suspected direction,
the big buck was there in the foreground of inquiry. When finally they
made me out, it was generally the big buck who gave the signal. He
went first, to be sure, but his going first was evidently an act of
leadership, and not merely a disgraceful desire to get away before the
rest did.

But the waterbuck had to yield in turn to the plains
gazelles; especially to the Thompson's gazelle, familiarly-and
affectionately-known as the “Tommy.” He is a quaint little chap,
standing only a foot and a half tall at the shoulder, fawn colour on
top, white beneath, with a black, horizontal stripe on his side, like
a chipmunk, most lightly and gracefully built. When he was first made,
somebody told him that unless he did something characteristic,
like waggling his little tail, he was likely to be mistaken by the
undiscriminating for his bigger cousin, the Grant's gazelle. He has
waggled his tail ever since, and so is almost never mistaken for a
Grant's gazelle, even by the undiscriminating. Evidently his religion is
Mohammedan, for he always has a great many wives. He takes good care of
them, however. When danger appears, even when danger threatens, he
is the last to leave the field. Here and there he dashes frantically,
seeing that the women and children get off. And when the herd tops the
hill, Tommy's little horns bring up the rear of the procession. I like
Tommy. He is a cheerful, gallant, quaint little person, with the air of
being quite satisfied with his own solution of this complicated world.

Among the low brush at the edge of the river jungle dwelt also the
dik-dik, the tiniest miniature of a deer you could possibly imagine.
His legs are lead pencil size, he stands only about nine inches tall, he
weighs from five to ten pounds; and yet he is a perfect little antelope,
horns and all. I used to see him singly or in pairs standing quite
motionless and all but invisible in the shade of bushes; or leaping
suddenly to his feet and scurrying away like mad through the dry grass.
His personal opinion of me was generally expressed in a loud clear
whistle. But then nobody in this strange country talks the language you
would naturally expect him to talk! Zebra bark, hyenas laugh, impallas
grunt, ostriches boom like drums, leopards utter a plaintive sigh,
hornbills cry like a stage child, bushbucks sound like a cross between
a dog and a squawky toy-and so on. There is only one safe rule of the
novice in Africa: NEVER BELIEVE A WORD THE JUNGLE AND VELDT PEOPLE TELL
YOU.

These two-the impalla and the waterbuck-were the principal buck we would
see close to the river. Occasionally, however, we came on a few oryx,
down for a drink, beautiful big antelope, with white and black faces,
roached manes, and straight, nearly parallel, rapier horns upward of
three feet long. A herd of these creatures, the light gleaming on their
weapons, held all at the same slant, was like a regiment of bayonets in
the sun. And there were also the rhinoceroses to be carefully espied
and avoided. They lay obliterated beneath the shade of bushes, and arose
with a mighty blow-off of steam. Whereupon we withdrew silently, for we
wanted to shoot no more rhinos, unless we had to.

Beneath all these obvious and startling things, a thousand other
interesting matters were afoot. In the mass and texture of the jungle
grew many strange trees and shrubs. One most scrubby, fat and leafless
tree, looking as though it were just about to give up a discouraged
existence, surprised us by putting forth, apparently directly from
its bloated wood, the most wonderful red blossoms. Another otherwise
self-respecting tree hung itself all over with plump bologna sausages
about two feet long and five inches thick. A curious vine hung like a
rope, with Turk's-head knots about a foot apart on its whole length,
like the hand-over-hand ropes of gymnasiums. Other ropes were studded
all over with thick blunt bosses, resembling much the outbreak on one
sort of Arts-and-Crafts door: the sort intended to repel Mail-clad
Hosts.

The monkeys undoubtedly used such obvious highways through the trees.
These little people were very common. As we walked along, they withdrew
before us. We could make out their figures galloping hastily across the
open places, mounting bushes and stubs to take a satisfying backward
look, clambering to treetops, and launching themselves across the
abysses between limbs. If we went slowly, they retired in silence. If
we hurried at all, they protested in direct ratio to the speed of
our advance. And when later the whole safari, loads on heads, marched
inconsiderately through their jungle! We happened to be hunting on a
parallel course a half mile away, and we could trace accurately the
progress of our men by the outraged shrieks, chatterings, appeals to
high heaven for at least elemental justice to the monkey people.

Often, too, we would come on concourses of the big baboons. They
certainly carried on weighty affairs of their own according to a fixed
polity. I never got well enough acquainted with them to master the
details of their government, but it was indubitably built on patriarchal
lines. When we succeeded in approaching without being discovered, we
would frequently find the old men baboons squatting on their heels in a
perfect circle, evidently discussing matters of weight and portent. Seen
from a distance, their group so much resembled the council circles
of native warriors that sometimes, in a native country, we made that
mistake. Outside this solemn council, the women, young men and children
went about their daily business, whatever that was. Up convenient low
trees or bushes roosted sentinels.

We never remained long undiscovered. One of the sentinels barked
sharply. At once the whole lot loped away, speedily but with a curious
effect of deliberation. The men folks held their tails in a proud high
sideways arch; the curious youngsters clambered up bushes to take a
hasty look; the babies clung desperately with all four feet to the thick
fur on their mothers' backs; the mothers galloped along imperturbably
unheeding of infantile troubles aloft. The side hill was bewildering
with the big bobbing black forms.

In this lower country the weather was hot, and the sun very strong. The
heated air was full of the sounds of insects; some of them comfortable,
like the buzzing of bees, some of them strange and unusual to us. One
cicada had a sustained note, in quality about like that of our own
August-day's friend, but in quantity and duration as the roar of a train
to the gentle hum of a good motor car. Like all cicada noises it did not
usurp the sound world, but constituted itself an underlying basis, so
to speak. And when it stopped the silence seemed to rush in as into a
vacuum!

We had likewise the aeroplane beetle. He was so big that he would have
made good wing-shooting. His manner of flight was the straight-ahead,
heap-of-buzz, plenty-busy, don't-stop-a-minute-or-you'll-come-down
method of the aeroplane; and he made the same sort of a hum. His
first-cousin, mechanically, was what we called the wind-up-the-watch
insect. This specimen possessed a watch-an old-fashioned Waterbury,
evidently-that he was continually winding. It must have been hard work
for the poor chap, for it sounded like a very big watch.

All these things were amusing. So were the birds. The African bird is
quite inclined to be didactic. He believes you need advice, and he means
to give it. To this end he repeats the same thing over and over until
he thinks you surely cannot misunderstand. One chap especially whom we
called the lawyer bird, and who lived in the treetops, had four phrases
to impart. He said them very deliberately, with due pause between each;
then he repeated them rapidly; finally he said them all over again with
an exasperated bearing-down emphasis. The joke of it is I cannot now
remember just how they went! Another feathered pedagogue was continually
warning us to go slow; very good advice near an African jungle.
“Poley-poley! Poley-poley!” he warned again and again; which is good
Swahili for “slowly! slowly!” We always minded him. There were many
others, equally impressed with their own wisdom, but the one I remember
with most amusement was a dilatory person who apparently never got
around to his job until near sunset. Evidently he had contracted to
deliver just so many warnings per diem; and invariably he got so busy
chasing insects, enjoying the sun, gossiping with a friend and generally
footling about that the late afternoon caught him unawares with never a
chirp accomplished. So he sat in a bush and said his say over and over
just as fast as he could without pause for breath or recreation. It was
really quite a feat. Just at dusk, after two hours of gabbling, he would
reach the end of his contracted number. With final relieved chirp he
ended.

It has been said that African birds are “songless.” This is a careless
statement that can easily be read to mean that African birds are silent.
The writer evidently must have had in mind as a criterion some of our
own or the English great feathered soloists. Certainly the African
jungle seems to produce no individual performers as sustained as our own
bob-o-link, our hermit thrush, or even our common robin. But the African
birds are vocal enough, for all that. Some of them have a richness and
depth of timbre perhaps unequalled elsewhere. Of such is the chime-bird
with his deep double note; or the bell-bird tolling like a cathedral in
the blackness of the forest; or the bottle bird that apparently pours
gurgling liquid gold from a silver jug. As the jungle is exceedingly
populous of these feathered specialists, it follows that the early
morning chorus is wonderful. Africa may not possess the soloists, but
its full orchestrial effects are superb.

Naturally under the equator one expects and demands the “gorgeous
tropical plumage” of the books. He is not disappointed. The sun-birds
of fifty odd species, the brilliant blue starlings, the various parrots,
the variegated hornbills, the widower-birds, and dozens of others whose
names would mean nothing flash here and there in the shadow and in the
open. With them are hundreds of quiet little bodies just as interesting
to one who likes birds. From the trees and bushes hang pear-shaped
nests plaited beautifully of long grasses, hard and smooth as hand-made
baskets, the work of the various sorts of weaver-birds. In the tops of
the trees roosted tall marabout storks like dissipated, hairless old
club-men in well-groomed, correct evening dress.

And around camp gathered the swift brown kites. They were robbers and
villains, but we could not hate them. All day long they sailed back
and forth spying sharply. When they thought they saw their chance, they
stooped with incredible swiftness to seize a piece of meat. Sometimes
they would snatch their prize almost from the hands of its rightful
owner, and would swoop triumphantly upward again pursued by polyglot
maledictions and a throwing stick. They were very skilful on their
wings. I have many times seen them, while flying, tear up and devour
large chunks of meat. It seems to my inexperience as an aviator rather a
nice feat to keep your balance while tearing with your beak at meat held
in your talons. Regardless of other landmarks, we always knew when we
were nearing camp, after one of our strolls, by the gracefully wheeling
figures of our kites.





IX. THE FIRST LION

One day we all set out to make our discoveries: F., B., and I with our
gunbearers, Memba Sasa, Mavrouki, and Simba, and ten porters to bring
in the trophies, which we wanted very much, and the meat, which the men
wanted still more. We rode our horses, and the syces followed. This made
quite a field force-nineteen men all told. Nineteen white men would be
exceedingly unlikely to get within a liberal half mile of anything; but
the native has sneaky ways.

At first we followed between the river and the low hills, but when the
latter drew back to leave open a broad flat, we followed their line. At
this point they rose to a clifflike headland a hundred and fifty feet
high, flat on top. We decided to investigate that mesa, both for the
possibilities of game, and for the chance of a view abroad.

The footing was exceedingly noisy and treacherous, for it was composed
of flat, tinkling little stones. Dried-up, skimpy bushes just higher
than our heads made a thin but regular cover. There seemed not to be a
spear of anything edible, yet we caught the flash of red as a herd of
impalla melted away at our rather noisy approach. Near the foot of the
hill we dismounted, with orders to all the men but the gunbearers to
sit down and make themselves comfortable. Should we need them we could
easily either signal or send word. Then we set ourselves toilsomely to
clamber up that volcanic hill.

It was not particularly easy going, especially as we were trying to walk
quietly. You see, we were about to surmount a skyline. Surmounting a
skyline is always most exciting anywhere, for what lies beyond is at
once revealed as a whole and contains the very essence of the unknown;
but most decidedly is this true in Africa. That mesa looked flat, and
almost anything might be grazing or browsing there. So we proceeded
gingerly, with due regard to the rolling of the loose rocks or the
tinkling of the little pebbles.

But long before we had reached that alluring skyline we were halted by
the gentle snapping of Mavrouki's fingers. That, strangely enough, is a
sound to which wild animals seem to pay no attention, and is therefore
most useful as a signal. We looked back. The three gunbearers were
staring to the right of our course. About a hundred yards away, on
the steep side hill, and partly concealed by the brush, stood two
rhinoceroses.

They were side by side, apparently dozing. We squatted on our heels for
a consultation.

The obvious thing, as the wind was from them, was to sneak quietly by,
saying nuffin' to nobody. But although we wanted no more rhino, we very
much wanted rhino pictures. A discussion developed no really good reason
why we should not kodak these especial rhinos-except that there were two
of them. So we began to worm our way quietly through the bushes in their
direction.

F. and B. deployed on the flanks, their double-barrelled rifles ready
for instant action. I occupied the middle with that dangerous weapon the
3A kodak. Memba Sasa followed at my elbow, holding my big gun.

Now the trouble with modern photography is that it is altogether too
lavish in its depiction of distances. If you do not believe it, take a
picture of a horse at as short a range as twenty-five yards. That equine
will, in the development, have receded to a respectable middle distance.
Therefore it had been agreed that the advance of the battle line was
to cease only when those rhinoceroses loomed up reasonably large in
the finder. I kept looking into the finder, you may be sure. Nearer and
nearer we crept. The great beasts were evidently basking in the sun.
Their little pig eyes alone gave any sign of life. Otherwise they
exhibited the complete immobility of something done in granite. Probably
no other beast impresses one with quite this quality. I suppose it is
because even the little motions peculiar to other animals are with
the rhinoceros entirely lacking. He is not in the least of a nervous
disposition, so he does not stamp his feet nor change his position. It
is useless for him to wag his tail; for, in the first place, the tail is
absurdly inadequate; and, in the second place, flies are not among his
troubles. Flies wouldn't bother you either, if you had a skin two inches
thick. So there they stood, inert and solid as two huge brown rocks,
save for the deep, wicked twinkle of their little eyes.

Yes, we were close enough to “see the whites of their eyes,” if they
had had any: and also to be within the range of their limited vision. Of
course we were now stalking, and taking advantage of all the cover.

Those rhinoceroses looked to me like two Dreadnaughts. The African
two-horned rhinoceros is a bigger animal anyway than our circus friend,
who generally comes from India. One of these brutes I measured went five
feet nine inches at the shoulder, and was thirteen feet six inches from
bow to stern. Compare these dimensions with your own height and with the
length of your motor car. It is one thing to take on such beasts in the
hurry of surprise, the excitement of a charge, or to stalk up to within
a respectable range of them with a gun at ready. But this deliberate
sneaking up with the hope of being able to sneak away again was a little
too slow and cold-blooded. It made me nervous. I liked it, but I knew
at the time I was going to like it a whole lot better when it was
triumphantly over.

We were now within twenty yards (they were standing starboard side on),
and I prepared to get my picture. To do so I would either have to step
quietly out into sight, trusting to the shadow and the slowness of my
movements to escape observation, or hold the camera above the bush,
directing it by guess work. It was a little difficult to decide. I knew
what I OUGHT to do--

Without the slightest premonitory warning those two brutes snorted and
whirled in their tracks to stand facing in our direction. After the dead
stillness they made a tremendous row, what with the jerky suddenness of
their movements, their loud snorts, and the avalanche of echoing stones
and boulders they started down the hill.

This was the magnificent opportunity. At this point I should boldly
have stepped out from behind my bush, levelled my trusty 3A, and coolly
snapped the beasts, “charging at fifteen yards.” Then, if B.'s and F.'s
shots went absolutely true, or if the brutes didn't happen to smash the
camera as well as me, I, or my executors as the case might be, would
have had a fine picture.

But I didn't. I dropped that expensive 3A Special on some hard rocks,
and grabbed my rifle from Memba Sasa. If you want really to know why, go
confront your motor car at fifteen or twenty paces, multiply him by two,
and endow him with an eagerly malicious disposition.

They advanced several yards, halted, faced us for perhaps five or
six seconds, uttered snort, whirled with the agility of polo ponies,
departed at a swinging trot and with surprising agility along the steep
side hill.

I recovered the camera, undamaged, and we continued our climb.

The top of the mesa was disappointing as far as game was concerned. It
was covered all over with red stones, round, and as large as a man's
head. Thornbushes found some sort of sustenance in the interstices.

But we had gained to a magnificent view. Below us lay the narrow flat,
then the winding jungle of our river, then long rolling desert country,
gray with thorn scrub, sweeping upward to the base of castellated buttes
and one tremendous riven cliff mountain, dropping over the horizon to a
very distant blue range. Behind us eight or ten miles away was the low
ridge through which our journey had come. The mesa on which we stood
broke back at right angles to admit another stream flowing into our own.
Beyond this stream were rolling hills, and scrub country, the hint of
blue peaks and illimitable distances falling away to the unknown Tara
Desert and the sea.

There seemed to be nothing much to be gained here, so we made up our
minds to cut across the mesa, and from the other edge of it to overlook
the valley of the tributary river. This we would descend until we came
to our horses.

Accordingly we stumbled across a mile or so of those round and rolling
stones. Then we found ourselves overlooking a wide flat or pocket where
the stream valley widened. It extended even as far as the upward fling
of the barrier ranges. Thick scrub covered it, but erratically, so that
here and there were little openings or thin places. We sat down, manned
our trusty prism glasses, and gave ourselves to the pleasing occupation
of looking the country over inch by inch.

This is great fun. It is a game a good deal like puzzle pictures.
Re-examination generally develops new and unexpected beasts. We repeated
to each other aloud the results of our scrutiny, always without removing
the glasses from our eyes.

“Oryx, one,” said F.; “oryx, two.”

“Giraffe,” reported B., “and a herd of impalla.”

I saw another giraffe, and another oryx, then two rhinoceroses.

The three bearers squatted on their heels behind us, their fierce eyes
staring straight ahead, seeing with the naked eye what we were finding
with six-power glasses.

We turned to descend the hill. In the very centre of the deep shade of
a clump of trees, I saw the gleam of a waterbuck's horns. While I was
telling of this, the beast stepped from his concealment, trotted a short
distance upstream and turned to climb a little ridge parallel to that
by which we were descending. About halfway up he stopped, staring in
our direction, his head erect, the slight ruff under his neck standing
forward. He was a good four hundred yards away. B., who wanted him,
decided the shot too chancy. He and F. slipped backward until they had
gained the cover of the little ridge, then hastened down the bed of
the ravine. Their purpose was to follow the course already taken by the
waterbuck until they should have sneaked within better range. In the
meantime I and the gunbearers sat down in full view of the buck. This
was to keep his attention distracted.

We sat there a long time. The buck never moved but continued to stare
at what evidently puzzled him. Time passes very slowly in such
circumstances, and it seemed incredible that the beast should continue
much longer to hold his fixed attitude. Nevertheless B. and F. were
working hard. We caught glimpses of them occasionally slipping from bush
to bush. Finally B. knelt and levelled his rifle. At once I turned my
glasses on the buck. Before the sound of the rifle had reached me, I saw
him start convulsively, then make off at the tearing run that indicates
a heart hit. A moment later the crack of the rifle and the dull plunk of
the hitting bullet struck my ear.

We tracked him fifty yards to where he lay dead. He was a fine trophy,
and we at once set the boys to preparing it and taking the meat. In the
meantime we sauntered down to look at the stream. It was a small
rapid affair, but in heavy papyrus, with sparse trees, and occasional
thickets, and dry hard banks. The papyrus should make a good lurking
place for almost anything; but the few points of access to the water
failed to show many interesting tracks. Nevertheless we decided to
explore a short distance.

For an hour we walked among high thornbushes, over baking hot earth. We
saw two or three dik-dik and one of the giraffes. At that time it had
become very hot, and the sun was bearing down on us as with the weight
of a heavy hand. The air had the scorching, blasting quality of an
opened furnace door. Our mouths were getting dry and sticky in that
peculiar stage of thirst on which no luke-warm canteen water in
necessarily limited quantity has any effect. So we turned back, picked
up the men with the waterbuck, and plodded on down the little stream,
or, rather, on the red-hot dry valley bottom outside the stream's
course, to where the syces were waiting with our horses. We mounted with
great thankfulness. It was now eleven o'clock, and we considered our day
as finished.

The best way for a distance seemed to follow the course of the tributary
stream to its point of junction with our river. We rode along, rather
relaxed in the suffocating heat. F. was nearest the stream. At one point
it freed itself of trees and brush and ran clear, save for low papyrus,
ten feet down below a steep eroded bank. F. looked over and uttered a
startled exclamation. I spurred my horse forward to see.

Below us, about fifteen yards away, was the carcass of a waterbuck half
hidden in the foot-high grass. A lion and two lionesses stood upon it,
staring up at us with great yellow eyes. That picture is a very vivid
one in my memory, for those were the first wild lions I had ever seen.
My most lively impression was of their unexpected size. They seemed to
bulk fully a third larger than my expectation.

The magnificent beasts stood only long enough to see clearly what had
disturbed them, then turned, and in two bounds had gained the shelter of
the thicket.

Now the habit in Africa is to let your gunbearers carry all your guns.
You yourself stride along hand free. It is an English idea, and
is pretty generally adopted out there by every one, of whatever
nationality. They will explain it to you by saying that in such a
climate a man should do only necessary physical work, and that a
good gunbearer will get a weapon into your hand so quickly and in so
convenient a position that you will lose no time. I acknowledge the
gunbearers are sometimes very skilful at this, but I do deny that there
is no loss of time. The instant of distracted attention while receiving
a weapon, the necessity of recollecting the nervous correlations
after the transfer, very often mark just the difference between a sure
instinctive snapshot and a lost opportunity. It reasons that the man
with the rifle in his hand reacts instinctively, in one motion, to get
his weapon into play. If the gunbearer has the gun, HE must first react
to pass it up, the master must receive it properly, and THEN, and not
until then, may go on from where the other man began. As for physical
labour in the tropics: if a grown man cannot without discomfort or evil
effects carry an eight-pound rifle, he is too feeble to go out at all.
In a long Western experience I have learned never to be separated from
my weapon; and I believe the continuance of this habit in Africa saved
me a good number of chances.

At any rate, we all flung ourselves off our horses. I, having my
rifle in my hand, managed to throw a shot after the biggest lion as he
vanished. It was a snap at nothing, and missed. Then in an opening on
the edge a hundred yards away appeared one of the lionesses. She was
trotting slowly, and on her I had time to draw a hasty aim. At the shot
she bounded high in the air, fell, rolled over, and was up and into the
thicket before I had much more than time to pump up another shell from
the magazine. Memba Sasa in his eagerness got in the way-the first and
last time he ever made a mistake in the field.

By this time the others had got hold of their weapons. We fronted the
blank face of the thicket.

The wounded animal would stand a little waiting. We made a wide circle
to the other side of the stream. There we quickly picked up the trail of
the two uninjured beasts. They had headed directly over the hill, where
we speedily lost all trace of them on the flint-like surface of the
ground. We saw a big pack of baboons in the only likely direction for
a lion to go. Being thus thrown back on a choice of a hundred other
unlikely directions, we gave up that slim chance and returned to the
thicket.

This proved to be a very dense piece of cover. Above the height of the
waist the interlocking branches would absolutely prevent any progress,
but by stooping low we could see dimly among the simpler main stems to
a distance of perhaps fifteen or twenty feet. This combination at once
afforded the wounded lioness plenty of cover in which to hide, plenty of
room in which to charge home, and placed us under the disadvantage of a
crouched or crawling attitude with limited vision. We talked the matter
over very thoroughly. There was only one way to get that lioness out;
and that was to go after her. The job of going after her needed some
planning. The lion is cunning and exceeding fierce. A flank attack, once
we were in the thicket, was as much to be expected as a frontal charge.

We advanced to the thicket's edge with many precautions. To our relief
we found she had left us a definite trail. B. and I kneeling took up
positions on either side, our rifles ready. F. and Simba crawled by
inches eight or ten feet inside the thicket. Then, having executed this
manoeuvre safely, B. moved up to protect our rear while I, with Memba
Sasa, slid down to join F.

From this point we moved forward alternately. I would crouch, all
alert, my rifle ready, while F. slipped by me and a few feet ahead. Then
he get organized for battle while I passed him. Memba Sasa and Simba,
game as badgers, their fine eyes gleaming with excitement, their
faces shining, crept along at the rear. B. knelt outside the thicket,
straining his eyes for the slightest movement either side of the line of
our advance. Often these wily animals will sneak back in a half circle
to attack their pursuers from behind. Two or three of the bolder porters
crouched alongside B., peering eagerly. The rest had quite properly
retired to the safe distance where the horses stood.

We progressed very, very slowly. Every splash of light or mottled
shadow, every clump of bush stems, every fallen log had to be examined,
and then examined again. And how we did strain our eyes in a vain
attempt to penetrate the half lights, the duskinesses of the closed-in
thicket not over fifteen feet away! And then the movement forward of two
feet would bring into our field of vision an entirely new set of tiny
vistas and possible lurking places.

Speaking for myself, I was keyed up to a tremendous tension. I stared
until my eyes ached; every muscle and nerve was taut. Everything
depended on seeing the beast promptly, and firing quickly. With the
manifest advantage of being able to see us, she would spring to battle
fully prepared. A yellow flash and a quick shot seemed about to size up
that situation. Every few moments, I remember, I surreptitiously
held out my hand to see if the constantly growing excitement and the
long-continued strain had affected its steadiness.

The combination of heat and nervous strain was very exhausting. The
sweat poured from me; and as F. passed me I saw the great drops standing
out on his face. My tongue got dry, my breath came laboriously. Finally
I began to wonder whether physically I should be able to hold out. We
had been crawling, it seemed, for hours. I dared not look back, but we
must have come a good quarter mile. Finally F. stopped.

“I'm all in for water,” he gasped in a whisper.

Somehow that confession made me feel a lot better. I had thought that
I was the only one. Cautiously we settled back on our heels. Memba Sasa
and Simba wiped the sweat from their faces. It seemed that they too had
found the work severe. That cheered me up still more.

Simba grinned at us, and, worming his way backward with the sinuousity
of a snake, he disappeared in the direction from which we had come.
F. cursed after him in a whisper both for departing and for taking the
risk. But in a moment he had returned carrying two canteens of blessed
water. We took a drink most gratefully.

I glanced at my watch. It was just under two hours since I had fired
my shot. I looked back. My supposed quarter mile had shrunk to not over
fifty feet!

After resting a few moments longer, we again took up our systematic
advance. We made perhaps another fifty feet. We were ascending a very
gentle slope. F. was for the moment ahead. Right before us the lion
growled; a deep rumbling like the end of a great thunder roll, fathoms
and fathoms deep, with the inner subterranean vibrations of a heavy
train of cars passing a man inside a sealed building. At the same moment
over F.'s shoulder I saw a huge yellow head rise up, the round eyes
flashing anger, the small black-tipped ears laid back, the great fangs
snarling. The beast was not over twelve feet distant. F. immediately
fired. His shot, hitting an intervening twig, went wild. With the utmost
coolness he immediately pulled the other trigger of his double barrel.
The cartridge snapped.

“If you will kindly stoop down-” said I, in what I now remember to be
rather an exaggeratedly polite tone. As F.'s head disappeared, I placed
the little gold bead of my 405 Winchester where I thought it would do
the most good, and pulled trigger. She rolled over dead.

The whole affair had begun and finished with unbelievable swiftness.
From the growl to the fatal shot I don't suppose four seconds elapsed,
for our various actions had followed one another with the speed of the
instinctive. The lioness had growled at our approach, had raised her
head to charge, and had received her deathblow before she had released
her muscles in the spring. There had been no time to get frightened.

We sat back for a second. A brown hand reached over my shoulder.

“Mizouri-mizouri sana!” cried Memba Sasa joyously. I shook the hand.

“Good business!” said F. “Congratulate you on your first lion.”

We then remembered B., and shouted to him that all was over. He and the
other men wriggled in to where we were lying. He made this distance in
about fifteen seconds. It had taken us nearly an hour.

We had the lioness dragged out into the open. She was not an especially
large beast, as compared to most of the others I killed later, but at
that time she looked to me about as big as they made them. As a matter
of fact she was quite big enough, for she stood three feet two inches
at the shoulder-measure that against the wall-and was seven feet and
six inches in length. My first bullet had hit her leg, and the last had
reached her heart.

Every one shook me by the hand. The gunbearers squatted about the
carcass, skilfully removing the skin to an undertone of curious crooning
that every few moments broke out into one or two bars of a chant. As the
body was uncovered, the men crouched about to cut off little pieces of
fat. These they rubbed on their foreheads and over their chests, to make
them brave, they said, and cunning, like the lion.

We remounted and took up our interrupted journey to camp. It was
a little after two, and the heat was at its worst. We rode rather
sleepily, for the reaction from the high tension of excitement had set
in. Behind us marched the three gunbearers, all abreast, very military
and proud. Then came the porters in single file, the one carrying the
folded lion skin leading the way; those bearing the waterbuck trophy
and meat bringing up the rear. They kept up an undertone of humming in
a minor key; occasionally breaking into a short musical phrase in full
voice.

We rode an hour. The camp looked very cool and inviting under its wide
high trees, with the river slipping by around the islands of papyrus. A
number of black heads bobbed about in the shallows. The small fires sent
up little wisps of smoke. Around them our boys sprawled, playing simple
games, mending, talking, roasting meat. Their tiny white tents gleamed
pleasantly among the cool shadows.

I had thought of riding nonchalantly up to our own tents, of dismounting
with a careless word of greeting--

“Oh, yes,” I would say, “we did have a good enough day. Pretty hot. Roy
got a fine waterbuck. Yes, I got a lion.” (Tableau on part of Billy.)

But Memba Sasa used up all the nonchalance there was. As we entered camp
he remarked casually to the nearest man.

“Bwana na piga simba-the master has killed a lion.”

The man leaped to his feet.

“Simba! simba! simba!” he yelled. “Na piga simba!”

Every one in camp also leaped to his feet, taking up the cry. From the
water it was echoed as the bathers scrambled ashore. The camp broke into
pandemonium. We were surrounded by a dense struggling mass of men. They
reached up scores of black hands to grasp my own; they seized from me
everything portable and bore it in triumph before me-my water bottle,
my rifle, my camera, my whip, my field glasses, even my hat, everything
that was detachable. Those on the outside danced and lifted up their
voices in song, improvised for the most part, and in honor of the day's
work. In a vast swirling, laughing, shouting, triumphant mob we swept
through the camp to where Billy-by now not very much surprised-was
waiting to get the official news. By the measure of this extravagant joy
could we gauge what the killing of a lion means to these people who have
always lived under the dread of his rule.





X. LIONS

A very large lion I killed stood three feet and nine inches at the
withers, and of course carried his head higher than that. The top of
the table at which I sit is only two feet three inches from the floor.
Coming through the door at my back that lion's head would stand over
a foot higher than halfway up. Look at your own writing desk; your own
door. Furthermore, he was nine feet and eleven inches in a straight line
from nose to end of tail, or over eleven feet along the contour of the
back. If he were to rise on his hind feet to strike a man down, he would
stand somewhere between seven and eight feet tall, depending on how
nearly he straightened up. He weighed just under six hundred pounds, or
as much as four well-grown specimens of our own “mountain lion.” I tell
you this that you may realize, as I did not, the size to which a wild
lion grows. Either menagerie specimens are stunted in growth, or their
position and surroundings tend to belittle them, for certainly until a
man sees old Leo in the wilderness he has not understood what a fine old
chap he is.

This tremendous weight is sheer strength. A lion's carcass when the skin
is removed is a really beautiful sight. The great muscles lie in ropes
and bands; the forearm thicker than a man's leg, the lithe barrel banded
with brawn; the flanks overlaid by the long thick muscles. And this
power is instinct with the nervous force of a highly organized being.
The lion is quick and intelligent and purposeful; so that he brings to
his intenser activities the concentration of vivid passion, whether of
anger, of hunger or of desire.

So far the opinions of varied experience will jog along together. At
this point they diverge.

Just as the lion is one of the most interesting and fascinating of
beasts, so concerning him one may hear the most diverse opinions. This
man will tell you that any lion is always dangerous. Another will hold
the king of beasts in the most utter contempt as a coward and a skulker.

In the first place, generalization about any species of animal is an
exceedingly dangerous thing. I believe that, in the case of the higher
animals at least, the differences in individual temperament are quite
likely to be more numerous than the specific likenesses. Just as
individual men are bright or dull, nervous or phlegmatic, cowardly or
brave, so individual animals vary in like respect. Our own hunters will
recall from their personal experiences how the big bear may have sat
down and bawled harmlessly for mercy, while the little unconsidered
fellow did his best until finished off: how one buck dropped instantly
to a wound that another would carry five miles: how of two equally
matched warriors of the herd one will give way in the fight, while
still uninjured, before his perhaps badly wounded antagonist. The casual
observer might-and often does-say that all bears are cowardly, all bucks
are easily killed, or the reverse, according as the god of chance has
treated him to one spectacle or the other. As well try to generalize
on the human race-as is a certain ecclesiastical habit-that all men are
vile or noble, dishonest or upright, wise or foolish.

The higher we go in the scale the truer this individualism holds. We
are forced to reason not from the bulk of observations, but from their
averages. If we find ten bucks who will go a mile wounded to two who
succumb in their tracks from similar hurts, we are justified in saying
tentatively that the species is tenacious of life. But as experience
broadens we may modify that statement; for strange indeed are runs of
luck.

For this reason a good deal of the wise conclusion we read in
sportsmen's narratives is worth very little. Few men have experience
enough with lions to rise to averages through the possibilities of luck.
ESPECIALLY is this true of lions. No beast that roams seems to go more
by luck than felis leo. Good hunters may search for years without seeing
hide nor hair of one of the beasts. Selous, one of the greatest, went to
East Africa for the express purpose of getting some of the fine beasts
there, hunted six weeks and saw none. Holmes of the Escarpment has lived
in the country six years, has hunted a great deal and has yet to kill
his first. One of the railroad officials has for years gone up and down
the Uganda Railway on his handcar, his rifle ready in hopes of the lion
that never appeared; though many are there seen by those with better
fortune. Bronson hunted desperately for this great prize, but failed.
Rainsford shot no lions his first trip, and ran into them only three
years later. Read Abel Chapman's description of his continued bad luck
at even seeing the beasts. MacMillan, after five years' unbroken good
fortune, has in the last two years failed to kill a lion, although he
has made many trips for the purpose. F. told me he followed every rumour
of a lion for two years before he got one. Again, one may hear the most
marvellous of yarns the other way about-of the German who shot one from
the train on the way up from Mombasa; of the young English tenderfoot
who, the first day out, came on three asleep, across a river, and potted
the lot; and so on. The point is, that in the case of lions the element
of sheer chance seems to begin earlier and last longer than is the case
with any other beast. And, you must remember, experience must thrust
through the luck element to the solid ground of averages before it can
have much value in the way of generalization. Before he has reached that
solid ground, a man's opinions depend entirely on what kind of lions
he chances to meet, in what circumstances, and on how matters happen to
shape in the crowded moments.

But though lack of sufficiently extended experience has much to do with
these decided differences of opinion, I believe that misapprehension
has also its part. The sportsman sees lions on the plains. Likewise the
lions see him, and promptly depart to thick cover or rocky butte. He
comes on them in the scrub; they bound hastily out of sight. He may even
meet them face to face, but instead of attacking him, they turn to right
and left and make off in the long grass. When he follows them, they
sneak cunningly away. If, added to this, he has the good luck to kill
one or two stone dead at a single shot each, he begins to think there is
not much in lion shooting after all, and goes home proclaiming the king
of beasts a skulking coward.

After all, on what grounds does he base this conclusion? In what way
have circumstances been a test of courage at all? The lion did not
stand and fight, to be sure; but why should he? What was there in it
for lions? Behind any action must a motive exist. Where is the possible
motive for any lion to attack on sight? He does not-except in unusual
cases-eat men; nothing has occurred to make him angry. The obvious thing
is to avoid trouble, unless there is a good reason to seek it. In that
one evidences the lion's good sense, but not his lack of courage. That
quality has not been called upon at all.

But if the sportsman had done one of two or three things, I am quite
sure he would have had a taste of our friend's mettle. If he had shot at
and even grazed the beast; if he had happened upon him where an exit was
not obvious; or IF HE HAD EVEN FOLLOWED THE LION UNTIL THE LATTER HAD
BECOME TIRED OF THE ANNOYANCE, he would very soon have discovered that
Leo is not all good nature, and that once on his courage will take him
in against any odds. Furthermore, he may be astonished and dismayed
to discover that of a group of several lions, two or three besides the
wounded animal are quite likely to take up the quarrel and charge too.
In other words, in my opinion, the lion avoids trouble when he can, not
from cowardice but from essential indolence or good nature; but does not
need to be cornered* to fight to the death when in his mind his dignity
is sufficiently assailed.

     * This is an important distinction in estimating the inherent
     courage of man or beast. Even a mouse will fight when
     cornered.

For of all dangerous beasts the lion, when once aroused, will alone face
odds to the end. The rhinoceros, the elephant, and even the buffalo can
often be turned aside by a shot. A lion almost always charges home.*
Slower and slower he comes, as the bullets strike; but he comes, until
at last he may be just hitching himself along, his face to the enemy,
his fierce spirit undaunted. When finally he rolls over, he bites the
earth in great mouthfuls; and so passes fighting to the last. The death
of a lion is a fine sight.

     * I seem to be generalizing here, but all these conclusions
     must be understood to take into consideration the liability
     of individual variation.

No, I must confess, to me the lion is an object of great respect; and
so, I gather, he is to all who have had really extensive experience.
Those like Leslie Tarleton, Lord Delamere, W. N. MacMillan, Baron von
Bronsart, the Hills, Sir Alfred Pease, who are great lion men, all
concede to the lion a courage and tenacity unequalled by any other
living beast. My own experience is of course nothing as compared to that
of these men. Yet I saw in my nine months afield seventy-one lions. None
of these offered to attack when unwounded or not annoyed. On the other
hand, only one turned tail once the battle was on, and she proved to be
a three quarters grown lioness, sick and out of condition.

It is of course indubitable that where lions have been much shot they
become warier in the matter of keeping out of trouble. They retire to
cover earlier in the morning, and they keep more than a perfunctory
outlook for the casual human being. When hunters first began to go into
the Sotik the lions there would stand imperturbable, staring at the
intruder with curiosity or indifference. Now they have learned that
such performances are not healthy-and they have probably satisfied
their curiosity. But neither in the Sotik, nor even in the plains around
Nairobi itself, does the lion refuse the challenge once it has been put
up to him squarely. Nor does he need to be cornered. He charges in quite
blithely from the open plain, once convinced that you are really an
annoyance.

As to habits! The only sure thing about a lion is his originality. He
has more exceptions to his rules than the German language. Men who have
been mighty lion hunters for many years, and who have brought to their
hunting close observation, can only tell you what a lion MAY do in
certain circumstances. Following very broad principles, they may even
predict what he is APT to do, but never what he certainly WILL do. That
is one thing that makes lion hunting interesting.

In general, then, the lion frequents that part of the country where feed
the great game herds. From them he takes his toll by night, retiring
during the day into the shallow ravines, the brush patches, or the rocky
little buttes. I have, however, seen lions miles from game, slumbering
peacefully atop an ant hill. Indeed, occasionally, a pack of lions likes
to live high in the tall-grass ridges where every hunt will mean for
them a four- or five-mile jaunt out and back again. He needs water,
after feeding, and so rarely gets farther than eight or ten miles from
that necessity.

He hunts at night. This is as nearly invariable a rule as can be
formulated in regard to lions. Yet once, and perhaps twice, I saw
lionesses stalking through tall grass as early as three o'clock in
the afternoon. This eagerness may, or may not, have had to do with the
possession of hungry cubs. The lion's customary harmlessness in the
daytime is best evidenced, however, by the comparative indifference of
the game to his presence then. From a hill we watched three of these
beasts wandering leisurely across the plains below. A herd of kongonis
feeding directly in their path, merely moved aside right and left, quite
deliberately, to leave a passage fifty yards or so wide, but otherwise
paid not the slightest attention. I have several times seen this
incident, or a modification of it. And yet, conversely, on a number of
occasions we have received our first intimation of the presence of lions
by the wild stampeding of the game away from a certain spot.

However, the most of his hunting is done by dark. Between the hours of
sundown and nine o'clock he and his comrades may be heard uttering the
deep coughing grunt typical of this time of night. These curious, short,
far-sounding calls may be mere evidences of intention, or they may be
a sort of signal by means of which the various hunters keep in touch.
After a little they cease. Then one is quite likely to hear the
petulant, alarmed barking of zebra, or to feel the vibrations of many
hoofs. There is a sense of hurried, flurried uneasiness abroad on the
veldt.

The lion generally springs on his prey from behind or a little off the
quarter. By the impetus his own weight he hurls his victim forward,
doubling its head under, and very neatly breaking its neck. I have never
seen this done, but the process has been well observed and attested; and
certainly, of the many hundreds of lion kills I have taken the pains
to inspect, the majority had had their necks broken. Sometimes, but
apparently more rarely, the lion kills its prey by a bite in the back of
the neck. I have seen zebra killed in this fashion, but never any of the
buck. It may be possible that the lack of horns makes it more difficult
to break a zebra's neck because of the corresponding lack of leverage
when its head hits the ground sidewise; the instances I have noted may
have been those in which the lion's spring landed too far back to throw
the victim properly; or perhaps they were merely examples of the great
variability in the habits of felis leo.

Once the kill is made, the lion disembowels the beast very neatly
indeed, and drags the entrails a few feet out of the way. He then eats
what he wants, and, curiously enough, seems often to be very fond of the
skin. In fact, lacking other evidence, it is occasionally possible
to identify a kill as being that of a lion by noticing whether any
considerable portion of the hide has been devoured. After eating he
drinks. Then he is likely to do one of two things: either he returns
to cover near the carcass and lies down, or he wanders slowly and with
satisfaction toward his happy home. In the latter case the hyenas,
jackals, and carrion birds seize their chance. The astute hunter can
often diagnose the case by the general actions and demeanour of these
camp followers. A half dozen sour and disgusted looking hyenas seated
on their haunches at scattered intervals, and treefuls of mournfully
humpbacked vultures sunk in sadness, indicate that the lion has decided
to save the rest of his zebra until to-morrow and is not far away.
On the other hand, a grand flapping, snarling Kilkenny-fair of an
aggregation swirling about one spot in the grass means that the
principal actor has gone home.

It is ordinarily useless to expect to see the lion actually on his prey.
The feeding is done before dawn, after which the lion enjoys stretching
out in the open until the sun is well up, and then retiring to the
nearest available cover. Still, at the risk of seeming to be perpetually
qualifying, I must instance finding three lions actually on the stale
carcass of a waterbuck at eleven o'clock in the morning of a piping
hot day! In an undisturbed country, or one not much hunted, the early
morning hours up to say nine o'clock are quite likely to show you lions
sauntering leisurely across the open plains toward their lairs. They
go a little, stop a little, yawn, sit down a while, and gradually work
their way home. At those times you come upon them unexpectedly face to
face, or, seeing them from afar, ride them down in a glorious gallop.
Where the country has been much hunted, however, the lion learns to
abandon his kill and seek shelter before daylight, and is almost never
seen abroad. Then one must depend on happening upon him in his cover.

In the actual hunting of his game the lion is apparently very clever.
He understands the value of cooperation. Two or more will manoeuvre
very skilfully to give a third the chance to make an effective spring;
whereupon the three will share the kill. In a rough country, or
one otherwise favourable to the method, a pack of lions will often
deliberately drive game into narrow ravines or cul de sacs where the
killers are waiting.

At such times the man favoured by the chance of an encampment within
five miles or so can hear a lion's roar.

Otherwise I doubt if he is apt often to get the full-voiced, genuine
article. The peculiar questioning cough of early evening is resonant and
deep in vibration, but it is a call rather than a roar. No lion is fool
enough to make a noise when he is stalking. Then afterward, when full
fed, individuals may open up a few times, but only a few times, in
sheer satisfaction, apparently, at being well fed. The menagerie row at
feeding time, formidable as it sounds within the echoing walls, is only
a mild and gentle hint. But when seven or eight lions roar merely to
see how much noise they can make, as when driving game, or trying to
stampede your oxen on a wagon trip, the effect is something tremendous.
The very substance of the ground vibrates; the air shakes. I can only
compare it to the effect of a very large deep organ in a very small
church. There is something genuinely awe-inspiring about it; and when
the repeated volleys rumble into silence, one can imagine the veldt
crouched in a rigid terror that shall endure.





XI. LIONS AGAIN

As to the dangers of lion hunting it is also difficult to write. There
is no question that a cool man, using good judgment as to just what
he can or cannot do, should be able to cope with lion situations. The
modern rifle is capable of stopping the beast, provided the bullet goes
to the right spot. The right spot is large enough to be easy to hit, if
the shooter keeps cool. Our definition of a cool man must comprise the
elements of steady nerves under super-excitement, the ability to think
quickly and clearly, and the mildly strategic quality of being able to
make the best use of awkward circumstances. Such a man, barring sheer
accidents, should be able to hunt lions with absolute certainty for
just as long as he does not get careless, slipshod or over-confident.
Accidents-real accidents, not merely unexpected happenings-are hardly to
be counted. They can occur in your own house.

But to the man not temperamentally qualified, lion shooting is dangerous
enough. The lion, when he takes the offensive, intends to get his
antagonist. Having made up his mind to that, he charges home, generally
at great speed. The realization that it is the man's life or the beast's
is disconcerting. Also the charging lion is a spectacle much more
awe-inspiring in reality than the most vivid imagination can predict.
He looks very large, very determined, and has uttered certain rumbling,
blood-curdling threats as to what he is going to do about it. It
suddenly seems most undesirable to allow that lion to come any closer,
not even an inch! A hasty, nervous shot misses--

An unwounded lion charging from a distance is said to start rather
slowly, and to increase his pace only as he closes. Personally I have
never been charged by an unwounded beast, but I can testify that the
wounded animal comes very fast. Cuninghame puts the rate at about seven
seconds to the hundred yards. Certainly I should say that a man charged
from fifty yards or so would have little chance for a second shot,
provided he missed the first. A hit seemed, in my experience, to the
animal, by sheer force of impact, long enough to permit me to throw in
another cartridge. A lioness thus took four frontal bullets starting at
about sixty yards. An initial miss would probably have permitted her to
close.

Here, as can be seen, is a great source of danger to a flurried or
nervous beginner. He does not want that lion to get an inch nearer; he
fires at too long a range, misses, and is killed or mauled before he can
reload. This happened precisely so to two young friends of MacMillan.
They were armed with double-rifles, let them off hastily as the beast
started at them from two hundred yards, and never got another chance. If
they had possessed the experience to have waited until the lion had
come within fifty yards they would have had the almost certainty of
four barrels at close range. Though I have seen a lion missed clean well
inside those limits.

From such performances are so-called lion accidents built. During my
stay in Africa I heard of six white men being killed by lions, and a
number of others mauled. As far as possible I tried to determine the
facts of each case. In every instance the trouble followed either
foolishness or loss of nerve. I believe I should be quite safe in
saying that from identically the same circumstances any of the good lion
men-Tarleton, Lord Delamere, the Hills, and others-would have extricated
themselves unharmed.

This does not mean that accidents may not happen. Rifles jam, but
generally because of flurried manipulation! One may unexpectedly meet
the lion at too close quarters; a foot may slip, or a cartridge prove
defective. So may one fall downstairs or bump one's head in the dark.
Sufficient forethought and alertness and readiness would go far in
either case to prevent bad results.

The wounded beast, of course, offers the most interesting problem to the
lion hunter. If it sees the hunter, it is likely to charge him at once.
If hit while making off, however, it is more apt to take cover. Then one
must summon all his good sense and nerve to get it out. No rules can be
given for this; nor am I trying to write a text book for lion hunters.
Any good lion hunter knows a lot more about it than I do. But always
a man must keep in mind three things: that a lion can hide in cover so
short that it seems to the novice as though a jack-rabbit would find
scant concealment there; that he charges like lightning, and that he
can spring about fifteen feet. This spring, coming unexpectedly from an
unseen beast, is about impossible to avoid. Sheer luck may land a fatal
shot; but even then the lion will probably do his damage before he dies.
The rush from a short distance a good quick shot ought to be able to
cope with.

Therefore the wise hunter assures himself of at least twenty
feet-preferably more-of neutral zone all about him. No matter how long
it takes, he determines absolutely that the lion is not within that
distance. The rest is alertness and quickness.

As I have said, the amount of cover necessary to conceal a lion is
astonishingly small. He can flatten himself out surprisingly; and
his tawny colour blends so well with the brown grasses that he is
practically invisible. A practised man does not, of course, look for
lions at all. He is after unusual small patches, especially the black
ear tips or the black of the mane. Once guessed at, it is interesting to
see how quickly the hitherto unsuspected animal sketches itself out in
the cover.

I should, before passing on to another aspect of the matter, mention the
dangerous poisons carried by the lion's claws. Often men have died
from the most trivial surface wounds. The grooves of the claws carry
putrefying meat from the kills. Every sensible man in a lion country
carries a small syringe, and either permanganate or carbolic. And those
mild little remedies he uses full strength!

The great and overwhelming advantage is of course with the hunter. He
possesses as deadly a weapon: and that weapon will kill at a distance.
This is proper, I think. There are more lions than hunters; and, from
our point of view, the man is more important than the beast. The game is
not too hazardous. By that I mean that, barring sheer accident, a man is
sure to come out all right provided he does accurately the right thing.
In other words, it is a dangerous game of skill, but it does not possess
the blind danger of a forest in a hurricane, say. Furthermore, it is a
game that no man need play unless he wants to. In the lion country he
may go about his business-daytime business-as though he were home at the
farm.

Such being the case, may I be pardoned for intruding one of my own small
ethical ideas at this point, with the full realization that it depends
upon an entirely personal point of view. As far as my own case goes,
I consider it poor sportsmanship ever to refuse a lion-chance merely
because the advantages are not all in my favour. After all, lion hunting
is on a different plane from ordinary shooting: it is a challenge to
war, a deliberate seeking for mortal combat. Is it not just a little
shameful to pot old felis leo at long range, in the open, near his kill,
and wherever we have him at an advantage-nine times, and then to back
out because that advantage is for once not so marked? I have so often
heard the phrase, “I let him (or them) alone. It was not good enough,”
 meaning that the game looked a little risky.

Do not misunderstand. I am not advising that you bull ahead into the
long grass, or that alone you open fire on a half dozen lions in easy
range. Kind providence endowed you with strategy, and certainly you
should never go in where there is no show for you to use your weapon
effectively. But occasionally the odds will be against you and you will
be called upon to take more or less of a chance. I do not think it is
quite square to quit playing merely because for once your opponent has
been dealt the better cards. If here are too many of them see if you
cannot manoeuvre them; if the grass is long, try every means in your
power to get them out. Stay with them. If finally you fail, you will
at least have the satisfaction of knowing that circumstances alone have
defeated you. If you do not like that sort of a game, stay out of it
entirely.





XII. MORE LIONS

Nor do the last remarks of the preceding chapter mean that you shall not
have your trophy in peace. Perhaps excitement and a slight doubt as
to whether or not you are going to survive do not appeal to you; but
nevertheless you would like a lion skin or so. By all means shoot one
lion, or two, or three in the safest fashion you can. But after that you
ought to play the game.

The surest way to get a lion is to kill a zebra, cut holes in him, fill
the holes with strychnine, and come back next morning. This method is
absolutely safe.

The next safest way is to follow the quarry with a pack of especially
trained dogs. The lion is so busy and nervous over those dogs that you
can walk up and shoot him in the ear. This method has the excitement of
riding and following, the joy of a grand and noisy row, and the fun of
seeing a good dog-fight. The same effect can be got chasing wart-hogs,
hyenas, jackals-or jack-rabbits. The objection is that it wastes a
noble beast in an inferior game. My personal opinion is that no man is
justified in following with dogs any large animal that can be captured
with reasonable certainty without them. The sport of coursing is another
matter; but that is quite the same in essence whatever the size of the
quarry. If you want to kill a lion or so quite safely, and at the same
time enjoy a glorious and exciting gallop with lots of accompanying row,
by all means follow the sport with hounds. But having killed one or two
by that method, quit. Do not go on and clean up the country. You can do
it. Poison and hounds are the SURE methods of finding any lion there may
be about; and AFTER THE FIRST FEW, one is about as justifiable as the
other. If you want the undoubtedly great joy of cross country pursuit,
send your hounds in after less noble game.

The third safe method of killing a lion is nocturnal. You lay out a kill
beneath a tree, and climb the tree. Or better, you hitch out a pig or
donkey as live bait. When the lion comes to this free lunch, you try to
see him; and, if you succeed in that, you try to shoot him. It is not
easy to shoot at night; nor is it easy to see in the dark. Furthermore,
lions only occasionally bother to come to bait. You may roost up that
tree many nights before you get a chance. Once up, you have to stay up;
for it is most decidedly not safe to go home after dark. The tropical
night in the highlands is quite chilly. Branches seem to be quite as
cramping and abrasive under the equator as in the temperate zones.
Still, it is one method.

Another is to lay out a kill and visit it in the early morning. There is
more to this, for you are afoot, must generally search out your beast
in nearby cover, and can easily find any amount of excitement in the
process.

The fourth way is to ride the lion. The hunter sees his quarry returning
home across the plains, perhaps; or jumps it from some small bushy
ravine. At once he spurs his horse in pursuit. The lion will run but a
short distance before coming to a stop, for he is not particularly long
either of wind or of patience. From this stand he almost invariably
charges. The astute hunter, still mounted, turns and flees. When the
lion gets tired of chasing, which he does in a very short time, the
hunter faces about. At last the lion sits down in the grass, waiting for
the game to develop. This is the time for the hunter to dismount and to
take his shot. Quite likely he must now stand a charge afoot, and drop
his beast before it gets to him.

This is real fun. It has many elements of safety, and many of danger.

To begin with, the hunter at this game generally has companions to back
him: often he employs mounted Somalis to round the lion up and get it
to stand. The charging lion is quite apt to make for the conspicuous
mounted men-who can easily escape-ignoring the hunter afoot. As the game
is largely played in the open, the movements of the beast are easily
followed.

On the other hand, there is room for mistake. The hunter, for example,
should never follow directly in the rear of his lion, but rather at a
parallel course off the beast's flank. Then, if the lion stops suddenly,
the man does not overrun before he can check his mount. He should never
dismount nearer than a hundred and fifty yards from the embayed
animal; and should never try to get off while the lion is moving in
his direction. Then, too, a hard gallop is not conducive to the best of
shooting. It is difficult to hold the front bead steady; and it is still
more difficult to remember to wait, once the lion charges, until he has
come near enough for a sure shot. A neglect in the inevitable excitement
of the moment to remember these and a dozen other small matters may
quite possibly cause trouble.

Two or three men together can make this one of the most exciting mounted
games on earth; with enough of the give and take of real danger and
battle to make it worth while. The hunter, however, who employs a dozen
Somalis to ride the beast to a standstill, after which he goes to
the front, has eliminated much of the thrill. Nor need that man's
stay-at-home family feel any excessive uneasiness over Father Killing
Lions in Africa.

The method that interested me more than any other is one exceedingly
difficult to follow except under favourable circumstances. I refer to
tracking them down afoot. This requires that your gunbearer should be
an expert trailer, for, outside the fact that following a soft-padded
animal over all sorts of ground is a very difficult thing to do, the
hunter should be free to spy ahead. It is necessary also to possess much
patience and to endure under many disappointments. But on the other
hand there is in this sport a continuous keen thrill to be enjoyed in no
other; and he who single handed tracks down and kills his lion thus, has
well earned the title of shikari-the Hunter.

And the last method of all is to trust to the God of Chance. The secret
of success is to be always ready to take instant advantage of what the
moment offers.

An occasional hunting story is good in itself: and the following will
also serve to illustrate what I have just been saying.

We were after that prize, the greater kudu, and in his pursuit had
penetrated into some very rough country. Our hunting for the time being
was over broad bench, perhaps four or five miles wide, below a range
of mountains. The bench itself broke down in sheer cliffs some fifteen
hundred feet, but one did not appreciate that fact unless he stood
fairly on the edge of the precipice. To all intents and purposes we
were on a rolling grassy plain, with low hills and cliffs, and a most
beautiful little stream running down it beneath fine trees.

Up to now our hunting had gained us little beside information: that kudu
had occasionally visited the region, that they had not been there for a
month, and that the direction of their departure had been obscure. So we
worked our way down the stream, trying out the possibilities. Of other
game there seemed to be a fair supply: impalla, hartebeeste, zebra,
eland, buffalo, wart-hog, sing-sing, and giraffe we had seen. I had
secured a wonderful eland and a very fine impalla, and we had had a
gorgeous close-quarters fight with a cheetah.* Now C. had gone out, a
three weeks' journey, carrying to medical attendance a porter injured in
the cheetah fracas. Billy and I were continuing the hunt alone.

     * This animal quite disproved the assertion that cheetahs
     never assume the aggressive. He charged repeatedly.

We had marched two hours, and were pitching camp under a single tree
near the edge of the bench. After seeing everything well under way, I
took the Springfield and crossed the stream, which here ran in a deep
canyon. My object was to see if I could get a sing-sing that had bounded
away at our approach. I did not bother to take a gunbearer, because I
did not expect to be gone five minutes.

The canyon proved unexpectedly deep and rough, and the stream up to my
waist. When I had gained the top, I found grass growing patchily from
six inches to two feet high; and small, scrubby trees from four to ten
feet tall, spaced regularly, but very scattered. These little trees
hardly formed cover, but their aggregation at sufficient distance
limited the view.

The sing-sing had evidently found his way over the edge of the bench. I
turned to go back to camp. A duiker-a small grass antelope-broke from a
little patch of the taller grass, rushed, head down headlong after their
fashion, suddenly changed his mind, and dashed back again. I stepped
forward to see why he had changed his mind-and ran into two lions!

They were about thirty yards away, and sat there on their haunches, side
by side, staring at me with expressionless yellow eyes. I stared back.
The Springfield is a good little gun, and three times before I had been
forced to shoot lions with it, but my real “lion gun” with which I had
done best work was the 405 Winchester. The Springfield is too light
for such game. Also there were two lions, very close. Also I was quite
alone.

As the game stood, it hardly looked like my move; so I held still and
waited. Presently one yawned, they looked at each other, turned quite
leisurely, and began to move away at a walk.

This was a different matter. If I had fired while the two were facing
me, I should probably have had them both to deal with. But now that
their tails were turned toward me, I should very likely have to do with
only the one: at the crack of the rifle the other would run the way he
was headed. So I took a careful bead at the lioness and let drive.

My aim was to cripple the pelvic bone, but, unfortunately, just as I
fired, the beast wriggled lithely sidewise to pass around a tuft of
grass, so that the bullet inflicted merely a slight flesh wound on
the rump. She whirled like a flash, and as she raised her head high to
locate me, I had time to wish that the Springfield hit a trifle harder
blow. Also I had time to throw another cartridge in the barrel.

The moment she saw me she dropped her head and charged. She was
thoroughly angry and came very fast. I had just enough time to steady
the gold bead on her chest and to pull trigger.

At the shot, to my great relief, she turned bottom up, and I saw her
tail for an instant above the grass-an almost sure indication of a bad
hit. She thrashed around, and made a tremendous hullabaloo of snarls and
growls. I backed out slowly, my rifle ready. It was no place for me, for
the grass was over knee high.

Once at a safe distance I blazed a tree with my hunting knife and
departed for camp, well pleased to be out of it. At camp I ate lunch and
had a smoke; then with Memba Sasa and Mavrouki returned to the scene
of trouble. I had now the 405 Winchester, a light and handy weapon
delivering a tremendous blow.

We found the place readily enough. My lioness had recovered from the
first shock and had gone. I was very glad I had gone first.

The trail was not very plain, but it could be followed a foot or so at a
time, with many faults and casts back. I walked a yard to one side while
the men followed the spoor. Owing to the abundance of cover it was
very nervous work, for the beast might be almost anywhere, and would
certainly charge. We tried to keep a neutral zone around ourselves by
tossing stones ahead of and on both sides of our line of advance. My own
position was not bad, for I had the rifle ready in my hand, but the men
were in danger. Of course I was protecting them as well as I could, but
there was always a chance that the lioness might spring on them in such
a manner that I would be unable to use my weapon. Once I suggested that
as the work was dangerous, they could quit if they wanted to.

“Hapana!” they both refused indignantly.

We had proceeded thus for half a mile when to our relief, right ahead of
us, sounded the commanding, rumbling half-roar, half-growl of the lion
at bay.

Instantly Memba Sasa and Mavrouki dropped back to me. We all peered
ahead. One of the boys made her out first, crouched under a bush
thirty-two yards away. Even as I raised the rifle she saw us and
charged. I caught her in the chest before she had come ten feet. The
heavy bullet stopped her dead. Then she recovered and started forward
slowly, very weak, but game to the last. Another shot finished her.

The remarkable point of this incident was the action of the little
Springfield bullet. Evidently the very high velocity of this bullet
from its shock to the nervous system had delivered a paralyzing blow
sufficient to knock out the lioness for the time being. Its damage to
tissue, however, was slight. Inasmuch as the initial shock did not cause
immediate death, the lioness recovered sufficiently to be able, two
hours later, to take the offensive. This point is of the greatest
interest to the student of ballistics; but it is curious to even the
ordinary reader.

That is a very typical example of finding lions by sheer chance.
Generally a man is out looking for the smallest kind of game when he
runs up against them. Now happened to follow an equally typical example
of tracking.

The next day after the killing of the lioness Memba Sasa, Kongoni and I
dropped off the bench, and hunted greater kudu on a series of terraces
fifteen hundred feet below. All we found were two rhino, some sing-sing,
a heard of impalla, and a tremendous thirst. In the meantime, Mavrouki
had, under orders, scouted the foothills of the mountain range at the
back. He reported none but old tracks of kudu, but said he had seen
eight lions not far from our encounter of the day before.

Therefore, as soon next morning as we could see plainly, we again
crossed the canyon and the waist-deep stream. I had with me all three of
the gun men, and in addition two of the most courageous porters to help
with the tracking and the looking.

About eight o'clock we found the first fresh pad mark plainly outlined
in an isolated piece of soft earth. Immediately we began that most
fascinating of games-trailing over difficult ground. In this we could
all take part, for the tracks were some hours old, and the cover scanty.
Very rarely could we make out more than three successive marks. Then we
had to spy carefully for the slightest indication of direction. Kongoni
in especial was wonderful at this, and time and again picked up a broken
grass blade or the minutest inch-fraction of disturbed earth. We moved
slowly, in long hesitations and castings about, and in swift little
dashes forward of a few feet; and often we went astray on false scents,
only to return finally to the last certain spot. In this manner we
crossed the little plain with the scattered shrub trees and arrived at
the edge of the low bluff above the stream bottom.

This bottom was well wooded along the immediate bank of the stream
itself, fringed with low thick brush, and in the open spaces grown to
the edges with high, green, coarse grass.

As soon as we had managed to follow without fault to this grass, our
difficulties of trailing were at an end. The lions' heavy bodies
had made distinct paths through the tangle. These paths went forward
sinuously, sometimes separating one from the other, sometimes
intertwining, sometimes combining into one for a short distance. We
could not determine accurately the number of beasts that had made them.

“They have gone to drink water,” said Memba Sasa.

We slipped along the twisting paths, alert for indications; came to the
edge of the thicket, stooped through the fringe, and descended to the
stream under the tall trees. The soft earth at the water's edge was
covered with tracks, thickly overlaid one over the other. The boys felt
of the earth, examined, even smelled, and came to the conclusion that
the beasts must have watered about five o'clock. If so, they might be
ten miles away, or as many rods.

We had difficulty in determining just where the party left this place,
until finally Kongoni caught sight of suspicious indications over the
way. The lions had crossed the stream. We did likewise, followed the
trail out of the thicket, into the grass, below the little cliffs
parallel to the stream, back into the thicket, across the river once
more, up the other side, in the thicket for a quarter mile, then out
into the grass on that side, and so on. They were evidently wandering,
rather idly, up the general course of the stream. Certainly, unlike most
cats, they did not mind getting their feet wet, for they crossed the
stream four times.

At last the twining paths in the shoulder-high grass fanned out
separately. We counted.

“You were right, Mavrouki,” said I, “there were eight.”

At the end of each path was a beaten-down little space where evidently
the beasts had been lying down. With an exclamation the three gunbearers
darted forward to investigate. The lairs were still warm! Their
occupants had evidently made off only at our approach!

Not five minutes later we were halted by a low warning growl right
ahead. We stopped. The boys squatted on their heels close to me, and we
consulted in whispers.

Of course it would be sheer madness to attack eight lions in grass
so high we could not see five feet in front of us. That went without
saying. On the other hand, Mavrouki swore that he had yesterday seen no
small cubs with the band, and our examination of the tracks made in soft
earth seemed to bear him out. The chances were therefore that, unless
themselves attacked or too close pressed, the lions would not attack us.
By keeping just in their rear we might be able to urge them gently along
until they should enter more open cover. Then we could see.

Therefore we gave the owner of that growl about five minutes to forget
it, and then advanced very cautiously. We soon found where the objector
had halted, and plainly read by the indications where he had stood for a
moment or so, and then moved on. We slipped along after.

For five hours we hung at the heels of that band of lions, moving very
slowly, perfectly willing to halt whenever they told us to, and going
forward again only when we became convinced that they too had gone on.
Except for the first half hour, we were never more than twenty or thirty
yards from the nearest lion, and often much closer. Three or four
times I saw slowly gliding yellow bodies just ahead of me, but in the
circumstances it would have been sheer stark lunacy to have fired.
Probably six or eight times-I did not count-we were commanded to stop,
and we did stop.

It was very exciting work, but the men never faltered. Of course I went
first, in case one of the beasts had the toothache or otherwise did
not play up to our calculations on good nature. One or the other of the
gunbearers was always just behind me. Only once was any comment made.
Kongoni looked very closely into my face.

“There are very many lions,” he remarked doubtfully.

“Very many lions,” I agreed, as though assenting to a mere statement of
fact.

Although I am convinced there was no real danger, as long as we stuck to
our plan of campaign, nevertheless it was quite interesting to be for so
long a period so near these great brutes. They led us for a mile or so
along the course of the stream, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the
other. Several times they emerged into better cover, and even into the
open, but always ducked back into the thick again before we ourselves
had followed their trail to the clear.

At noon we were halted by the usual growl just as we had reached the
edge of the river. So we sat down on the banks and had lunch.

Finally our chance came. The trail led us, for the dozenth time, from
the high grass into the thicket along the river. We ducked our heads
to enter. Memba Sasa, next my shoulder, snapped his fingers violently.
Following the direction of the brown arm that shot over my shoulder, I
strained my eyes into the dimness of the thicket. At first I could see
nothing at all, but at length a slight motion drew my eye. Then I made
out the silhouette of a lion's head, facing us steadily. One of the
rear guard had again turned to halt us, but this time where he and his
surroundings could be seen.

Luckily I always use a Sheard gold bead sight, and even in the dimness
of the tree-shaded thicket it showed up well. The beast was only forty
yards away, so I fired at his head. He rolled over without a sound.

We took the usual great precautions in determining the genuineness of
his demise, then carried him into the open. Strangely enough the bullet
had gone so cleanly into his left eye that it had not even broken the
edge of the eyelid; so that when skinned he did not show a mark. He was
a very decent maned lion, three feet four inches at the shoulder, and
nine feet long as he lay. We found that he had indeed been the rear
guard, and that the rest, on the other side of the thicket, had made off
at the shot. So in spite of the APPARENT danger of the situation, our
calculations had worked out perfectly. Also we had enjoyed a half day's
sport of an intensity quite impossible to be extracted from any other
method of following the lion.

In trying to guess how any particular lions may act, however, you will
find yourself often at fault. The lion is a very intelligent and crafty
beast, and addicted to tricks. If you follow a lion to a small hill,
it is well to go around that hill on the side opposite to that taken by
your quarry. You are quite likely to meet him for he is clever enough
thus to try to get in your rear. He will lie until you have actually
passed him before breaking off. He will circle ahead, then back to
confuse his trail. And when you catch sight of him in the distance, you
would never suspect that he knew of your presence at all. He saunters
slowly, apparently aimlessly, along pausing often, evidently too bored
to take any interest in life. You wait quite breathlessly for him to
pass behind cover. Then you are going to make a very rapid advance, and
catch his leisurely retreat. But the moment old Leo does pass behind the
cover, his appearance of idle stroller vanishes. In a dozen bounds he is
gone.

That is what makes lion hunting delightful. There are some regions,
very near settlements, where it is perhaps justifiable to poison these
beasts. If you are a true sportsman you will confine your hound-hunting
to those districts. Elsewhere, as far as playing fair with a noble
beast is concerned, you may as well toss a coin to see which you shall
take-your pack or a strychnine bottle.





XIII. ON THE MANAGING OF A SAFARI

We made our way slowly down the river. As the elevation dropped, the
temperature rose. It was very hot indeed during the day, and in the
evening the air was tepid and caressing, and musical with the hum of
insects. We sat about quite comfortably in our pajamas, and took our
fifteen grains of quinine per week against the fever.

The character of the jungle along the river changed imperceptibly, the
dhum palms crowding out the other trees; until, at our last camp, were
nothing but palms. The wind in them sounded variously like the patter
or the gathering onrush of rain. On either side the country remained
unchanged, however. The volcanic hills rolled away to the distant
ranges. Everywhere grew sparsely the low thornbrush, opening sometimes
into clear plains, closing sometimes into dense thickets. One morning
we awoke to find that many supposedly sober-minded trees had burst into
blossom fairly over night. They were red, and yellow and white that
before were green, a truly gorgeous sight.

Then we turned sharp to the right and began to ascend a little tributary
brook coming down the wide flats from a cleft in the hills. This was
prettily named the Isiola, and, after the first mile or so, was not
big enough to afford the luxury of a jungle of its own. Its banks were
generally grassy and steep, its thickets few, and its little trees
isolated in parklike spaces. To either side of it, and almost at its
level, stretched plains, but plains grown with scattered brush and
shrubs so that at a mile or two one's vista was closed. But for all its
scant ten feet of width the Isiola stood upon its dignity as a stream.
We discovered that when we tried to cross. The men floundered waist-deep
on uncertain bottom; the syces received much unsympathetic comment
fo

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