AFRICA TAMED

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 220, 13 June 1933, Page 9

AFRICA TAMED

Views of Photographer THEN—AND NOW (Reuter— Special to “The Dominion.”) London, April 20. “Safe?" he. repeated scornfully. “There is no danger in Africa to-day. All the kick has gone out of it for a photographer. The animals are not a bit frightened of motor-cars. An elephant is inclined to be a bit too curious about it. but none runs away." The scoffing spokesman who thinks Africa is too tame for pleasure is Mr. Cherry Kearton, the first man who ever walked right up to a wild lion to “shoot” him with a camera. That was 25 years ago, in 1909, In Kenya. Now he has just returned to London from another look at the African jungle—which he saw from a limousine. Mr. Kearton has a picture of a lion in his photographic collection —the first lion ever taken by flashlight. “Twentyfive years ago I lay strapped to Hie branch of a tree for 20 nights on end to get that picture,” he admits. “Once rhinos scented me and nearly brought my career to a close. Once a bullet sang past my head, fired by one of my boys at a lion.”

He also has a newer version of wild lions, taken on his recent trip. “That is what L call ‘feather-bed’ photography,” he says. “It was taken from the ‘House in .the Trees,’ an adjunct of the hotel at Nyeri, 90 miles from Nairobi. They have built it so that tourists can see the animals at a water-hole. You sit in a comfortable ehair, with a drink at your elbow and they throw floodlights on the lions and rhinos when they come down to drink. That is whbt 25 years lias done for Africa. The animals just think the light is an extra bright moon and look round curiously.” 'The last time Mr. Kearton took Africa’s photograph he did his own walking with native porters and au odd mule —until it died. This time he drove through the bush in the comfort of a limousine, taking his pictures from the roof.