BROADCASTING IN THE BUSH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3131, 21 August 1922, Page 2

BROADCASTING IN THE BUSH.

(Isv l'\ 8. .loolson, author of “The Tanganyika. Territory”).

Wi think i( wonderful that. our advancing knowledge li:»s made broadcasting possible. Yet cvitv traveller in savage Africa lias had evidence of the almost incredible swiftness with which tile natives can communicate with distant friends, this “hush wireless” operating more speedily than our telegraph. j The exact means employed vary with the tribe and circumstances. Drumbeats are the usual signals, smoko is often used, and in some parts of the Gold Coast even whistling is enlisted for the conveyance qf news. More mysterious Still isi the so-called veld or hush telegraph, a phenomenal) which wise Europeans, do not attempt to explain. They merely know that it does exist, and that messages are carried hundreds of miles in a day or two when neither drums, smoke, nor other visible or audible means have been utilised. Bush villages can call up one another very much as if they were on the telephone. Each has its collection of signalling drums, used for different purposes, and by them the chiefs can tell each other that there is a maneating lion on the prowl, that the native commissioner has started his tax gathering tom - , or that there will he a big beer-drink at such-and-such a village on the night of the full moon. The European who has lived long in the bush and who hears the sound of far-away drums knows well that the to him unintelligible beats are far from meaningless for the natives. For instance, in August 1914 I wasi forty miles from the East African coast, but only four miles from a telegraph office, immediately that station learnt of the outbreak of the war a. messenger jumped on a bicycle to bring ns the news. He need not have troubled. Four hours before the telegraph clerk had had the staggering news one of the plantation headmen had asked me mysteriously why the ivhito men in Europe were at war. It vas my first intimation that hostilities md started. The bush telegraph had beaten our )wn.