MARTIN JOHNSON

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 40, 16 August 1937, Page 3

MARTIN JOHNSON

FAMOUS LION-HUNTER

SAILED WITH JACK LONDON

SOME NARROW . ESCAPES

Martin Johnson, who photographed thousands of lions in the wilds of Africa, killed only two. He told me that during twenty months of his last stay in Africa he saw more lions than he had ever seen before; yet he never fired a gun once. In fact, he didn't even carry a gun, writes Dale Carnegie in the "San Francisco Chronicle." Some African explorers like to come back and tell about their bloodcurdling experiences; but Martin Johnson believed that any man who really knows the wild animals of Africa can walk from Cairo to the Cape armed with nothing more deadly than a bamboo walking stick and never suffer any harm. He also told me that the last time he went to Africa he took along a fine radio set so he could listen to programmes from America. He said he listened a great deal for. the first month or two, and then he got so tired of listening to long, blatant commercial announcements that he didn't turn on the radio for months at a time. Martin Johnson started roaming the world when he was fourteen years old. His father was a jeweller in Independence, Kansas, and when Martin was a boy he used to unpack the crates that came from the far-flung corners of the compass. He was fascinated by tha strange, colourful names on the labels —Paris, Geneva, Barcelona, Budapest —and he determined to put the dust of those towns under his heel. So one day he ran away, tramped over the United States, and finalls' shipped on a cattle boat to Europe. Landing in the Old World, he worked at anything he could find, but he couldn't always find work. He went hungry in Brussels; in Brest he stood gazing across the Atlantic, discouraged and homesick; and in London he had to sleep in 'packing boxes. In order to get back to America and Kansas he hid himself as a stowaway in the lifeboat of a steamer bound for New York. JACK LONDON ARTICLE. Then something happened ' which changed the course of his whole existence -and set him out on trails of glamorous adventure. An engineer on the boat showed him a magazine containing an article by Jack London. Jack London in this article told how he intended to make a trip around the world in a little 30-foot boat called the Snark. As soon as Johnson arrived home in Independence he wrote a letter to Jack London. He poured out his soul in eight feverish pages, and begged to go along on that trip. "I've already been abroad," he wrote. "I started from Chicago with five dollars (£1) in my pocket, and when I got back I still had 25 cents (Is)." Two weeks passed—two weeks of nerve-racking suspense. And then came a telegram from Jack London. It contained only three words—three words that changed Martin Johnson's life. "Can you cook?" the telegram inquired with telegraphic abruptness and brevity. , Could he cook? Why, he couldn't even cook rice. But he wired back precisely three words—"Just try. me" —then he went out and got himself n job in the kitchen -of a restaurant. And when the Snark finally sailed across the rippling waters in San Francisco bay and nosed across the Pacific Martin Johnson was aboard as chief cook and bottle washer, and his newlyacquired culinary knowledge enabled him to make bread, omelettes, gravy, soup, and even pudding. It was also his job to buy the provisions for the trip,' and he calculated that he took along enough salt and pepper and other spices to last a normal crew something like 200 years. He learned to navigate during this trip. He thought he was an expert navigator. So one day, just to show how smart he was, he tried to locate the position of the ship on the map. By that time the Snark was in midPacific swept along by billowing sails in the direction of Honolulu; but according to his nautical calculations the ship was located squarely in ,the middle of the Atlantic Ocean! DAYS OF ADVENTURE. But he didn't give a whoop if the calculations were all cock-eyed. He was living the gay, adventurous life every boy dreams of living. Nothing could daunt his enthusiasm. Once the crew ran out of water for two weeks and nearly perished under a sizzling sun—a sun so hot that the pitch in the deck seams bubbled and boiled like soft molasses. Almost thirty happy years passed— years packed with action, for Martin Johnson sailed the seven seas and roamed all over the world from the coral islands of the South Seas to the jungles of dreary, darkest Africa. He made the first pictures of cannibals ever shown in this country. He photographed pigmies and giants, elephants and giraffes, and made pictures of. all the wild life in the African veldt. He brought back a whole Noah's Ark full of fantastic creatures —brought back spools of celluloid film that have been shown upon thousands of moving picture screens. He captured an imperishable record of a perishing wild animal life —a photographic record that your great-grandchildren may enjoy when the many wild animals of Africa ho longer exist. Martin Johnson told me that a weltfed lion that has never been molested by man will pay no. attention whatever to the scent of a human being. He had driven his automobile into the midst of a bunch of fifteen lions and the lions just lay there and blinked like pussy cats. One lion even came over and started to chew the front tyre. Another time he drove his car so close to a lioness that she could have reached out and touched it with her paw—but she didn't even so much' as twitch a whisker. I asked him: "Are you trying to tell me that a lion is really a good-natured beast?" And he said: "Good heavens, no! The best way I know to commit suicide is to trust a lion." I asked him what he considered his narrowest escape and he said, "Oh, there have been lots of close calls. But they're all fun." - NEAR DEATH IN ISLANDS. One of his closest calls was in the South Sea Islands, when he nearly ended up in a kettle of soup. That was when he was getting the first picture of cannibals ever made. . White traders had been raiding the cannibal island, kidnapping the natives and selling them into slavery. The cannibals were hostjje and suspicious— and hungry. They had already killed a number of white men and seized their goods; and after sizing up Martin Johnson, they figured that this chap from Kansas would make a nice tender pot roast for Sunday dinner. So while he was busy talking to the chief and laying out the presents he had brought along dozens of cannibals began to gather out of the forest and surround him. Help was miles away. He had" a revolver, but he was outnumbered a hundred to one. A cold

sweat of fear stood out on his forehead. His heart raced and pounded but there was nothing to do but appear calm and.keep.-on talking. And all the time he was being crowded in by a ring of greedy cannibals licking their chops in anticipation. And then, just as the cannibals were about to rush, a miracle happened. Into the bay far below steamed a British patrol boat. The cannibals stared. They knew what that meant. Johnson stared too, hardly able to believe his own eyes. And then, with n. Jnw brmr to the chief, he said: "You see my ship has come for me. Glad to have met you all. Good-bye." And before anyone summoned enough courage to stop him, he made a dash for the shore,.