AFRICA FROM MANY ANGLES

Evening Star, Issue 21170, 2 August 1932, Page 12

AFRICA FROM MANY ANGLES

A WHITE QUEEN ANIMALS AND ANTS Mining engineer, soldier in the Boer War, in the South-west African campaign, and in several minor expeditions—-that is Major Tudor G. Trevor, author of ‘ Forty Years in Africa.’ He is versatile to a degree. Soon after the Boer \y ar —j n 1903-1901 —wo find him serving with the Boers, punishing troublesome native chiefs.. In the Madjijic country ho had a strange adventure. Here, he tells us, although Madjijie ruled, there was no such person as Madjijie! The Madjijie people consisted of seven small tribes, whoso indunas were supposed to visit Madjijie in a cave, where she' gave them orders. She was said to be a white woman and over two hundred years old. It is believed that this legend actually gave Rider Haggard his inspiration for ‘ She.’ The legend was that she lived in this cave, and as she got older she appeared less and less, until at last she was never seen at’all. As a special favour Major Trevor was taken to “ see Madjijie.” Ho was escorted at nightfall to a rough stone enclosure at the base of a towering cliff. After much dancing and drum-boating fires were lit on two altars, and on them was thrown some stuff that caused ” dense aromatic smoke to rise. The light of the rising moon shone on this smoke, like the light of a sotting sun on clouds, and at once I began to see outlines that shaped themselves like dream castles. But the castles and all the larger shapes dissipated until I saw onlv a woman’s left hand.” Afterwards the natives told him that he was a sufficiently good man to bo

favoured with a glimpse of Madjijie’s hand, but not of her whole body! Major Trevor thinks it possible that the legend arose after a shipwreck of which the Madjijie—-Madge Somebody —was the sole survivor. Mr C. T. Stoneham, too, has soldiered in Africa —against the Germans in the East Africa campaign. But professional hunting is his real business and provides the thrills for the pages of his ‘ Wanderings in Wild Africa.’ Those who do not know Africa will be surprised to find him writing; “ For three years I lived in close contact with dangerous animals and had little or no protection from them. During that time 1 was not attacked by anything but a rhinoceros, which I killed by a lucky shot when it was within a few yards of me.” The “ most savage and dangerous creatures of the wild,” he says, are the large, spotted hunting dogs of East Africa. Lions and leopards he found “ harmless.” Mr Stoneham describes wild life attractively, and he has had some wildly exciting adventures—especially that time he was chased up and down a sand pit in a river by a crocodile!

Sir Hector Duff combined administration work in Nyasaland and Tanganj'ika with campaigning in East Africa and hig-game shooting. His ‘ African Small Chop ’ is a haphazard account of experiences covering some twenty years. He is always interesting, whatever he writes about—native archers, for instance. Hunting in Portuguese territory he met a fellow sportsman thus armed, and had some conversation with him. “On my pulling one of the darts out of his quiver he begged me to be careful, saying it was poisoned and that the least scratch from it would kill me. These arrows were mere splinters of cane, about eighteen inches long, with an iron point and a barb on each side of the shaft . . .

tho bowstring was so tight that, in shooting, lie hardly drew it hack more than two or three inches, jerking the arrow off with a kind of Hick.” At

forty yards or so he Vas amazingly accurate, and most African archers, Sir Hector tells us, could hit a flying guinea fowl or dove nine times out of ten. Sir Alfred Pease’s experience of Africa covers a period of administration in the Transvaal, farming in Kenya, and shooting in North Africa, Somaliland, Abyssinia the Sudan, and elsewhere. One of his most alarming and unpleasant adventures, he tells us in ‘ Half a Century of Sport,’ occurred when he was living on a river boat in the Sudan. In the middle of the night he put his hand outside his mosquito net to reach his water bottle. Immediately he was attacked by what ho took to be particularly vicious mosquitoes. But they sw r armed up his arm to his neck and body: “In a minute the creatures had hold of me with pinchers all oyer, as if a hundred tweezers were pulling bits of skin off. I leapt out of bed in the dark, only to find myself standing in deep moving masses of insects. I took off my pypamas and wrenched and swept the mounting myriads down in vain. 1 realised now' that they W'cre ants of some dreadful kind. In a few- seconds I was a column of great ants holding on with nippers lobster-like.” He saved himself by jumping into a bath of water. In the morning they found the boat seething with ants. They destroyed the ants by throwing dry grass covered with kerosene over them and then firing it.