AN ADVENTUROUS CAREER

Evening Star, Issue 21216, 24 September 1932, Page 2

AN ADVENTUROUS CAREER

AFRICAN EXPLORER AND HUNTER Captain Poulett Weatberley, who has died at Bournemouth at the age of 72* was a noted African explorer-and biggame hunter. From ‘- East Africa/' are taken the following facte 'of hid career:— But for his intense modesty and Els, persistent refusal to publish any record of his long years of travel in Central Africa, even when Stanley brought pressure to bear on him, the name of Captain Poulett Weather ley would' have been known to a wide public, for he was one of the early explorers of what are now Northern Rhodesia, the Belgian: Congo, and Tanganyika Territory, was the discoverer of the source of the Congo, the first white man to circumnavigate Lake _ Bangweulu, the . first European permitted by the powerful llhbdesian chief, Mporogoso, to ‘pass through his country, and the first European to Safari in the dry season from Mwanza across the Serengeti to Moshi. Yet he lived the evening of his days in an obscurity from which he had no desire to emerge and in a town which he told ‘ East Africa ’ in one of his letters, reminded him “ of that .fabled place in Africa to which elephants go to die.”

At the age of nineteen ha ‘joined Weatherley’s Horse (raised by his father), and served through the Zulu War of 1879, in which his father and his brother were killed on the same day* Five years later he served with the- Nile Expedition, after which began hia long wanderings through Central Africa, for which he received the Cuthbert Peek grant of the Royal Geographical Society. In the early ’nineties he was _in Nyasaland, then for a time British Vice-consul in Quelimane, and ip 1896 he made his memorable investigation of Lake Bangweulu and declared to thd scientific world that the Chambezi River was the [most remote] source of the Congo—a claim substantiated years afterwards by the Director of Surveys of Northern Rhodesia. Then followed constant safaris. in British,; Belgian, and German territories, which, occupied all his time until the year before the outbreak of war.

In August, 1914, though fifty-four years of age, he offered his services to the War Office, was appointed a captam in the Royal Bucks Hussars, and served through the Senussi campaign in the Libyan Desert. In 1917 he was transferred to the Australian Army, which he joined a few days before the first taking of Bapaume. He remained in the front line, until the armistice, and then acted as a liaison officer with the Frepch army until May, 1920. As a geographer he made A’lasting impression on the blank regions Of Africa along the Upper Nile, on the Southern Sudan, the Luapula, tad the river systems of Lakes Bangweuju and Mweru. His method of survey, wascharaeteristic. When shooting along the Luapula he took compass bearings of all the windings of the river, and every night he posted men with rifles at important points, and by timing the interval between the flash of the rifles and the hearing of the report, deters, rained the distances between the points by calculating sound to travel,,,at I,lllft per second. So accurate" was he that when the distances were later mapped by trained surveyors, no serious errors were discovered in Weatherley.’a maps. _ . . He had his own views on hunting;' until at least 1910 he insisted on safa|iing alone, except for his porters, aijd he was so opposed to any native, even a gunbearer, firing a_ rifle that on one letter he wrote that if he were mauled by a lion the attendant native would probably ask permission before firing! He had a very poor opinion of men who employed natives to shoot and then called themselves elephant hunters, bht he did not grudge , them their ten .elephants to bis one, “ because X killed that one myself and practically alone;”' Once he knocked down two elephants with a right and left, but it was almost dark, and the second got away. Elephants fascinated him so much that, he far preferred to take pictures of tbehx than kill them—and he was one of the first of African big game cinematographers. With lions he felt differently* “ I’d go anywhere and risk anything to get good lion shooting. I consider elephant shooting, as far as personal, danger is concerned, a far more onesided affair than lion shooting. Thp lion travels a devil of a pace, coming fori one, and is not easy to bit.” ;; His diaries and his letters written 0$ safari were very frank. Thus, in a letter written in 1896 to Sir Alfred Sharpe, he said: “As regards one’s travels, it is much easier to tell the truth. To be a good liar one must have a good memory. I have an excellent memory, but I don’t wish to subject it to a constant strain. I travel for a selfish reason —to please myself. Fot awards, gold medals, letters after my name, I don’t care a solitary . cuss* Lightning journeys have no attraction fof me. lam . essentially a dawdler. I wander about and enjoy myself thoroughly.” That was thirty-six years ago, just after he had circumnavigated Lake Bangweulu. The difficulties and dangers of that exploration, were re* corded in a matter-of-fact style -in hi* notebooks. . That his memorable safari across the waterless Serengeti—an account of which was published in ‘ East Africa t some four years ago—was much in his mind in his closing' days, is shown by a recent letter, in which' he wrote:] “ Every night for ages past I have been t over my last cigarette,. in Arusha or wandering about Lake Natron and climbing Oldonyo Lengai. It is all that is left to me.” A clever portrait artist, a lover of scenery, a passionate lover of music, an expert photographer, a big game hunter, with many records to his credit, an ante and-out sportsman, and a true English’ gentleman, his memory will not be forgotten by his friends.