EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT IN UGANDA.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2787, 4 October 1910, Page 2

EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT IN UGANDA.

Ex-President Roosevelt, in the course of his story of his lug-game hunt in Uganda, which he is relating in the " Daily Telegraph " under the title of " A Sportsman's Paradise," describes what is, in his opinion, the most interesting railwaj journey in the world. " jit was Governor Jackson's special train ; and in addition to his party and ours there was only Selous, and we travelled with the utmost comfort through a naturalist's wonderland. .. . The locomotive was fitted with a comfortable seat across the cow-catcher, and on this, except at meal-times. I spent most of the hours of day-time, usually in company with Selous, and often with Governor Jackson, to whom the tertitory and the game were alike familiar. The first afternoon we did not see many- wild animals; but birds abounded and the scenery was both beautiful and interesting. A black-and-white hornbill, feeding on, the track, rose so late that we nearly caught it with our hands ; guineafowl and francolin, and occasionally bustard, rose near by ; brilliant rollers, sun-birds, bee-caters, and wea-ver-birds flew beside us, or sat unmoved among the trees as the train passed. In the dus'l we nearly ran over a hyena. (A year or two previously the train did actually run over a lioness one night, and the conductor brought in her head in triiimph. In fact, there have occasionally been mishaps such as could only happen to a railroad in

the Pleistocene !) The very night we went up there was an interruption in the telezraph service due to giraffes having knocked down some of the wires and a pole in crossing the track, and elephants have more than once performed the same fent. Two or three times at giraffes have been run into and killed ; once a rhinoceros was killed, the engine being damaged in the encounter ; nnd on other occasions the rhino has only just left the track in time, once the beast being struck and a good deal hurt, the engine again being somewhat crippled." RAILWAY JOURNEY THROUGH A I " ZOO." ! " Next morning we were in the game country," continues the exPresident's narrative," and as we sat on the seat over the cow-catcher it was literally like passing through a vast zoological garden. Indeed no such railway journey can be taken on any other line in any other land. At one time we passed a herd of a dozen or so great giraffes, cows an<l calves, cantering along through the open woods, a couple of hundred yards to the right of the train. Again, still closer, four waterbuck cows, their liitr ears thrown forward, stared at us without moving until we had passed. Hartebeests were everywhere ; one herd was on the tracli and when the engine whistled they bucked and sprang with ungainly agility and galloped clear of the danger. A long-tailed, straw-colour-ed monkey ran from one tree to another. Huge black ostriches appeared from time to time. Once a troop of impalla, close by the track, took fright ; and as the beautiful creatures fled, we saw now one and now another bound clear over the high bushes. A herd of zebra clattered across a cutting of the line not a hundred yards ahead of the train ; the whistle hurried their progress ; but only for a moment, and as we passed they were already turning round to gaze. The wild creatures were in their sanctuary, and they knew it. Some of the settlers have at times grumbled at this game reserve being kept of such size ; hut surel} it is one of the most valuable possessions the country could have. The lack of water in parts, the prevalence in other parts of disease harmful to both civilised man and domestic cattle, render this great track of conn-' try the home of all homes for the wild creatures of the waste. The protection given these wild creatures is genuine, not nominal ; they are : preserved, not for the pleasure of the few, but for the good of all who choose to see this strnntre nnd attractive spectacle ; and from this

nursery and breeding-ground the overflow ki?eps up the stock of panne in the adjacent land to the benefit of the settler, to whom the game Rives fresh meat, and to the beuefit of the whole country, because of the attraction it furnishes to all who desire to visit a veritable luippy hunt-ing-ground."

A LION TRAGEDY. " But the lions now offer and have always offered," says Mr. Roosevelt, " the chief source of unpleasant excitement. Throughout Bast Africa the lions continually take to maneating at the expense of native tribes, and white hunters are continually being killed or crippled by them. At the lonely stations on the railroad the two or three subordinate officials often live in terror of some fearsome brute that has taken to haunting the vicinity ; and every few months, at some one of these stations, a man is killed, or badly hurt by, or narrowly escapes from, a prowling lion." In this connection Mr. Roosevelt considers the most thrilling book of true lion stories ever written is Colonel Patterson's " Man-eaters of Tsavb." Colonel Patterson was one of the engineers engaged Borne ten or twelve years back, in building the Uganda Railway. "He was in charge of the work," we are told, " at a place called Tsavo, when it was brought to a complete halt by the ravages of a couple of man-eating lions, which, after many adventures he finally killed. At the dmner at the Mombasa Club I met one of the actors in a blood-curdling tragedy which Colonel Patterson relates. He was a German and, in company with an Italian friend, he went down in the special car of one of the English railroad officials to try to kill a man-eating lion which had carried away several people from a station on the line. They put the car on a siding. As it was hot, the door was left open, and the Englishman sat by the open window to watch for the lion ; while the Italian finally lay down on the floor, and the German got into an upper bunk. Evidently the Englishman must have fallen asleep, nnd the lion seeing him through the window, entered the carriage by the door to get at him. The Italian waked to find the lion standing on him with its hind feet, while its fore-paws were on the scat, as it killed the unfor tunatc Englishman ; and the German my informant, hearing the disturbance, leaped out of, his bunk actually on to the back of the lion. The man eater, however was occupied only with his prey. Holding the body In his mouth he forced his way out through the window-sash, and made his meal undisturbed, but a couple o/ yards from the railway carriage."