THE LOG OF THE “TRADER HORN” EXPEDITION.

Northland Age, Volume III, Issue 34, 2 September 1931, Page 7

THE LOG OF THE “TRADER HORN” EXPEDITION.

(By W. S. Van Dyke) Perhaps I’m too pessimistic tonight. Perhaps the tropics is working its insidious spell over me —the same spell that has given us so much excellent drama in "Rain,” “White Cargo,” and “The Letter.” Perhaps, many years hence a white man will visit these shores and find me a beachcomber, dressed in trayed linens, drinking myself to death. “1 was once a movie director,” 1 will It II him. ‘You deserve the promotion, old man,” he will answer, grasping my hand. It is quite daik now. The silence ol death has fallen over the town. O.dside my window lean see the Hires ol cigarettes in the p.ii o h low. A famili ir voice ci.il.t Lp. “You can have your Africa. Give me Hollywood, I’d give anything in the world to be there to-night!” To-morrow we leave for Nairobi, bag and baggage. Nairobi, Kenya. —For two days we have been established here, setting up our laboratory and preparing a safari into “the blue.” All of the equipment that has followed us from Hollywood is either with us in Mombasa, or waiting the next slow freight. With the indulgence of the Kenya and Uganda Railroad we should be ready to start up country on the last leg of our journey next week. By that time the laboratory will be functioning and our film will be developed and printed as fast as we can get it back The trip trom Mombasa was more absorbing per mile than all the other 12,000 we have travelled. The heroic little wood-burning train that fights its way over the 300 miles run from sea-level at Mombasa to the 5,000 feet altitude of Nairobi gave us every thrill

we have been expecting from Africa, It takes 18 hours to make the journey, but it may be 18 hours at a three ring circus. On one side you have a game preserve, alive with zebra, antelope, wildbcast, giraffe and ostrich. On the other you are passing

native villages, dense jungle country and miles of upland plains. Just when you get your glasses focused on a particularly attractive ostrich, someone on the other side of the compartment shouts that if you hurry you can get a flash of a native warrior with a shield and a spear. At Nairobi we changed from

the white ducks we were wearing and climbed back into woollens. Except for a very hot sun at noontime, you might be in the temperature zone. But the minute we started out of the station we realised we were not. Our breaths started to come in gasps. I was on the verge of throwing away my last pack of American cigarettes when an Englishman who had come on with us on the train stopped with me. “It’s not the cigarettes, it’s the altitude,” he said. Since then, I’ve heard the expression a great deal. It’s a lot like “It’s not the heat it’s the humidity.” In Kenya it will

cover anything from grounds for divorce to the text of a sermon.

We stopped at the new Stanley Hotel, a short turn from the station. It is the customary home for Americans at the present, although President Roosevelt stayed at the Norfolk when he carpe to Nairobi for big game. Nairobi as a city is a remarkable instance of the development which a single railroad can bring

to a cluster of huts. Were it not tor the Kenya and Uganda Railroad there is no doubt that this city would still be nothing but a dot on the horizon. Instead it is the most progressive city in Kenya, the home of a most civilised and highly cultured European population. The impenetrable country that separates it from the sea has been spanned by the railroad and the influx of civilisation has begun. It should be a matter of only a few years until there are street cars in Nairobi and, perhaps, a cafateria or two Right now there is a fivestcry hotel under construction on one corner, and down the street, two blocks away, another one has just been completed. And yet, on the outskirts of the town, proplc slill complain of the lions running over theit gardens. And apart from the game, which has its attraction, is the matter of the r> (I dust which covers everything ti r tv.ilcs around the city. In the

'I iy i!iy season you are apt to wake in the morning with henna hair or with red ink in your wash pitcher. Perhaps when all the roads are paved the problem will be solved. fContinuing)