CIVILISATION ABANDONED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

CIVILISATION ABANDONED

BACK TO PEACE AND QUIET VETERAN SOLDIER'S DECISION LIFE OF MANY THRILLS Colonel R. V. K. Applin, sixty-six-year-old English Member of Parliament, has decided to leave civilisation to spend the rest of his life in the hinterland "of South Africa. Last month he said to a London interviewer: " It's got to be good-bye. I'm as fit as a fiddle 3 and have thousands of friends here. I must live in the open again. " I shall leave for good sooty buildings, petrol fumes and excessive income tax. I shall choose the quietest place in South Africa, wherever that is." he said. " Perhaps I shall find myself a nice secluded spot in the Drakensberg mountains, hundreds of miles awuy from motor-cars, and a day's ride at least frojii the nearest neighbour. I shan't have a wireless set.

"And no telephone! Useful things sometimes, but not to a man who wants peace and quiet. Oil lamps will probably light my bungalow, which will bo simply furnished. " I will shoot and fish and read —it will be good to renew my acquaintance with the classics. I shall have about three servants, Zulus or Kaffirs." Colonel Applin is used to the solitary life. He has lived in thirty-two different homes, so leaving his present one will not be such a wrench. Ho has lived in huts in India, bungalows in Africa, tents in Borneo. " There was that tent of ours on the banks of the Brahmaputra River," he reflected. " It was comfortable enough, but my wife and I weren't too pleased one morning at finding a perfect circle round our tent —the tracks of a tiger which must have stalked round and round the tent for hours. " Then that bungalow in Assam. A nice, pleasant place, kept by tho Gov-

I ernment for the free use of an3 T bod.v | going that way. But it was a little | disturbing to find a ten-foot snake, a hamadryad, in the bath one morning. It was kind enough to wriggle down the spout and allow me to shoot it, when it got to the other end, but it ' might have been a different story. " Then I lived among the headhunters of Borneo —a nice crowd when you get to know them, but one must be careful. My hut was supported on stilts twelve feet high, so that nobody could get in once the ladder was drawn up. Rather necessary, that, because a murderer who had escaped had threatened to ' sumpet ' me, which meant that he would blow a poisoned dart at me. " This is a silent way of killing anybody, so he stood a good chance .of succeeding. But it is dangerous to show the white feather in those places, so in the evenings I would sit reading on my verandah with a loaded revolver at my side. I can't say I used to enjoy the book very much. Among the Head-hunters " This was in Central Borneo, the land of the head-hunters, and five days on foot to the nearest white man. I didn't speak my own language for eighteen months." The most uncomfortable night of all was in a village in North Borneo. Hq had been ordered by the Governor to take the first expedition from the north to the south to instal telegraph lines across the country. He had to pass over sixty rapids and through primeval forests. One night he was guest of the chief of a band of head-hunters. The families lived in separate huts, but used a large hall communally. The chief received him there, and to his embarrassment he had to wash in front of them all. Hanging up among the grass of the roof were human heads! The chief cheerfully informed him that one was the head of the only white man who had over passed that way " I think," said Colonel Applin, " that if I hadn't spoken the language mine also would have adorned the rafters. The head ho showed me was that of Whitty, the explorer."