HUNTING IN AFRICA

Southland Times, Issue 22158, 28 October 1933, Page 11

HUNTING IN AFRICA

The Story of Safari Sam Colonel Deneys Reitz, the author of “Commands” has hinted broadly at the possibility of Safari Sam being the creation of Gordon Makepeace rather than the originator of the tales, warnings and observations that have appeared under the title of this character. Makepeace is a South African journalist, who, on the advice of his wise chief, kept the door open for the visit of the one man possessed of a real “story.” Africa must be teeming with Trader Horns, whose romancing is as important and as entertaining as their bouts with sober fact. Still in a long pioneering period Africa offers shelter and opportunity to all manner of women, and among these romance i lingers. Safari Sam went through | Makepeace’s door to tell him a story i about a crocodile, and he remained and I returned, as Aloysius Horn did, to give | a greedy writer more of himself and j his adventures in the wild country of the Continent. Colonel Reitz may have considered caution necessary, but it was a pity that he threw any doubt upon the substance of Safari Sam, who is a man wellworth meeting. He does not deal in the gaudy material that Trader Hom wove after he found that Mrs Lewis was prepared to take his wares. In these pages Safari Sam is a work-a-day hunter chatting over old times and recalling incidents which, though thrilling, have the flavour of authenticity. Much of the book is given to a hunter’s observations of wild life and some exciting times with a German Count who was busily engaged “gassing” specimens for German zooligical societies. To people whose feet never leave asphalt some of the incidents are almost hair-raising but Safari Sam has some matter-of-fact explanation which brings them at once into the realm of accepted fact. Evidently Makepeace owed his acquaintance with Safari Sam to the feat of Ben Groenewalt, who tackled a crocodile seven feet long in a river. The croc had come between the Dutchman and the riverbank, but his attention was riveted on the swimmers who had scrambled ashore. Groenewalt told them to keep quiet: He dived and came up next the croc. Then he stood up and, bracing himself firmly on the shallow bed, he seized the astonished croc round the middle. With a Herculean effort he lifted the creature out of the water! We then witnessed the grimmest struggle ever staged in an African river. The crocodile thrashed about madly with its tail, and its paws scratched and tore at its captor, who maintained a relentless grip. After a few minutes’ desperate struggle, Groenewalt walked to the bank with his captive croc, and put it down under a tree about a dozen yards from the river. He held it down

while we procured ropes and wagon chains and with these we trussed up the croc.

Groenewait’s simple explanation of his success was the crocodile’s inability to turn his head unless the rest of the body turned with it, but this thirty-year-old Dutchman certainly owed something to nerve and strength, both of them of outstanding quality. The German Count with whom Safari Sam had many adventures is a character quite as interesting as Sam himself. A knightly gentleman who faced danger cheerfully and was ready to release a captured giraffe, after an obstinate struggle to induce it to make its way to camp, because it would probably be unhappy in Berlin. The Count was ready to help Safari Sam after his escape from the coils of a python and then to set off in an effort to ‘gas” the snake. Crocodiles, lions, hippopotamus, perils of flood and forest, these all figure in Safari Sam’s narrative and they help to make a book which is alive with interest, loaded with strange information and salted with the quaint philosophy of the man of the wilds. The reader ceases to care, like Colonel Reitz, whether Safari Sam is authentic or not, because the story Makepeace unfolds is such a good one. “Safari Sam” by Gordon Makepeace (Messrs Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., London).