IN WEST AFRICA

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3215, 11 August 1932, Page 6

IN WEST AFRICA

RIVAL OF TRADER HORN. "He was dapper, dignified, and diminutive" said Mr D. McLean, in describing to the Melbourne Legacy Club a man whose adventures in Afr'ca rivalled, he said, those of Trader Horn. " When I first met him I hated him," he added, thoughtfully. It was not ■ until he heard the fellow's tales, went on the lecturer, that he real'sed that ( his dilettantism was a cloak for a fierce, swashbuckling temperament. This young English coxcomb went to West Africa as a young man, green and callow, but soon showed the mettle of his pastures to the bush natives who tried to rob him and the white man who dumped him contemp- j tuously on a sand bank. Once he j raided a village single-handed and I set it on fire, because he suspected that some villager had stolen his goods. For this exploit he was fined £2OO by the authorities. When he arrived in London this self-reliant man Hodson was his name—was summoned to the Colonial Office, where he expected another wigging over this little matter of the razing of a village. Instead, a high functionary, in a gratified sotto voce, told him that not for thirty years had the villagers behaved so well as they did after the raid. '"'! |

" Had I only realised it," said Mr ■ McLean, " this was my ' Trader Horn.' He was full of the most astonishing stories of Africa, and was himself an extraordinary personality. I ought to have made a book out of him, but I let the opportunity slip." /