LIFE IN AFRICA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1938, Page 7

LIFE IN AFRICA

NEW ZEALANDER’S ADVENTURES FOUGHT IN TWO WARS. LONG TpEK IN SEARCH OF ELEPHANTS. After thirty-eight years in Africa, during which he fought in two wars, hunted elephants, prospected for gold, and occupied a farm. Mr J. T. Muirhead. has returned to New Zealand. He is staying with his sister. Miss-M. A. Muirhead. at. Stourbridge Street. Spreydon. Paying his own fare to South Africa. Mr Muirhead enlisted in Damant’s "Tigers,” a regiment of mounted scouts, and fought against the Boers. For weeks at a time the troops were out in front of the main columns, making contact with the enemy commandoes. When the war ended Mr Muirhead stayed in South Africa, but 1914 found him fighting again. This time he was with a Belgian force, from the Belgian Congo, operating against General von Lettow, commander of the German forces in German East Africa. The Germans were probably the last of the Kaiser’s men to give up their arms, because it was not until after the armistice that they stopped fighting. They were actually in British territory, Northern Rhodesia, at the time, haying crosssed through Portugese East Africa. Elephant hunting occupied Mr Muirhead's time after the South African War, and he ranged all over equatorial Africa, then without roads or railways of any kind, and up to the Southern Sudan and the borders of Abyssinia. TUSK WORTH £250. At that time ivory was worth from 10s to £1 a pound, and a big tusk might be worth £250. The largest needed four native boys to carry them, lashed on. to the limb of a tree. Much of the travelling in the swampy country, and on Lake Victoria Nyanza, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Nyassa, was done in canoes, but long distances were covered on foot. For treks lasting anything up to two years about two hundred natives were needed as bearers. For months at a time Mr Muirhead would see no other European. When his boots were worn out, and several pairs would be taken, the natives would fashion rough coverings out of animal skins. The hunter's gun provided him with his food. Of the scores.of elephants shot little was useful to a European for food. Pieces of the trunk, boiled for two or three days, resembled roast beef, and the natives prepared a jelly like delicacy from the feet. This was done in much the same way that Maoris cook. A fire was built in a hole, the elephant’s foot was placed on top, and earth was shovelled into the hole. After two or three days the food was ready, and could be eaten cold or hot. Rank elephant’s meat was eaten by the natives, after steaks had been hung on a wooden framework and cured over a smoky fire, but it was unpalatable to Europeans. Of the party only ’ the white man would be armed with a rifle, although the “capato,” or head boy, was sometimes able to shoot. Some natives now possessed antique firearms, which, although! they might be absolutely useless, gave them prestige in the eyes of their fellows. SHOOTING PIGMY ELEPHANTS. In search of pygmy elephants, which grow only five or six feet tall, Mr Muirhead penetrated the dense forests in the Congo, where sunlight gets no further down than the tree-tops, and everything is continually damp. Native boys would not penetrate the forest, and Mr Muirhead would go in alone. Moving his camp day by day,’ he left quantities of salt behind. The pygmies, with none of their own, seized it joyfully, and, when they were satisfied that the intruder was friendly, came to his camp. Going off silently into the forest, the pygmies would bring back saplings, and indicate on them to the hunter the size of the tusk on any elephants in the neighbourhood. The ordinary natives could not get near the pygmy elephants, which charged them at sight, but the pygmies could get close to them without, harm.

Salt was to the pygmies the epitome of wealth, for they had not the means of making it, as other natives had, bypreparing it from the ashes of fires in which certain shrubs had been burned. Substitutes for ivory made the hunting unprofitable, but some years ago Mr Muirhead was engaged by the Nyassaland Government to shoot six hundred elephants which had come across from Belgian territory and were killing natives and wrecking their gardens. The Uganda Government hpd also asked him to do some culling, but the job was turned down, as it "would not pay for shoe leather.” TUSKERS NOW RARE. Big tuskers are now rare,' and a licence to shoot only two elephants costs £6O, so that it is a sport for the wealthy only. Farming in Northern Rhodesia, before it was surveyed or roads or railways were built, Mr Muirhead found profitless. No matter what crop he grew, he could not sell it, as there were no buyers or mean's of exporting produce. Seven lions lived on the property, which was unfenced, and it wai possible to shoot buck or other game from the door. Now, however, the same land would be valuable, as the capital of the teriitory, Lusaka, is comparatively close a! hand. In recent years, Mr Muirhead haf been prospecting at an alluvial golc mine in Tanganyika, six or seven hundred miles from the nearest railway. Twenty miles on one side of the Equator, the nearest trading post is .fort) miles away, on the other side.