The Africa That Roosevelt Is Seeing

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 7, 18 August 1909, Page 33

The Africa That Roosevelt Is Seeing

By

C. BRYSON TAYLOR

Author of “In the Dwellings of the Wilderness." “ Nicanor, Teller of Tales." Etc Photographs by the MacQuecn and Dutkewich Expedition

b 7 F FRlCA—the real Africa—is not '/ | all of it the land the average fancy pictures—not all a savage, strangling, tropic waste of jungle threaded by slow and miasmatic streams, a sinister, forbidding continent, savage and repellent. Nor is it, as so many would have us believe, a wide and terrible arena of barbarity and tragic darkness. Africa —the real Africa—is a vast and changeful area of the world, a land of many phases, many moods and expressions; and of such magnitude in its distances and conditions that no single picture can more tian hint at the reality.

A brown village of thatched huts, squatting in a trampled clearing of the forest, and backed by thickset trees so closely laced with a living tapestry of woven green that the aching, tropic sunlight can scarcely penetrate. Slim, naked black's, slipping like shadows among the broad-leaved bananas and rubber trees, staring furtively as your bearers file slowly past them. A lonely station, far up or down-river, where a haggard white man sits to receive tribute in the name of his trading company, marks an outpost of civilisation in this jungle land. And through and under it all is the fevered glare of sunlight, the ceaseless, drowsy whisper of the woods, the hot. dry scents of th-> parched earth; or, if rains have come.

all the land about will lie cloaked in steaming vapour, the sultry air as thick and humid as the air of a greenhouse at home. There you have the Congo as the white man knows it—the Congo jungle, or the jungle of Uganda; but all of this is -only a part of what we have chosen to call, and to picture as, the Dark Continent. For there, too, is the desert, widely different in all its aspects from Congoland. On the slope of the rising ground that lifts from sea-level at Mombasa, and climbs to nearly 8,000 feet before it drops again to the lesser level of Victoria Nyanza, is another vast waste

as typical of Africa as this jungle country—the desert, as it i- called, the plains of bush and grass. Six months of the year-—from October to April—it lies half drowned under tropic rains; from April to September only occasional showers fall, and the wide plateau grills under the staring sunlight, all yellowing in the glare. Here upon these uplands is found the great variety of big game, the vast herds of wild things that have made and still make Africa the greatest shooting country in the world. This is British East Africa as the hunter knows it. Since the days of Livingstone Africa has been the Mecca for explorers and sportsmen. Barons and lords and dukes, millionaires and adventurers, they have

hacked their way into the dark and brooding heart of her, and many of them she has claimed and taken as her own. Mr. Roosevelt will find good company—strange company, perhaps—along his way. By steamer you arrive one morning al Mombasa, the largest seaport town of British East Africa, a low-lying island city, with white Moorish walls

vivid in the morning light. There is colour, always colour, incredibly raw. upon analysis, yet blending into a wonderfully harmonious whole —the living blue of the waters, white walls, a background of the dull Jieavy, eye-relieving green of the topics, and over all the intense golden sunlight that washes the whole picture into proper tone. Mombasa is a pretty old town, with very bad water. If you stay long enough, you will learn its history: the fact that to white men its very existence was unknown until about four hundred years ago—and to the Elder World four centuries is not so long a time. You will be shown Freretown Mission, and the old Portuguese fort that guards the roadway and is now used as an English prison; and you will hear strange tales of the untold wealth of ivory, skins, and rubber that yearly passes through the port on the way west. But though the spell of the East is on it, Mombasa is only the threshold of the black land behind the shining waters; and who would linger at the threshold? Your luggage collected, you go by train from Mombasa to Nairobi, 327 miles up the line. From here, the real

start into the interior nowadays usually is made. You will have previously secured your hunter's license, costing £ 50, without which no one is permitted to hunt what is known as Royal Game. The elephant, hippopotamus, buffalo. rhinoceros, eland, giraffe, zebra, impalla, and ostrich come under this head; and even with a license only a limited number may be killed.

For the first twenty-five or thirty miles a stern and wary eye must be kept upon the native porters. Inevitably there will be desertions, so that sometimes an expedition is seriously depleted. There are wild ones who make a practice of enlisting with one outfit to obtain the one month's wages that must invariably be paid in advance, and slipping back to the coast at the first opportunity, to repeat their tactics elsewhere. Thirty porters to each white in the party is the usual number employed, and sixty pounds per man is the regulation load, which must not be exceed ed; but where forced marches are con templated for any reason, it is far bet ter to reduce the load to fifty or fiftyfive pounds, and take along more men. But though so large a number of men is required, the cost, after all, is not so staggering as you may think. The pay for porters, under ordinary conditions, ranges from 14/- to 22/- a month, with an extra allowance of from 4/to 8/- for food. Gun bearers amt caravan headmen. of course, draw higher wages, the headman getting from £2 8/- to £3 a month if he be a Swahili, and nearly double that

amount if ho bo a Somali. Cheapness in this respect is a poor economy; the Somali is the highest type of native in British East Africa; and while the Swahili is competent to do, he by no means approaches the other in courage and efficiency. In every case, the hunter finds it to his best interests to take out a government caravan license. It is not obligatory, but if you eare to maintain your standing in law, to be in a way to get redress if your men mutiny or desert or run of! with your property, it will be well for you to go through the formality. All that the license requires is that you pay your men what you stipulate, feed them on not less than one quart of cereals a day, that you comport yourself according to the district regulations, and that you provide each man with a water bottle and a blanket, and each gang of eight with a tent and cooking pot. A word as to equipment may be of interest here. The idea that an African trip means enduring all manner of hardships, lack of persona! comforts, luxuries, and even necessities, has fortunately been exploded. Many a man who has come out of the swamps and jungles' broken with fever- or perhaps never come out at all—would have been none the worse for bis adventure had he not gone in with the notion that he must "rough it" to the limit. It pays to take eare of oneself, even at the cost of an extra hundred pounds of luggage. Tents are a necessity, it is not only uncomfortable to sleep beneath a tree whose leaves are dripping dew upon you like rain, but it is dangerous. The commissary department may be as varied as one pleases. For eggs. Hour, fowls, and vegetables the native villages can usually be relied on: on the coast and in certain parts of Uganda there is plenty of fruit: meat you can obtain yourself: but it is always well to have a good supply of canned goods—• meats. tomatoes, desiccated vegetables. and so on. Plenty of sugar should be among the supplies, for it is a curious fact that in the tropics one at times becomes possessed of an in ordinate craving for sweets, and sugar is not only satisfying but wholesome. And after one of the many accidents that at any moment may occur, to find your sugar supply mixed with the castor oil, for instance, is one of the minor tragedies of life. A medicine chest is, of course, imperative; and a cast-iron rule of the expedition should be that the rolls of lint bandages must never on any account be purloined for cleaning guns. There have been occasions when a bit of elean rag or cotton seemed absolutely the only thing in the world not forthcoming, and the thing most desperately needed. Brandy and champagne are necessary, but these should be classed among the medical supplies rather than as table

luxuries. Drinking liquor is dangeroubusiness in tropic Africa, and the man who indulges even moderately :n alcoholic drinks will find his capacity for hard work and endurance lessened by about a third. An important part of the hunter's impedimenta is a generous supply of gla-s bead-, brass wire, red and blu» doth, and toys, and the far-sighted man who provides himself with a load of the

most vicious and discordant alarm clocks obtainable will find that he may have things very much his own way. As to arms —this is a question which every hunter decides for himself. Briefly, the subject of necessary armament may be summed up thus: one large eailbre

rifle —say, a .450 cordite express, capable of great shocking power; one of smaller calibre, with highly penetrative bullets; a shotgun for birds, and a brace of revolvers for camp use. The variations on this foundation may be as elaborate as one desires. On leaving the coast, the country is found to be undulating and monotonous,

parched in the dry season, and in sections badly scarred and burned, where the natives fire the grass in order to run their cattle on the fresh green herbage that immediately springs up. This is the country of the war-like Masai, who in former years gave endless trouble to hunter- and traders, but who are now isolated in a reservation on the Laikipia plateau. All this region of the rising land is al-

most park-like, with broad, gentle slopes covered with short grass and clusters of euphorbia and mimosa trees. This is the fringe of the big game country; one catches frequent glimpses of troops of zebras, hartbeests, gazelles, and, with great good luck, an eland, all far in the

distance. The eland, one of the most noted game animals of Africa, is the largest and heaviest antelope in the world, an old bull weighing sometimes as much as a good-sized ox, and its meat is by far the best and finest-flavoured that the hunter can choose. One will not soon forget his first, impressive view of Kilimanjaro, the highest

mountain in all Africa; so high that although it is only three miles or so off the line of the equator, its greater peak. Kibo, is capped with ever'asting snow. It stands out clear cut against the trr.pie sky, nearly nineteen thousand feet above the level of the Red Sea — two mighty peaks, some five miles apart, one flat ami snow-crowned, the other, somewhat lower, rearing itself in a broken and pointed mass, and the two connected

by a broad and undulating saddle. From its summit it seems as though one might almost overlook all Africa, across her dusky forests and her dry and burning plains into the inmost hidden heart of her. Even from its lower levels there is a wonderfid panoramic view of endless stretches of rolling country, shadowed with dark patches of woods, and dotted here and there with the strange, whispering seas of tawny bush which in places extend for many square miles, and through which one must wade before reaching the forests that skirt the mountain’s foot. It is in these brush areas that the best lion hunting will be found. The lion is not a forest animal; he prefers the plains and the dry and dusty jungles, where his yellow hide is less conspicuous. And speaking of lions, there lies on the floor of a certain home in Virginia a mammoth skin, eleven feet from nose to tip of tail, tawny, and maned, with huge head and open, yellow-fanged jaws. Save for its size it is much like any other good lion skin, except that upon a second glance it will be seen that the left forepaw is missing. It is difficult to get a lion’s skin in perfect condition, for the reason that they are generally' mangy, and scarred with the marks of encounters with other beasts; often, too, they are so badly' torn by bullets that it is bard to mount them. But this one, barring a long scar down the flank, is unusually good. If you should ever stumble upon the little village of Bangu, which hides shyly under the palms and bananas not far from the Nakuru, ask the headmen if they have ever heard of a huge lion that went upon three feet, and, scorning speais and traps and bullets, spread death and destruction around the village on a time not so very' long gone. If you cannot converse fluently enough in Afrieanese, merely draw a rough sketch of tine? footprints on the earth, and make a noise like a roar, and then watch the expression of wonder and dismay ami flight upon the faces of your audience. Certain skins treasured as most precious trophies. have stories that are as well known as are the stories of famous horses, or the histories of works of art; and this’ is the story of the Lion on Three Feet: — Four hunters landed in Bangu one day, hungry and footsore, and with a sadly attenuated party of bearers. One was a German, an army- officer on leave, a large man, ’with sandy moustache and a monocle. Two were Englishmen, lean and hardbitten, professional hunters out after ivory. The fourth was an American, a tall, dark fellow from Virginia, with a soft-voiced drawl that matched the Englishmen’s own. The party had met in the queer casual way in which men of all degrees and nationalities stumble together in this unexpected country; they might part to-morrow, or they might travel in company' until next week. For the moment, however, they' were in Bangu, in-

t?nt only on getting something to eat; and Bangu, being in a state of sore excitement about something, did not pay much attention to them. Finally, the solemn native guide, who had been christened Natty Bumpo by the Virginian, to the mystification of the others, explained that the chief’s son had been carried off the night before by a lion that must have been wounded, for it limped when it walked ; and the beast, having once tasted

human meat, was certain to return for another victim. “Tell them,’’ said the Virginian to Natty Bumpo, “that if they will give us and our men something to eat, we’ll wait over a night, and kill the lion for them.” “You don’t want to be rash, you know, old ehap!” exclaimed the Englishmen. “If you can't make good on a boast like that, your credit won’t be good in these parts. But we’ll stay—what?”

That night they tied up a goat in a likely place; but the lion did not come. For another day and a night they waited. Then one Englishman had an idea. “They say he was wounded. Perhaps he has died out in the bush. Shall we look about a bit for him, eh?” That afternoon they went out to look about a bit, and while they were gone, the lion came and carried off an old man. “Stung!” said the Virginian; and the Britons looked at one another and said: “By Jove, fancy that, will you?” For two more days the lame lion played hide-and-seek with them; then the Englishmen said: “Very sorry, old chap, but we’re here under contract and not for our health, and we can’t lose any more time. Really, we’d like to stay, you know, but ” “You must all do as you please, of course,” said the Virginian amiably. “But I’ve got a guinea that says the brute will be along to-night.” “Done!” said the Britons before they thought. And that night the lion came. It was the night of the full moon, when the Dark Land is most mysterious, most unfathomable. Crickets shrilled with subdued stridency; all the whisperings of the jungle were hushed. Such nights are very quiet, with a tense and waiting silence that oddly strains the nerves almost to breaking-point. The four Europeans sat in the shade of a giant baobab, for the African moon seems to hold uncanny and .sinister power, and one may suffer from moonstroke as well as sunstroke. There was no warning of any kind, not the faintest crackle of twig nor stir of leaf. With appalling suddenness a huge black bulk launched itself out of the night, into the very midst of the group. Outlined for one heart-beat against the orb of the low-hung moon, it seemed the size of an elephant. The whole thing

came with a whirlwind rush; there was a snarling roar, a mad flurry of confusion. and a scream. Three shots spat flashes of flame into the darkness, helterskelter, hit or miss; and the great cat leaped straight into the air and dropped on the body of the victim that even in that brief instant was torn by its fangs. The village shrieked, the jungle woke and chattered; one of the Englishmen came running with a torch. By its light the.

picture jumped into relief against the night: a circle of terrified blacks; the two Englishmen, guns in hand; in the centre of illumination the American, kneeling by the dead lion, and the German underneath its body, the revolver the Virginian had used lying on the ground beside him. They dragged the lion’s carcase off the German; lie swore at them gently and fainted. Here is where the strange part of the story enters —the part that has made the Lion on Three Feet famous in African hunting annals. Three shots had been fired, but when the body was examined only one wound was found upon it—the mark of a bullet that by some freak of the hunter’s god, had gone cleanly through the left eye straight to the brain, A wonderful shot, made in darkness and confusion, but a chance shot, such as a man may make once and never more in a lifetime. A post mortem was held, and the bullet extracted. It proved to have come from the Virginian’s .45 Colt. Later, it seemed that everywhere he went the Virginian met men who had tried to pot the Lion on Three Feet and failed. No one knew how or when the brute had lost his foot—and that was another strange part of the story. If any hunter has reason to believe that his shot gave the beast his name, he will confer a favour on a goodly number of interested and puzzled brethren by telling what he knows. Occasionally, on the trail, one will pass a native village, where the chiefs invariably demand hongu, which may be interpreted equally well as presents or as blackmail. One learns rapidly to accept with fortitude what one can get at these villages; certain things are not at all bad. even to European taste. Honey, remarkably aromatic, when one considers the scentlessness of most African flowers; sweet potatoes, sugar cane, pumpkins, In-

dian corn (pounded and fried in butter this makes an entirely palatable dish) — these can nearly always be found. Most common is the banana. The natives mash and boil the green fruit, producing a black, sticky compound, which. although fearfully uninviting to look at, is wholesome, and rather pleasant after the first attempt at it. As one pushes ever farther into the interior. the rolling country gives place to a belt of forest. A different world this, of strange green twilight, through which bright - coloured birds Hit with raucous shrieking, and monkeys gibe ami chatter from the swinging vines. The nights are cold here, even in the dry season; and from the reeking swamps of the Nakuru. overhung with green poison growths, where the hippopotamus wallows, rises the thin white

vapour that is the very breath of death. Here, alike in the dry and the rainy seasons, one must endure the torment of mosquitoes—such mosquitoes as one never dreamed of at home. Some years ago three American hunters were working back through Uganda. The rainy season was close at hand —a time when all wild animals are more restless and suspicious—and their luck had not been good. They were anxious to get back to the coast before the rains came on, for one of their number, a Westerner called Rogers, was suffering from malaria, and was in no shape to stand the added hardships of the winter. The leader of the party was a man named Rector, who had hunted in Africa before, and had won a reputation for the sheer, beautiful, cold nerve he had shown

on certain previous occasions in encounters first with a wounded lion, and later with a buffalo bull that had turned at bay. The third of the trio was a New York physician, who was supposed to be recuperating from a breakdown, and in reality was working harder than he had ever done in his life. One Sunday evening the party made ramp under a mopani tree. The cook they had brought along Fad died the day before of fever, so the hunters took turns at his work. That night it was Rector’s turn. It was chilly, and the others sat around the fire in their coats; but Rector laid his aside while he cleaned a brace of birds that had been shot for supper. Farther oil. the blacks were huddled around their own fire in their shapeless wrappings, finishing the last of their rations. Rector, his sleeves rolled

to his elbows, a half-plucked bird in one hand and a knife in the other, suddenly called across to the physician: — “Doe, will you get the ammonia from the medicine chest? 1 think I've got a bite, although I didn't see the beggar that did it.” On examination two faint red spots, close together and very small, showed on his left arm below the elbow; around them the flesh was slightly inflamed. He had found no insect on his skin, neither had he any idea when he had been bitten. The ammonia was applied, giving a sharp, momentary pain, and Rector pulled down his sleeves and went on with his preparations. By the time the birds were grilling, the arm was paining him intensely, and he realised that something drastic must be

done, it was swelling rapidly, and the flesh around the punctures was discoloured as though from a bruise. Soon he began to complain of red hot pains shooting up the arm to the shoulder, and within the hour, in spite of the evening chill, he was sweating from head to foot. The doctor recognised the symptoms. “Man dear, you're poisoned!” he said bluntly. “I’ve tried everything I’ve got, but I don't know what it is I'm lighting against. There’s only one thing more I van do pour all the whisky in camp into you and see if we can't drown it out

“No!” said Rector through his teeth. “Cut the arm off at the shoulder and for God's sake, do it quick!” They did it : and because other means were not at hand, they seared the stump with tire, in the native fashion, to stop the bleeding. Through it all Rector sat. livid and steady, keeping himself in hand with that wonderful nerve of his that not even the agony of saw ami 11ame could shake. He fainted when they were through with him. but the whisky that they gave him brought him around. All they could give him. however, never went to his head, and this in itself was a bad sign. But they had not done their work quite soon enough. The poison spread so swiftly that it was a thing to marvel at. until limbs and trunk were black and swollen out of all human semblance. Even then the man’s nerve dominated them. He said, his voice controlled and coherent by what effort they could only “Boys, there's only one thing you can do for me. I can’t stand this much longer—and it may last for hours: there's no knowing. You don't want to see me twisting ami screaming here like a poisoned rat. do you? Then for God's ->ake put a bullet in me now. and let me go while I can die decently. won't you ?” In telling the story later. Rogers said: “It wouldn't have seemed quite so horrible. somehow, if the poor chap himself hadn't been so steady. But the contrast between that quiet voice of his—as quiet, almost, a- though he were offering you a ci'ar-and the sight of him — Lord, if I < ould ever forget it! I couldn't stan I for it at first—it seemed so like shooting him down in cold blood: I believe 1 ev» n *aid to wait a while: but the doctor, who knew letter than I what was toning, took his w vol ver out of hi' l»<dt and put it on the ground letwe n !•» the day of his death neither man will tell who fired th - 'hot. They’ burie 1 their (omr.ide next morning, on the spot, be aii'V there was nothing else to do: and Roger*, half dead with fever, and beside himself with the horror of the

night, and therefore never thinking of how far his words might prove adequate to the occasion, could only repeat over and over: “And he never knew what bit him—he never even knew what bit him!” Mr. Roosevelt has announced his intention of bringing back skins and skeletons for the collection he will give to the National Museum. As many other collectors have found to their sorrow, this is by no means an easy thing to accomplish. Even when skins are cured at once, in the most careful manner, there is constant danger that they will

become spoiled, not only from the effect of the climate, but from the ravages of insects—particularly the plague of white ants with which all Africa is infested. These ants, by the way, are one of the greatest pests the hunter has to encounter. So voracious are they that a eoat or a pair of trousers left inadvertently overnight where they could reach it has been found in the morning nearly riddled. They will eat everything that is not stone or metal: after a visitation of them, a place is stripped as bare as after a flight of locusts. Throughout British East Africa and in Uganda one breaks through the same forests, suffers thirst and heat in the same desert land, wades through the same swamps, bags the same game. But though there may be monotony, there is never-failing variation as well: above all. there is ever the strange and subtle spell that only the Black Land has power to east over those who have once known her thrall.