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IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA
[Illustration: ON A TYPICAL ELEPHANT TRAIL IN THE FOREST]
CARL E. AKELEY
IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA
Memorial Edition
[Illustration: THE STAR SERIES GC PCo]
Garden City, New York
Garden City Publishing Co., Inc
Copyright, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, by Doubleday,
Page & Company. All Rights Reserved.
Printed in the United States at the
Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.
TO
THE MEMORY
OF
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
"_He that hath drunk of Africa's fountains, will drink again._"
--OLD ARAB PROVERB
FOREWORD
I have written this Foreword, not after reading the manuscript of the
volume thoroughly, but after a quarter of a century acquaintance with
the experiences, thoughts, and ideals of the author himself. This is
the daybook, the diary, the narrative, the incident, and the adventure
of an African sculptor and an African biographer, whose observations
we hope may be preserved in imperishable form, so that when the animal
life of Africa has vanished, future generations may realize in some
degree the beauty and grandeur which the world has lost.
Sculptor and Biographer of the vanishing wild life of Africa--I do not
feel that I can adequately and truthfully characterize Carl E. Akeley
better than in these words. I have always maintained that he was a
sculptor, that sculpture was his real vocation, in which taxidermy was
an incidental element. The sculptor is a biographer and an historian.
Without sculpture we should know far less of the vanished greatness of
Greece than we do. Through sculpture Carl E. Akeley is recording the
vanishing greatness of the natural world of Africa. We palæontologists
alone realize that in Africa the remnants of all the royal families of
the Age of Mammals are making their last stand, that their backs are
up against the pitiless wall of what we call civilization. Human rights
are triumphing over animal rights, and it would be hard to determine
which rights are really superior or most worthy to survive.
Akeley came twenty-seven years ago into the midst of this unequal
contest between the flesh and blood of the animal kingdom and the
steel and lead of the sportsman, of the food and ivory hunter, and his
sympathies were all on the animal side in the fight. If his sympathies
had been on the human side he could not be the biographer of the
African vanishing world who speaks in the pages of this volume, lost in
admiration of the majesty of the elephant, the unchallenged reign of
the lion, the beauty and grace of the antelope, the undaunted courage
of the buffalo, and, last but not least, of certain splendid qualities
in the native African hunter. We know of only one other sculptor who
has immortalized the African Negro in bronze; this is Herbert Ward,
whose splendid life work is now in the United States National Museum.
Similarly, Carl E. Akeley's life work will be assembled in the African
and Roosevelt Halls of the American Museum, in human bronzes, in a
great group of the elephant, in rhinoceroses and gorillas, each group
representing his unerring portrayal of the character of the animal
and his sympathetic admiration of its finest qualities. It is in
making close observations for these groups that he has lived so long
in Africa and come very close to death on three occasions. We may
find something base in animal nature if we seek it; we may also find
much that is excellent and worthy of emulation. In this respect animal
nature is like human nature--we may take our choice. The decadent
sculptor and the decadent writer may choose the wrong side in human
nature, and the sensational writer may choose the wrong side in animal
nature; Akeley has chosen the ennobling side and does not dwell on the
vices either of the animals or of the natives but on their virtues,
their courage, defence of their young, devotion to the safety of their
families--simple, homely virtues which are so much needed to-day in our
civilization.
Truthfulness is the high note of the enduring biographer of animal
life as well as of human life. "Set down naught in malice, nothing
extenuate" is an essential principle in the portrayal of vanishing
Africa as it is in our portrayal of the contemporary manners and
customs of modern society; to know the elephant, the lion, the
antelope, the gorilla as they really are, not as they have been
pictured by sensational writers who have never seen them at close range
or who have been tempted to exaggerate their danger for commercial
reasons. Akeley's work on the gorilla is the latest and perhaps his
best portrayal of animal life in Africa as it really is. He defends the
reputation of this animal, which has been misrepresented in narrative
and fiction as a ferocious biped that attacks man at every opportunity,
abducts native women as in the sculptures of Fremiet, a monster with
all the vices of man and none of the virtues. For this untruthful
picture Akeley substitutes a real gorilla, chiefly a quadruped in
locomotion, not seeking combat with man, ferocious only when his family
rights are invaded, benign rather than malignant in countenance. Thus
he explodes the age-long gorilla myth and we learn for the first time
the place in nature of this great anthropoid and come to believe
that it should be conserved and protected rather than eliminated. In
other words, the author shows that there are good grounds for the
international movement to conserve the few remaining tribes of the
gorilla.
Akeley has come into closest touch with all these animals in turn,
even at great personal risk, always leaving with increased rather than
diminished admiration for them. This quality of truthfulness, combined
with his love of beauty of the animal form--beauty of hide, of muscle,
of bone, of facial expressions--will give permanence to Akeley's work,
and permanence will be the sure test of its greatness.
HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN.
July 27, 1923.
American Museum.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A NEW ART BEGUN 1
II. ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES 20
III. MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH LIONS 58
IV. HUNTING THE AFRICAN BUFFALO 82
V. LEOPARDS AND RHINOS 94
VI. ALONG THE TRAIL 111
VII. BILL 131
VIII. SAFARI HUNTERS 148
IX. INVENTIONS AND WARFARE 164
X. A TAXIDERMIST AS A SCULPTOR 175
XI. HUNTING GORILLAS IN CENTRAL AFRICA 188
XII. ADVENTURES ON MT. MIKENO 211
XIII. THE LONE MALE OF KARISIMBI 225
XIV. IS THE GORILLA ALMOST A MAN? 236
XV. ROOSEVELT AFRICAN HALL--A RECORD FOR THE FUTURE 251
LIST OF LINE DRAWINGS
PAGE
Map of the Elephant Country 34
Sketch Indicating Mr. Akeley's Movements
During Encounter with Leopard 98
Map Showing Mr. Akeley's Route to Gorilla
Country 199
Map Showing Location of Three Mountains,
Mikeno, Karisimbi, and Visoke 227
Plan of the Main Floor and Gallery of Roosevelt
African Hall 255
A Section of the "Annex" Containing Habitat
Groups 259
IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA
CHAPTER I
A NEW ART BEGUN
As a boy I lived on a farm near Clarendon, Orleans County, N. Y., and
for some reason, about the time I was thirteen, I got interested in
birds. I was out of place on the farm for I was much more interested
in taxidermy than in farming. As a matter of fact, by the time I was
sixteen I announced to the world that I was a taxidermist. I had
borrowed a book which had originally cost a dollar, and from that book
I learned taxidermy up to a point where I felt justified in having
business cards printed stating that I did artistic taxidermy in all its
branches. I even went so far as to take several lessons in painting
from a lady who taught art in Clarendon, in order that I might paint
realistic backgrounds behind the birds that I mounted. So far as I
know, that was the first experiment of painted backgrounds used for
mounted birds or animals. I believe that my first attempt in this
direction is still in existence in Clarendon but I have been a little
afraid to go to see it.
In the fall of the year in which I was nineteen, after the crops were
in, I set out to get a wider field for my efforts. There was at that
time in the neighbouring town of Brockport an Englishman named David
Bruce, whose hobby was taxidermy. By calling he was a painter and
interior decorator--a very skilful craftsman who did special work far
and wide through the country. As a recreation he mounted birds and
animals for sportsmen. His office was filled with birds in cases and he
was surrounded with other evidences of his hobby.
To me it seemed that he led an ideal life, for he had a successful
business and one that gave him enough spare time to indulge his fancies
in taxidermy. It hadn't entered my head at the time that a man could
make a living at anything as fascinating as taxidermy, so I felt that
the best possible solution of the problem was that which Mr. Bruce had
devised. I went to see if I could get a job with him in his decorating
business in order that I might also be with him in his hobby. He was
most kindly and cordial. I remember that he took me out and bought
me an oyster stew and told me, while we were eating, that if I came
with him he would teach me all his trade secrets in painting and
decorating, which he had kept even from his workmen. It seemed to me
that a glorious future was settled for me then and there. If I was not
in the seventh heaven, I was at least in the fifth or sixth and going
up, and then my prospects became so favourable as to become almost
terrifying. Mr. Bruce, after having made me such alluring offers to
come with him, said that he thought I ought to go to a much better
place than his shop--a place where I might actually make a living at
taxidermy. In Rochester there was a famous institution, Ward's Natural
Science Establishment. At that time, and for years afterward, this
establishment supplied the best museums in this country with nearly all
their mounted specimens and also most of their other natural history
collections. Professor Ward was the greatest authority on taxidermy of
his day. It was to this place that Bruce suggested I should go. The
step which he planned seemed a great venture to me, but I determined
to try it. I went home from Brockport and told the family what Bruce
had said and what I intended to do. I got up early next morning--I
didn't have to wake up for I had hardly slept a wink--and walked three
miles to the station to take the train to Rochester. When I reached
there, I walked all over town before I found Ward's Natural Science
Establishment and the more I walked the lower and lower my courage
sank. The Establishment consisted of Professor Ward's house and
several other buildings, the entrance to the place being an arch made
of the jaws of a sperm whale. An apprentice approaching the studio of
a Rembrandt or a Van Dyke couldn't have been more in awe than I was.
I walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the Professor's house
for a while until I finally gathered courage to ring the door-bell.
I was admitted to an elaborately furnished room, and after a little
while Professor Ward came in. It had been a long time since I had had
breakfast, but he hadn't quite finished his, and this contrast seemed
to increase my disadvantages in his presence. Moreover, Professor Ward
was always very busy and very brusque and was a very fierce man. Not
even when a leopard sprang on me in Africa have I had a worse moment
than when this little man snapped out, "What do you want?"
The last vestige of my pride and assurance was centred on my business
card, and without a word I handed him this evidence of my skill and
art as a taxidermist. The card seemed to justify my belief in it, for
the great man asked me when I could go to work and offered me the
munificent sum of $3.50 a week. I discovered a boarding house where I
could get a room and my meals for $4 a week and on this basis I began
to learn the art of taxidermy and to run through my slender resources.
The art of taxidermy as practised at Ward's Natural Science
Establishment in those days was very simple. To stuff a deer, for
example, we treated the skin with salt, alum, and arsenical soap. Then
the bones were wired and wrapped and put in his legs and he was hung,
upside down, and the body stuffed with straw until it would hold no
more If then we wished to thin the body at any point, we sewed through
it with a long needle and drew it in. Now to do this, no knowledge of
the animal's anatomy or of anything else about it was necessary. There
was but little attempt to put the animals in natural attitudes; no
attempt at grouping, and no accessories in the shape of trees or other
surroundings. The profession I had chosen as the most satisfying and
stimulating to a man's soul turned out at that time to have very little
science and no art at all.
The reason for this was not so much that no one knew better. It was
more the fact that no one would pay for better work. Professor Ward
had to set a price on his work that the museums would pay, and at that
time most museums were interested almost exclusively in the collection
of purely scientific data and cared little for exhibitions that would
appeal to the public. They preferred collections of birds' skins to
bird groups, and collections of mammal data and skeletons to mammal
groups. The museums then had no taxidermists of their own.
However, many of the prominent museum men of to-day had their early
training at Ward's Natural Science Establishment. Soon after I went
to Ward's another nineteen-year-old boy named William Morton Wheeler,
now of the Bussey Institution at Harvard, turned up there. E. N.
Gueret, now in charge of the Division of Osteology in the Field Museum
of Natural History, George K. Cherrie, the South American explorer;
the late J. William Critchley, who became the chief taxidermist in
the Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences; Henry L. Ward, director of
the Kent Scientific Museum in Grand Rapids; H. C. Denslow, an artist
formerly associated with several of the leading museums as bird
taxidermist; William T. Hornaday, director of the New York Zoölogical
Park, and Frederick S. Webster, who was the first president of the
Society of American Taxidermists, were all among the friends I made in
those early days. A long list of others, not my contemporaries at that
institution, but men with whom I have since been associated in museum
work, might be added. Dr. Frederic A. Lucas had left Ward's shortly
before my arrival to take up his duties at the Smithsonian Institution
but I came to feel that I knew him very well through the stories and
reminiscences of my companions. It was not until my return from my
third expedition in 1911 that my delightful association with him as the
director of the American Museum of Natural History was begun.
I have a theory that the first museum taxidermist came into existence
in about this way: One of our dear old friends, some old-fashioned
closet naturalist who knew animals only as dried skins and had been
getting funds from some kind-hearted philanthropist, one day, under
pressure from the philanthropist, who wanted something on exhibition to
show his friends, sent around the corner and called in an upholsterer
and said, "Here is the skin of an animal. Stuff this thing and make
it look like a live animal." The upholsterer did it and kept on doing
it until the scientist had a little more money. Given more work the
upholsterer became ambitious and had an idea that these animals might
be improved upon, so he began to do better work. But it took more time
and cost more money so that he lost his job. Thus it has been that from
the very people from whom we expected the most encouragement in the
beginning of our efforts, we received the least.
I remember very well one time when an opportunity came to do something
a little better. A zebra was brought into the Establishment. I had been
studying anatomy and I had learned the names of all the muscles and all
the bones. When I saw the zebra I realized that here was an opportunity
to do something good and I asked to make a plaster cast of the body.
I had to do it in my own time and worked from supper until breakfast
time, following out a few special experiments of my own in the process.
Nevertheless, the zebra was handed out to be mounted in the old way and
my casts were thrown on the dump.
I stayed at this leading institution of taxidermy for four years and
while I was there we stuffed animals for most of the museums in the
country, for hunters and sportsmen, and various other kinds of people,
including Barnum's circus. The animal we stuffed for Barnum's circus
was the famous elephant Jumbo. We had to use a slightly different
method for Jumbo, not only because of his size but because he had to be
made rigid and strong enough to stand being carted around the country
with the circus; for this old elephant served dead as well as alive to
amuse and instruct the public. As a matter of fact, he is still at it,
for his skin on the steel-and-wood frame we made for it at Ward's is
at Tufts College and his skeleton is at the American Museum of Natural
History.
Between the time that I first went to Ward's and my last job there,
which was on Jumbo, there was an intermission which I spent in the
taxidermy shop of John Wallace on North William Street in New York. I
roomed in Brooklyn with Doctor Funk, of Funk & Wagnalls, and worked in
the basement shop of Wallace's, and a more dreary six months I never
had spent anywhere. So when Ward came after me to go back, saying that
his having fired me was all a mistake due to erroneous reports that
had been given him, I went, and stayed three years. During this time
I got to know Professor Webster of Rochester University, who later
became president of Union College, and he urged me to study to become
a professor. In spite of the fact that my education had stopped early
on account of a lack of funds, I set to work to prepare myself to go
to the Sheffield Scientific School. But between working in the daytime
and studying at night I broke down, and when examination time came
I wasn't ready. However, my chances of further education, although
delayed, seemed improved. At the time I was studying for the Sheffield
Scientific School my friend, William Morton Wheeler, had left Ward's
and was teaching in the High School in Milwaukee. He wrote and offered
to tutor me if I would go out there. So I went to Milwaukee and got a
job with the museum there, which was to give me food and lodging while
I prepared for college. It did more than that, for it absorbed me so
that I gave up all thought of abandoning taxidermy. I stayed eight
years in Milwaukee, working in the museum and in a shop of my own.
Several things happened there which stimulated my interest in
taxidermy. One of the directors had been to Lapland and had collected
the skin of a reindeer, a Laplander's sled, and the driving
paraphernalia, and he was anxious to have these shown in the museum.
This material we turned into a group of a Laplander driving a reindeer
over the snow. That was fairly successful, and we induced the museum to
buy a set of skins of orang-outangs, which Charles F. Adams, another of
my former colleagues at Ward's, had collected in Borneo. We arranged
them in a group using some bare branches as accessories.
In making these groups we had had to abandon the old straw-rag-and-bone
method of stuffing and create modelled manikins over which to stretch
the skins. As soon as this point was reached several problems
presented themselves, the solution of which meant an entirely new era
in taxidermy. If a man was going to model a realistic manikin for an
animal's skin, instead of stuffing the skin with straw, it was evident
he would have to learn to model. Likewise it turned out that, even if
a man knew how to model, he couldn't model an animal body sufficiently
well for the skin to fit it unless he knew animal anatomy. And we found
out also that making a manikin from a model was not as simple as it
sounds, but that on the contrary it is about as difficult as casting in
bronze, the difference being that the art of bronze casting has been
developed through many years, while the art of making manikins had to
be created comparatively quickly and by a very few people. We worked
at these problems step by step in Milwaukee and made a good deal of
progress.
The reindeer and orang-outang work encouraged me to suggest a series
of groups of the fur-bearing animals of Wisconsin, the muskrat group
to be the first of the series. This suggestion was more tolerated than
encouraged when it was first made, but I went as far as I could go
with my dream and before I left there I finished the muskrat group, as
I did most of my early experiments, in spite of the opposition of the
authorities. It was the old, old story of starting a thing and having
to give it up because of lack of support. But my idea won eventually.
It was only a short time until my friend Wheeler was made director of
the museum and from then on there was full sympathy for the plan. This
was an entering wedge, and since that time group after group has been
added, until now that museum has a magnificent series.
Wheeler, who had encouraged me to go to Milwaukee, also was the cause
of my leaving. One year, while he was director, he went to Europe,
and while abroad had a talk with Sir William Flower of the British
Museum, in which Flower intimated that he would like me to go there.
So I planned to quit Milwaukee and to go to London. However, I didn't
immediately get any farther than Chicago. I stopped there and happened
to go into the Field Museum of Natural History. It was then housed
in the old art gallery of the Columbian Exposition. Professor Daniel
G. Eliot was its curator of zoölogy. He offered me some taxidermy
contracts on the spot and I accepted. While I was doing them he
suggested that I go with him on an expedition to Africa. We started in
1896.
When we got back from that trip I continued at the Field Museum as
chief of the Department of Taxidermy. Before leaving Milwaukee I had
been working on an idea of four deer groups, to be called the "Four
Seasons," to show the animals in natural surroundings of spring,
summer, autumn, and winter. I collected a good deal of the necessary
material and put a lot of work on the project in my own shop, and
finally reached a point where it became necessary for me to know
whether the museum was going to want the groups or not. I approached
the curator of zoölogy. He said that he would recommend the purchase of
one of the four. Later I saw the president of the museum. After some
discussion he asked why it was that the museum couldn't have the four
groups. I gave him every assurance that it could. I spent four years on
these four groups. It wouldn't take so long now but at that time we had
not only to make the groups but also to perfect the methods of doing
it at the same time. Four years is a long time to take on four deer
groups, but the number of things in taxidermy we worked out in doing
those groups made it a very full four years' work. In fact, the method
finally used for mounting those deer groups is the method still in use.
Briefly, that method is this: For each animal a rough armature was
made, on which a life-sized clay model was shaped just like a clay
model made for casting in bronze except that to facilitate accuracy the
skull and leg bones of the animal were used. This model was checked by
measurements made of the dead animal in the field, by photographs, and
frequently by anatomical casts made in the field. The final result
was a model not only of the species but of the actual animal whose
skin we were going to use. All this took a lot of time, study, and
money, and it was quite a different thing from stuffing a skin with
rags and straw. For a temporary effect the skin could be mounted on the
clay model, but an animal so mounted would deteriorate. For permanent
work it was necessary to devise some light, durable substance, which
would not be affected by moisture, to take the place of the clay of
the manikin. After a lot of experimentation I came to the conclusion
that a papier-mâché manikin reënforced by wire cloth and coated with
shellac would be tough, strong, durable, and impervious to moisture.
It isn't possible to model papier-mâché with the hands as one moulds
clay, so the problem resolved itself into making a plaster mould of the
clay model and then using that to build the papier-mâché manikin. When
a man wishes to make a bronze in a mould he can pour the melted metal
into the mould and when it has cooled remove the mould. But you can't
pour papier-mâché reënforced with wire cloth and if you put it into a
plaster-of-paris mould it will stick. The solution of this difficulty
struck me suddenly one day when I was riding into town to go to the
museum.
"I've got it!" I exclaimed, to the amusement of my friends and the rest
of the car full of people. As soon as I could get to my shop I tried
it and it worked. It was to take the plaster moulds of the clay model
and coat the inside of them with glue. On this glue I laid a sheet of
muslin and worked it carefully and painstakingly into every undulation
of the mould. On this went thin layers of papier-mâché with the wire
cloth reënforcement likewise worked carefully into every undulation of
the mould. Every layer of the papier-mâché composition was carefully
covered with a coating of shellac so that each layer, as well as the
whole, was entirely impervious to water. For animals the size of a deer
two layers of reënforced composition give strength enough. For animals
the size of an elephant four are sufficient and four layers are only
about an eighth of an inch thick. When the final coat of shellac was
well dried I immersed the whole thing in water. The water affected
nothing but the thin coating of glue between the mould and the muslin.
That melted and my muslin-covered, reënforced papier-mâché sections of
the manikin came out of the plaster mould clean and perfect replicas
of the original clay model. The four sections of the manikin were
assembled with the necessary leg irons and wooden ribs and the whole
was ready for the skin.
The combination of glue and muslin was the key to the whole problem.
The manikin so made is an absolutely accurate reproduction of the
clay model, even more accurate than bronze castings for there is no
shrinkage. The manikin of a deer so constructed weighs less than thirty
pounds, but it is strong enough to hold a man's weight. I have sat on
the back of an antelope mounted in this manner and done it no harm.
Moreover, it is entirely made of clean and durable materials. There is
nothing to rot or shrink or to cause shrinkage or decay in the skin.
Of the animal itself only the shells of the hoofs and horns, and the
skin are used, and the skin is much more carefully cleaned and tanned
than those of women's furs. An animal prepared in this way will last
indefinitely. This was a long step from the methods we used at Ward's
of filling a raw skin with greasy bones of the legs and skull and
stuffing the body out with straw, excelsior, old rags, and the like.
I believe that there has not yet been devised a better method of
taxidermy than that described here and its use has become almost
universal. Although it does not take much time to tell about it, the
mounting of an animal in this way is a long and tedious process.
Moreover, it is hard work. Consequently, but few of the people using
it do a thoroughly constructed manikin. In an attempt to save time and
money cheaper processes are resorted to and many animals, mounted by
methods that only approximate that which I have evolved, fail to show
good results. When the method was first introduced at the American
Museum of Natural History, the authorities objected to its expense,
and to cut down the cost a light plaster cast, believed to be "just as
good," was substituted for the manikin. Many specimens mounted in this
manner have since been thrown on the dump heap.
I finally got the four deer groups finished and the Field Museum bought
them at the price agreed upon. When I figured it out financially I
found that I had come out even on my expenditures for labour and
materials but for my own time and for profit there was nothing.
However, I had the experience and the method and I felt that it was a
pretty good four years' work.
In the old days at Ward's a taxidermist was a man who took an animal's
skin from a hunter or collector and stuffed it or upholstered it.
By the time I had finished the deer groups I had become pretty well
convinced that a real taxidermist needed to know the technique of
several quite different things.
First, he must be a field man who can collect his own specimens, for
other people's measurements are never very satisfactory, and actual
study of the animals in their own environment is necessary in making
natural groups.
Second, he must know both animal anatomy and clay modelling in order to
make his models.
Third, he should have something of the artistic sense to make his
groups pleasing as well as accurate.
Fourth, he must know the technique of manikin making, the tanning
of skins, and the making of accessories such as artificial leaves,
branches, etc.
With all these different kinds of technique in taxidermy it is obvious
that if a man attempts to do practically everything himself, as I did
in the deer groups, taxidermy must be a very slow process--just as if
a painter had to learn to make his own paint or a sculptor to cast his
own bronzes or chisel his concepts out of granite or marble.
The proper care of the skins in the field is itself a subject of
infinite ramifications. I remember, for instance, my experience in
skinning the first elephant that I killed. I shot him in the early
afternoon. I immediately set to work photographing and measuring him.
That took about an hour, and then I set to the serious work of getting
off his skin. I worked as rapidly as I could, wherever possible using
the help of the fifty boys of my _safari_, and by strenuous efforts
finished taking the skin off and salting it by breakfast time the next
morning. And that was not quick enough. Before I got all the skin off
the carcass some of it on the under side had begun to decompose and
I lost a little of it. This was a particularly difficult beast to
skin because he had fallen in a little hollow and after skinning the
exposed side of him all the efforts of the fifty black boys to roll him
over, out of the depression, so that we could easily get at the other
side, failed. After I had had more practice, I was able to photograph,
measure, and skin an elephant and have his hide salted in eight hours.
But then the work on the skin was only begun. A green skin like this
weighs a ton and a quarter and in places is as much as two and a half
inches thick. There is about four days' work in thinning it. I have had
thirty or forty black boys for days cutting at the inside of the skin
in this thinning process or sharpening the knives with which they did
the work.
When it is finally thinned down, thoroughly dried and salted, it
presents another problem. Moisture will ruin it. Salt, the only
available preservative, attracts moisture. It isn't possible to carry
zinc-lined cases into the forests after elephants. I tried building
thatched roofs over the skins but it was not a success. I speculated on
many other plans but none appeared feasible. Finally Nature provided a
solution for the difficulty.
There are, in the elephant country, many great swarms of bees. I set
the natives to work collecting beeswax which is as impervious to
moisture as shellac. I melted the wax and used it to coat unbleached
cotton cloth, known in East Africa as Americana. In this water-tight,
wax-covered cloth I wrapped my dried and salted rolls of skins and
packed them on the porters' heads down to the railroad.
As a matter of fact, field conditions make it so difficult to care for
skins properly that only a very small percentage ever reach a taxidermy
shop in perfect condition.
Similarly the measurement of animals for taxidermy presents many
difficulties. The size of a lion's leg, for instance, measured as it
hangs limp after the animal's death is not accurate data for the leg
with the muscles taut ready for action. Nor is an animal's body the
same size with its lungs deflated in death as when the breath of life
was in its body. All these things must be taken into account in using
measurements or even casts to resurrect an animal true to its living
appearance.
My work on the deer groups impressed me with the fact that taxidermy,
if it was to be an art, must have skilled assistance as the other arts
have. I began to dream of museums which would have artist-naturalists
who would have the vision to plan groups and the skill to model them
and who would be furnished with skilled assistance in the making of the
manikins and accessories and in the mounting of the animals. And it
seemed as if the dream were about to come true. About this time I had a
conference with Dr. Herman Bumpus, then director of the American Museum
of Natural History in New York. He told me that he had then at the
museum a young man named James Clark who could model but who did not
know the technique of making manikins and mounting animals. The result
of our talk was that Clark came out to my shop in Chicago and together
we went through the whole process, mounting a doe which now stands in
the American Museum. But the old museum trouble broke out again. It
cost a lot to mount animals in the method which Clark brought back. So
there was pressure to reduce the cost and, under this pressure, the
methods, in the words of O. Henry, "were damaged by improvements."
However, in the course of time it was demonstrated that while it often
happens that an honest effort to make a thing better often makes it
cheaper also, an effort merely to cheapen a thing very seldom makes it
better.
In the meanwhile, in 1905, I went to Africa again, to collect
zoölogical material for the Field Museum.
Again, in 1909, I went, this time for the American Museum of Natural
History. I stayed two years, studying elephants, lions, and lion
spearing. When I got back and set to work mounting the elephant group
in the American Museum in New York, I discovered that with these
hairless skins there was opportunity for a little simplification of
the method used in the deer groups. It was possible actually to model
the skin on the clay manikin, only in this case the clay manikin was
for convenience in three pieces. A layer of plaster of paris was then
laid on outside the skin to hold it firmly in shape. Then the clay
removed from the inside was replaced with a layer of plaster. Thus
every detail of the skin was held firmly in the matrix of plaster
until it was thoroughly dried, when the plaster was removed from the
inside and replaced with succeeding layers of wire cloth and shellaced
papier-mâché, making the skin an integral part of the manikin. In
other words, the skin functioned practically as does the muslin in the
manikins made for haired animals. When this was done the plaster mould
was taken off the outside and the clean, light, durable half-sections
of elephants were put together.
When I got back from Africa in 1911 I was dreaming of a great African
Hall which would combine all the advances that had been made in
taxidermy and the arts of museum exhibition and at the same time would
make a permanent record of the fast-disappearing wild life of that most
interesting animal kingdom, Africa.