abyss called the Great Rift, in which lies a chain of lakes: Nyassa,
Tanganyika, Kevu, Albert Edward, and Albert, whence the Nile flows down
into distant Egypt. This rift is walled and sometimes blocked by live
volcanoes, fouled with swamps, gigantic forests and new lava floods,
reeking with fever, and at the time of the journey was beset by tribes
of hostile cannibals. This pleasant path led to Khartoum, held in
those days by the Khalifa with his dervish army. The odds were about
a thousand to one that these two British adventurers were marching
straight to death or slavery. Their attempt was madness--that divine
madness that inspires all pioneers.
Now for a glimpse into this great adventure:
“I had shot a zebra ... and turning out at five-thirty A. M. crept up
within sixty yards.... I saw in the middle of a circle of some two
hundred vultures a grand old lion, leisurely gnawing the ribs, and
behind, four little jackals sitting in a row.... Behind stretched
the limitless plain, streaked with mists shimmering in the growing
light of the rising sun, clumps of graceful palms fenced in a sandy
arena where the zebra had fallen and round his attenuated remains,
and just out of reach of the swish of the monarch’s tail, the solid
circle of waiting vultures, craning their bald necks, chattering and
hustling one another, and the more daring quartette within the magic
circle like four little images of patience, while the lion in all his
might and matchless grandeur of form, leisurely chewed and scrunched
the titbits, magnificently regardless of the watchful eyes of the
encircling canaille.... I watched the scene for fully ten minutes, then
as he showed signs of moving I took the chance afforded of a broadside
shot and bowled him over with the .500 magnum. In inserting another
cartridge the gun jammed, and he rose, but after looking round for the
cause of the interruption, without success, started off at a gallop.
With a desperate effort I closed the gun and knocked him over again. He
was a fine black-maned lion and as he lay in a straight line from tip
to top ten feet, four inches, a very unusual length.”
Among the volcanoes near Lake Kivo, Grogan discovered a big one that
had been thrown up within the last two years, and there were vast new
floods of lava, hard to cross. One day, while searching out a route
for the expedition, he had just camped at a height of nine thousand
feet in the forest when he found the fresh tracks of a bull elephant,
and the spoor was much larger than he had ever seen. When he overtook
this giant the jungle was so dense that only the ridge of his back was
visible, and for some time he watched the animal picking the leaves off
a tree. When fodder ran short he tore down a tree whose trunk was two
feet thick, and fearing he might move on, Grogan fired. The elephant
fell, but recovered and clashed away, so that there were some hours of
tracking before the hunter could catch up again. And now on a flaw of
wind the giant scented him.
“The noise was terrific, and it suddenly dawned upon me that so far
from moving off he was coming on. I was powerless to move--a fall would
have been fatal--so I waited; but the forest was so dense that I never
saw him till his head was literally above me, when I fired both barrels
of the .500 magnum in his face. The whole forest seemed to crumple
up, and a second later I found myself ten feet above the ground, well
home in a thorn bush, while my gun was lying ten yards away in the
opposite direction; and I heard a roar as of thunder disappearing into
the distance. A few seconds later the most daring of my boys, Zowanji,
came hurrying along with that sickly green hue that a nigger’s face
assumes in moments of fear, and with his assistance I descended from
my spiky perch. I was drenched with blood, which fortunately proved to
be not mine, but that of the elephant; my gun, which I recovered, was
also covered with blood, even to the inside of the barrels. The only
damage I sustained was a slightly twisted knee. I can not say whether
the elephant actually struck me, or whether I was carried there by the
rush of the country.”
Following up, Grogan found enormous pools of blood, and half a mile
farther on heard grunts that showed that the elephant had scented
him. The animal rushed about with terrifying shrieks, devastated half
an acre of forest, and then moved on again. Several times the hunter
caught up, but the elephant moved on at an increasing pace, until
sunset put an end to Grogan’s hopes.
This part of the Rift has belts of forest, and close beside them are
patches of rich populous country where black nations live in fat
contentment. But for five years there had been trouble to the westward
where the Congo army had chased out the Belgian officials and run the
country to suit themselves. Still worse, there were certain cannibal
tribes moving like a swarm of locusts through Central Africa, eating
the settled nations. Lately the swarm had broken into the Rift, and as
Grogan explored northward he found the forest full of corpses. Here and
there lurked starving fugitives, but despite their frantic warnings
he moved on until he came to a wide province of desolated farms and
ruined villages. Seeing that he had but a dozen followers a mob of
cannibals attacked at night; but as they rushed, six fell to the white
man’s rifle, and when the rest fled he picked them off at the range
of a mile, as long as he could find victims. Then he entered a house
where they had been feasting. “A cloud of vultures hovering over, the
spot gave me an inkling of what I was about to see; but the realization
defies description; it haunts me in my dreams, at dinner it sits on my
leg-of-mutton, it bubbles in my soup, in fine, Watonga (the negro gun
bearer) would not eat the potatoes that grew in the same country.”
Grogan fled, and starved, for the mountain streams were choked with
corpses, the woods were a nightmare horror, to eat and sleep were alike
impossible. He warned his partner and the expedition marched by another
route.
Two very queer kinds of folk he met in the forests: the pygmies and the
ape-men. The pygmies are little hunters and not more than three feet
tall, but sturdy and compact, immensely strong, able to travel through
the pig-runs of the jungle, and brave enough to kill elephants with
their tiny poisoned arrows. He found them kindly, clever little folk,
though all the other explorers have disliked them.
The ape-men were tall, with hanging paunch and short legs, a small
skull and huge jaws, face, body and legs covered with wiry hair. The
hang of the long powerful arms, the slight stoop of the trunk, and the
hunted vacant expression of the face were marked. The twenty or thirty
of them Grogan met were frightened at first but afterward became very
friendly, proud to show him their skill in making fire with their fire
sticks.
Once in the forest he found the skeleton of an ape of gigantic size.
The natives explained that such apes were plentiful, although no white
man has ever seen one. They have a bad habit of stealing negro women.
At the northern end of the Rift, where the country flattens out
toward the Nile, Grogan and Sharp met with the officials of British
Uganda, which was then in a shocking muddle of mutinous black troops,
raids from the Congo, drought and famine. There Mr. Sharp left the
expedition, making his way to Mombasa; the carriers were sent back home
as a good riddance, and Mr. Grogan, with only five faithful attendants,
pushed on down the Nile Valley. The river was blocked with a weed
called the sudd, which a British expedition was trying to clear away,
and Grogan was forced to the eastward through horrible marshlands. He
had in all only fourteen men when he came to the Dinka country, and met
that queer race of swamp folk. They are very tall, some even gigantic,
beautifully built, but broad-footed, walking with feet picked up high
and thrust far forward--the gait of a pelican. At rest they stand on
one leg like a wading bird, the loose leg akimbo with its foot on the
straight leg’s knee. They are fierce, too, and one tribe made an attack
on Grogan’s party. His men threw down their loads, screaming that they
were lost, and the best Congo soldier fell stabbed to the heart, while
two others went down with cracked skulls.
“I took the chief,” says Grogan, “and his right-hand man with the
double barrel, then, turning round, found that my boy had bolted with
my revolver. At the same moment a Dinka hurled his spear at me; I
dodged it, but he rushed in and dealt me a swinging blow with his club,
which I fortunately warded with my arm, receiving no more damage than a
wholesome bruise. I poked my empty gun at his stomach, and he turned,
receiving a second afterwards a dum-dum in the small of his back. Then
they broke and ran, my army with eight guns having succeeded in firing
two shots. I climbed up an ant hill that was close by, and could see
them watching at about three hundred yards for our next move, which
was an unexpected one, for I planted a dum-dum apparently in the
stomach of one of the most obtrusive ruffians, whom I recognized by his
great height. They then hurried off and bunched at about seven hundred
yards, and another shot, whether fatal or not I could not see, sent
them off in all directions.”
The battle was finished, and Grogan toiled on with his wounded men,
famished, desperate, almost hopeless. One day in desert country he came
to the camp of Captain Dunn, a British officer.
“Captain Dunn: ‘How do you do?’
“I: ‘Oh, very fit, thanks; how are you? Had any sport?’
“Dunn: ‘Oh, pretty fair, but there is nothing here. Have a drink?’
“Then we washed, lunched, discussed the war, (South Africa), and
eventually Dunn asked where the devil I had come from.”
The battle of Omdurman had destroyed the dervish power, and opened the
Nile so that Grogan went on in ease and comfort by steamer to Khartoum,
to Cairo, and home. Still he heard in his sleep the night melody of the
lions--“The usual cry is a sort of vast sigh, taken up by the chorus
with a deep sob, sob, sob, or a curious rumbling noise. But the pukka
roar is indescribable ... it seems to permeate the whole universe,
thundering, rumbling, majestic: there is no music in the world so
sweet.”
It is hard to part with this Irish gentleman, whose fourteen months’
traverse of the Dark Continent is the finest deed in the history of
African exploration.
XXVIII
A. D. 1900
THE COWBOY PRESIDENT
Let others appraise the merits of this great American gentleman as
governor of New York, secretary of the United States Navy, colonel of
the Rough Riders, historian of his pet hero, Oliver Cromwell, and,
finally, president of the republic. He had spent half his life as
an adventurer on the wild frontier breaking horses, punching cows,
fighting grizzly bears, before he ever tackled the politicians, and he
had much more fun by the camp-fire than he got in his marble palace.
Here is his memory of a prairie fire:--“As I galloped by I saw that
the fire had struck the trees a quarter of a mile below me, in the
dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a giant, and roared in a
thunderous monotone as it swept up the coulée. I galloped to the hill
ridge ahead, saw that the fire line had already reached the divide,
and turned my horse sharp on his haunches. As I again passed under the
trees the fire, running like a race horse in the bush, had reached the
road; its breath was hot in my face; tongues of quivering flame leaped
over my head, and kindled the grass on the hillside fifty yards away.”
Thus having prospected the ground he discovered means of saving
himself, his companions, and his camp from the rushing flames. It
is an old artifice of the frontier to start a fresh fire, burn a
few acres, and take refuge on the charred ground while the storm of
flame sweeps by on either hand. But this was not enough. The fire
was burning the good pasture of his cattle and, unless stayed, might
sweep away not only leagues of grass, but ricks and houses. “Before
dark,” he continues, “we drove to camp and shot a stray steer, and
then split its carcass in two length ways with an ax. After sundown
the wind lulled--two of us on horseback dragging a half carcass bloody
side down, by means of ropes leading from our saddle-horns to the
fore and hind legs, the other two following on foot with slickers
and wet blankets. There was a reddish glow in the night air, and the
waving bending lines of flame showed in great bright curves against
the hillside ahead of us. The flames stood upright two or three feet
high. Lengthening the ropes, one of us spurred his horse across the
fire line, and then wheeling, we dragged the carcass along it, one
horseman being on the burnt ground, the other on the unburnt grass,
while the body of the steer lay lengthwise across the line. The weight
and the blood smothered the fire as we twitched the carcass over the
burning grass, and the two men following behind with their blankets
and slickers (oilskins) readily beat out any isolated tufts of flame.
Sometimes there would be a slight puff of wind, and then the man on the
grass side of the line ran the risk of a scorching.
“We were blackened with smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our thighs,
while at times the plunging horses tried to break or bolt. It was worse
when we came to some deep gully or ravine--we could see nothing, and
simply spurred our horses into it anywhere, taking our chances. Down
we would go, stumbling, sliding and pitching, over cut banks and into
holes and bushes, while the carcass bounded behind, now catching on
a stump, and now fetching loose with a ‘pluck’ that brought it full
on the horses’ haunches, driving them nearly crazy with fright. By
midnight the half carcass was worn through, but we had stifled the fire
in the comparatively level country to the eastwards. Back we went to
camp, drank huge drafts of muddy water, devoured roast ox-ribs, and
dragged out the other half carcass to fight the fire in the west. There
was some little risk to us who were on horseback, dragging the carcass;
we had to feel our way along knife-like ridges in the dark, one ahead
and the other behind while the steer dangled over the precipice on one
side, and in going down the buttes and into the cañons only by extreme
care could we avoid getting tangled in the ropes and rolling down in
a heap.” So at last the gallant fight was abandoned, and looking back
upon the fire which they had failed to conquer: “In the darkness it
looked like the rush of a mighty army.”
Short of cowboys and lunatics, nobody could have imagined such a feat
of horsemanship. Of that pattern is frontier adventure--daring gone
mad; and yet it is very rarely that the frontiersman finds the day’s
work worth recording, or takes the trouble to set down on paper the
stark naked facts of an incident more exciting than a shipwreck, more
dangerous than a battle, and far transcending the common experience of
men.
[Illustration: THEODORE ROOSEVELT]
Traveling alone in the Rockies, Colonel Roosevelt came at sundown to a
little ridge whence he could look into the hollow beyond--and there he
saw a big grizzly walking thoughtfully home to bed. At the first shot,
“he uttered a loud moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop,
while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off. After going a few
hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket ... which he did not leave....
As I halted I heard a peculiar savage whine from the heart of the
brush. Accordingly I began to skirt the edge standing on tiptoe, and
gazing earnestly in to see if I could not get a glimpse of his hide.
When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket he suddenly left it
directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the
hillside a little above. He turned his head stiffly toward me, scarlet
strings of froth hung from his lips, his eyes burned like embers in the
gloom. I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered
the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly
the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing
the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white
fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding
through the laurel bushes so that it was hard to aim.
“I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it
with a ball which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his
body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did
not know that I had struck him. He came unsteadily on, and in another
moment was close upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet
went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw, and going
into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled trigger, and
through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made
a vicious side blow at me. The rest of his charge carried him past. As
he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his
muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three
jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the
magazine, my rifle only holding four, all of which I had fired. Then he
tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed to give way, his
head drooped, and he rolled over--each of my first three bullets had
inflicted a mortal wound.”
This man who had fought grizzly bears came rather as a surprise among
the politicians in silk hats who run the United States. He had all the
gentry at his back because he is the first man of unquestioned birth
and breeding who has entered the political bear-pit since the country
squires who followed George Washington. He had all the army at his back
because he had charged the heights at Santiago de Cuba with conspicuous
valor at the head of his own regiment of cowboys. He had the navy at
his back because as secretary for the navy he had successfully governed
the fleet. But he was no politician when he came forward to claim the
presidency of the United States. Seeing that he could not be ignored
the wire-puller set a trap for this innocent and gave him the place of
vice-president. The vice-president has little to do, can only succeed
to the throne in the event of the president’s death, and is, after a
brief term, barred for life from any further progress. “Teddy” walked
into the trap and sat down.
But when President McKinley was murdered the politicians found that
they had made a most surprising and gigantic blunder. By their own
act the cowboy bear fighter must succeed to the vacant seat as chief
magistrate of the republic. President Roosevelt happened to be away at
the time, hunting bears in the Adirondack wilderness, and there began a
frantic search of mountain peaks and forest solitudes for the missing
ruler of seventy million people. When he was found, and had paid the
last honors to his dead friend, William McKinley, he was obliged to
proceed to Washington, and there take the oaths. His women folk had
a terrible time before they could persuade him to wear the silk hat
and frock coat which there serve in lieu of coronation robes, but he
consented even to that for the sake of the gorgeous time he was to have
with the politicians afterward.
XXIX
A. D. 1905
THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Once upon a time the Foul Fiend wanted a death-trap that would pick
out all the bravest men and destroy them, so he invented the Northwest
Passage.
So when Europe needed a short route to China round the north end of the
Americas our seamen set out to find a channel, and even when they knew
that any route must lie through the high Arctic, still they were not
going to be beaten. Our white men rule the world because we refuse to
be beaten.
The seamen died of scurvy, and it was two hundred years before they
found out how to stay alive on salted food, by drinking lime juice.
Safe from scurvy, they reached the gate of the passage at Lancaster
Sound, but there the winter caught them, so that their ships were
squashed in driving ice, and the men died of cold and hunger. Then
the explorers got ships too strong to be crushed; they copied the
dress of the Eskimo to keep them warm; and they carried food enough
to last for years. Deeper and deeper they forced their way into the
Arctic, but now they neared the magnetic pole where the compass is
useless, in belts of drifting fog darker than midnight. Still they
dared to go on, but the inner channels of the Arctic were found to be
frozen until the autumn gales broke up the ice-fields, leaving barely
six weeks for navigation before the winter frosts. At that rate the
three-thousand-mile passage would take three years. Besides, the ship
must carry a deck load of sledge dogs with their food, so that the men
might escape overland in case they were cast away. Only a big ship
could carry the supplies, but once again the seamen dared to try. And
now came the last test to break men’s hearts--the sea lane proved to
be so foul with shoals and rocks that no large vessel could possibly
squeeze through. At last, after three hundred years, the British seamen
had to own defeat. Our explorers had mapped the entire route, but no
ship could make the passage because it was impossible to raise money
for the venture.
Why should we want to get through this useless channel? Because it was
the test for perfect manhood free from all care for money, utterly
unselfish, of the highest intellect, patience, endurance and the last
possible extremity of valor.
And where the English failed a Norseman, Nordenskjöld made the
Northeast passage round the coast of Asia. Still nobody dared to broach
the Northwest passage round America, until a young Norse seaman solved
the riddle. Where no ship could cross the shoals it might be possible
with a fishing boat drawing only six feet of water. But she could not
carry five years’ supplies for men and dogs. Science came to the rescue
with foods that would pack into a tenth part of their proper bulk, and
as to the dog food, one might risk a deck load big as a haystack, to
be thrown off if the weather got too heavy. Still, how could a fishing
boat carry twenty men for the different expert jobs? Seven men might
be discovered each an expert in three or four different trades; the
captain serving as the astronomer and doctor, the cook as a naturalist
and seaman. So Roald Amundsen got Doctor Nansen’s help, and that
great explorer was backed by the king. Help came from all parts of
Scandinavia, and a little from Great Britain.
The _Gjöa_ was a forty-seven ton herring boat with a thirteen
horse-power motor for ship’s pet, loaded with five years’ stores for a
crew of seven men, who off duty were comrades as in a yachting cruise.
In 1903 she sailed from Christiania and spent July climbing the north
current in full view of the Greenland coast, the Arctic wonderland.
At Godhaven she picked up stores, bidding farewell to civilization,
passed Upernivik the last village, and Tassinssak, the last house on
earth, then entered Melville Bay with its three-hundred-mile frontage
of glacier, the most dangerous place in the Arctic. Beyond, near Cape
York, she found a deck load of stores left for her by one of the
Dundee whalers. There the people met the last white men, three Danish
explorers whose leader, Mylius Erichsen, was making his way to death
on the north coast of Greenland. So, like a barge with a hayrick, the
overload _Joy_ crossed from the Greenland coast to Lancaster Sound,
the gate of the Northwest passage, whose gatepost is Beechey Island,
sacred to the memory of Sir John Franklin, and the dead of the Franklin
search. The _Joy_ found some sole leather better than her own, a heap
of useful coal and an anvil, among the litter of old expeditions;
made the graves tidy; left a message at Franklin’s monument, and went
on. For three hundred years the channels ahead were known to have been
blocked; only by a miracle of good fortune could they be free from ice;
and this miracle happened, for the way was clear.
* * * * *