HIPPO CAMP
It took no little time to stow all our baggage, food and tents upon
the launch and its steel boats, and though our camp was astir at
half-past three, the dawn was just breaking when we were able to
embark. And then the _James Martin_ wedged herself upon a rock a few
yards from the shore of the sheltering inlet, and seemed to have got
herself hard and fast; for pull as we might with all the force of the
launch at full steam, and the added weight of the current to help us,
not an inch would she budge. Everything had, therefore, to be unloaded
again from the straggler, and when she had thus been lightened and her
freight transferred to the attendant canoes, James Kago ordered his
tribesmen to leap into the water, which was not more than five feet
deep, and push and lift the little vessel whilst the steamer tugged.
But this task the natives were most reluctant to perform out of
fear of the crocodiles, who might at any moment make a pounce,
notwithstanding all the noise and clatter. Thereupon the energetic
chief seized hold of them one after another round the waist, and threw
them full-splash into the stream, till at least twenty were
accumulated round the boat, and then, what with their impatience to
finish their uncomfortable job and our straining tow rope, the _James
Martin_ floated free, was reloaded, and we were off.
[Illustration: THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO.]
As we drifted out into mid-stream the most beautiful view of the falls
broke upon us. It was already almost daylight, but the sun had not yet
actually topped the great escarpment over which the Nile descends. The
banks on both sides of the river, clad with dense and lofty forest and
rising about twice as high as Cliveden Woods from the water's edge,
were dark in shadow. The river was a broad sheet of steel grey veined
with paler streaks of foam. The rock portals of the falls were jetty
black, and between them, illumined by a single shaft of sunlight,
gleamed the tremendous cataract--a thing of wonder and glory, well
worth travelling all the way to see.
We were soon among the hippopotami. Every two or three hundred yards,
and at every bend of the river, we came upon a herd of from five to
twenty. To us in a steam launch they threatened no resistance or
danger. But their inveterate hostility to canoes leads to repeated
loss of life among the native fishermen, whose frail craft are
crumpled like eggshells in the snap of enormous jaws. Indeed, all the
way from here to Nimule they are declared to be the scourge and terror
of the Nile. Fancy mistaking a hippopotamus--almost the largest
surviving mammal in the world--for a water lily. Yet nothing is more
easy. The whole river is dotted with floating lilies detached from any
root and drifting along contentedly with the current. It is the habit
of the hippo to loll in the water showing only his eyes and the tips
of his ears, and perhaps now and again a glimpse of his nose, and thus
concealed his silhouette is, at three hundred yards, almost
indistinguishable from the floating vegetation. I thought they also
looked like giant cats peeping. So soon, however, as they saw us
coming round a corner and heard the throbbing of the propeller, they
would raise their whole heads out of the water to have a look, and
then immediately dive to the bottom in disgust. Our practice was
then to shut off steam and drift silently down upon them. In this way
one arrives in the middle of the herd, and when curiosity or want of
air compels them to come up again there is a chance of a shot. One
great fellow came up to breathe within five yards of the boat, and the
look of astonishment, of alarm, of indignation, in his large,
expressive eyes--as with one vast snort he plunged below--was comical
to see. These creatures are not easy to kill. They bob up in the most
unexpected quarters, and are down again in a second. One does not like
to run the risk of merely wounding them, and the target presented is
small and vanishing. I shot one who sunk with a harsh sort of scream
and thud of striking bullet. We waited about a long time for him to
float up to the surface, but in vain, for he must have been carried
into or under a bed of reeds and could not be retrieved.
[Illustration: EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO.]
[Illustration: FAJAO.]
The Murchison, or Karuma, Falls, as the natives call them, are about
thirty miles distance from the Albert Lake, and as with the current we
made six or seven miles an hour, this part of our journey was short.
Here the Nile offers a splendid waterway. The main channel is at least
ten feet deep, and navigation, in spite of shifting sandbanks,
islands, and entanglements of reeds and other vegetation, is not
difficult. The river itself is of delicious, sweet water, and flows
along in many places half-a-mile broad. Its banks for the first twenty
miles were shaded by beautiful trees, and here and there contained by
bold headlands, deeply scarped by the current. The serrated outline of
the high mountains on the far side of the Albert Nyanza could soon be
seen painted in shadow on the western sky. As the lake is approached
the riparian scenery degenerates; the sandbanks became more intricate;
the banks are low and flat, and huge marshes encroach upon the river
on either hand. Yet even here the traveller moves through an imposing
world.
At length, after five or six hours' steaming, we cleared the mouth of
the Victoria Nile and swam out on to the broad expanses of the lake.
Happily on this occasion it was quite calm. How I wished then that I
had not allowed myself to be deterred by time and croakers from a
longer voyage, and that we could have turned to the south and,
circumnavigating the Albert, ascended the Semliki river with all its
mysterious attractions, have visited the forests on the south-western
shores, and caught, perhaps, a gleam of the snows of Ruenzori! But we
were in the fell grip of carefully-considered arrangements, and, like
children in a Christmas toy shop always looking back, were always
hurried on.
Yet progress offered its prizes as well as delay. Some of my party had
won the confidence of the engineer of the launch, who had revealed to
them a valuable secret. It appeared that "somewhere between Lake
Albert and Nimule"--not to be too precise--there was a place known
only to the elect, and not to more than one or two of them, where
elephants abounded and rhinoceros swarmed. And these rhinoceros, be it
observed, were none of your common black variety with two stumpy horns
almost equal in size, and a prehensile tip to their noses. Not at all;
they were what are called "white" rhino--Burchell's white
rhinoceros,[1] that is their full style--with one long, thin, enormous
horn, perhaps a yard long--on their noses, and with broad, square
upper lips. Naturally we were all very much excited, and in order to
gain a day on our itinerary to study these very rare and remarkable
animals more closely, we decided not to land and pitch a camp, but to
steam on all through the night. Meanwhile our friend the engineer
undertook to accomplish the difficult feat of finding the channel,
with all its windings, in the dark.
The scene as we left the Albert Lake and entered the White Nile was of
surpassing beauty. The sun was just setting behind the high, jagged
peaks of the Congo Mountains to the westward. One after another, and
range behind range, these magnificent heights--rising perhaps to eight
or nine thousand feet--unfolded themselves in waves of dark
plum-coloured rock, crested with golden fire. The lake stretched away
apparently without limit like the sea, towards the southward in an
ever-broadening swell of waters--flushed outside the shadow of the
mountains into a delicious pink. Across its surface our tiny
flotilla--four on a string--paddled its way towards the narrowing
northern shores and the channel of the Nile.
[Illustration: APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO HILLS IN THE
DISTANCE.]
[Illustration: WADELAI.]
The White Nile leaves the Albert Lake in majesty. All the way to
Nimule it is often more like a lake than a river. For the first twenty
miles of its course it seemed to me to be at least two miles across.
The current is gentle, and sometimes in the broad lagoons and bays
into which the placid waters spread themselves it is scarcely
perceptible. I slept under an awning in the _Kisingiri_, the last and
smallest boat of the string, and, except for the native steersman and
piles of baggage, had it all to myself. It was, indeed, delightful to
lie fanned by cool breezes and lulled by the soothing lappings of the
ripples, and to watch, as it were, from dreamland the dark outlines of
the banks gliding swiftly past and the long moonlit levels of the
water.
At daybreak we were at Wadelai. In twenty-four hours from leaving
Fajao we had made nearly a hundred miles of our voyage. Without the
sigh of a single porter these small boats and launch had transported
the whole of our "safari" over a distance which would on land have
required the labours and sufferings of three hundred men during at
least a week of unbroken effort. Such are the contrasts which impress
upon one the importance of utilising the water-ways of Central
Africa, of establishing a complete circulation along them, and of
using railways in the first instance merely to link them together.
Wadelai was deserted. Upon a high bank of the river stood a long row
of tall, peaked, thatched houses, the walls of a fort, and buildings
of European construction. All was newly abandoned to ruin. The
Belgians are evacuating all their posts in the Lado enclave except
Lado itself, and these stations, so laboriously constructed, so long
maintained, will soon be swallowed by the jungle. The Uganda
Government also is reducing its garrisons and administration in the
Nile province, and the traveller sees, not without melancholy, the
spectacle of civilization definitely in retreat after more than half a
century of effort and experiment.
We disembarked and climbed the slopes through high rank grass and
scattered boulders till we stood amidst the rotting bungalows and
shanties of what had been a bold bid for the existence of a town.
Wadelai had been occupied by white men perhaps for fifty years. For
half a century that feeble rush-light of modernity, of cigarettes, of
newspapers, of whisky and pickles, had burned on the lonely banks of
the White Nile to encourage and beckon the pioneer and settler. None
had followed. Now it was extinguished; and yet when I surveyed the
spacious landscape with its green expanses, its lofty peaks, its
trees, its verdure, rising from the brink of the mighty and majestic
river, I could not bring myself for a moment to believe that
civilization has done with the Nile Province or the Lado Enclave, or
that there is no future for regions which promise so much.
All through the day we paddled prosperously with the stream. At times
the Nile lost itself in labyrinths of papyrus, which reproduced the
approaches to Lake Chioga, and through which we threaded a tortuous
course, with many bumps and brushings at the bends. But more often the
banks were good, firm earth, with here and there beautiful cliffs of
red sandstone, hollowed by the water, and rising abruptly from its
brim, crowned with luxuriant foliage. In places these cliffs were
pierced by narrow roadways, almost tunnels, winding up to the high
ground, and perfectly smooth and regular in their construction. They
looked as if they were made on purpose to give access to and from the
river; and so they had been--by the elephants. Legions of water-fowl
inhabited the reeds, and troops of cranes rose at the approach of the
flotilla. Sometimes we saw great, big pelican kind of birds, almost as
big as a man, standing contemplative on a single leg, and often on the
tree-tops a fish-eagle, glorious in bronze and cream, sat sunning
himself and watching for a prey.
I stopped once in the hope of catching butterflies, but found none of
distinction--only a profuse variety of common types, a high level of
mediocrity without beauties or commanders, and swarms of ferocious
mosquitoes prepared to dispute the ground against all comers; and it
was nearly four in the afternoon when the launch suddenly jinked to
the left out of the main stream into a small semi-circular bay, five
hundred yards across, and we came to land at "Hippo Camp."
[Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" NEARING
NIMULE.]
[Illustration: HIPPO CAMP.]
We thought it was much too late to attempt any serious shooting that
day. There were scarcely three and a half hours of daylight. But after
thirty-six hours cramped on these little boats a walk through jungle
was very attractive; and, accordingly, dividing ourselves into
three parties, we started in three different directions--like the
spokes of a wheel. Captain Dickinson, who commanded the escort, went
to the right with the doctor; Colonel Wilson and another officer set
out at right angles to the river bank; and I went to the left under
the guidance of our friend the engineer. I shall relate very briefly
what happened to each of us. The right-hand party got, after an hour's
walking, into a great herd of elephants, which they numbered at over
sixty. They saw no very fine bulls; they found themselves surrounded
on every side by these formidable animals; and, the wind being shifty,
the hour late, and the morrow free, they judged it wise to return to
camp without shooting. The centre party, consisting of Colonel Wilson
and his companion, came suddenly, after about a mile and a half's
walk, upon a fine solitary bull elephant. They stalked him for some
time, but he moved off, and, on perceiving himself followed, suddenly,
without the slightest warning on his part and no great provocation on
theirs, he threw up his trunk, trumpeted, and charged furiously down
upon them; whereupon they just had time to fire their rifles in his
face and spring out of his path. This elephant was followed for some
miles, but it was not for three months afterwards that we learned that
he had died of his wounds and that the natives had recovered his
tusks.
So much for my friends. Our third left party prowled off, slanting
gradually away inland from the river's bank. It was a regular wild
scrub country, with high grass and boulders and many moderate-sized
trees and bushes, interspersed every hundred yards or so by much
bigger ones. Near the Nile extensive swamps, with reeds fifteen feet
high, ran inland in long bays and fingers, and these, we were told,
were the haunts of white rhino. We must have walked along warily and
laboriously for nearly three-quarters of an hour, when I saw through a
glade at about two hundred yards distance a great dark animal. Judging
from what I had seen in East Africa, I was quite sure it was a
rhinoceros. We paused, and were examining it carefully with our
glasses, when all of a sudden it seemed to treble in size, and the
spreading of two gigantic ears--as big, they seemed, as the flaps of
French windows--proclaimed the presence of the African elephant. The
next moment another and another and another came into view, swinging
leisurely along straight towards us--and the wind was almost dead
wrong.
We changed our position by a flank march of admirable celerity, and
from the top of a neighbouring ant-bear hill watched, at the distance
of about one hundred and fifty yards, the stately and awe-inspiring
procession of eleven elephants. On they came, loafing along from foot
to foot--two or three tuskers of no great merit, several large
tuskless females, and two or three calves. On the back of every
elephant sat at least one beautiful white egret, and sometimes three
or four, about two feet high, who pecked at the tough hide--I presume
for very small game--or surveyed the scene with the consciousness of
pomp. These sights are not unusual to the African hunter. Those who
dwell in the wilderness are the heirs of its wonders. But to me I
confess it seemed a truly marvellous and thrilling experience to
wander through a forest peopled by these noble Titans, to watch their
mysterious, almost ghostly, march, to see around on every side, in
large trees snapped off a few feet from the ground, in enormous
branches torn down for sport, the evidences of their giant strength.
And then, while we watched them roam down towards the water, I heard a
soft swishing sound immediately behind us, and turning saw, not forty
yards away, a splendid full-grown rhinoceros, with the long, thin horn
of his rare tribe upon him--the famous white rhinoceros--Burchell
himself--strolling placidly home after his evening drink and utterly
unconscious of the presence of stranger or foe!
We had very carefully judged our wind in relation to the elephants. It
was in consequence absolutely wrong in relation to the rhinoceros. I
saw that in another fifty yards he would walk right across it. For my
own part, perched upon the apex of a ten-foot ant-bear cone, I need
have no misgivings. I was perfectly safe. But my companions, and the
native orderlies and sailors who were with us, enjoyed no such
security. The consequences of not killing the brute at that range and
with that wind would have been a mad charge directly through our
party. A sense of responsibility no doubt restrained me; but I must
also confess to the most complete astonishment at the unexpected
apparition. While I was trying to hustle the others by signals and
whispers into safer places; the rhino moved steadily, crossed the line
of wind, stopped behind a little bush for a moment, and then, warned
of his danger, rushed off into the deepest recesses of the jungle. I
had thrown away the easiest shot I ever had in Africa. Meanwhile the
elephants had disappeared.
[Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT HIPPO CAMP.]
[Illustration: BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE.]
We returned with empty hands and beating hearts to camp, not without
chagrin at the opportunity which had vanished, but with the keenest
appetite and the highest hopes for the morrow. Thus in three hours and
within four miles of our landing-place our three separate parties had
seen as many of the greatest wild animals as would reward the whole
exertion of an ordinary big-game hunt. As I dropped off to sleep that
night in the little _Kisingiri_, moored in the bay, and heard the
grunting barks of the hippo floating and playing all around, mingling
with the cries of the birds and the soft sounds of wind and water, the
African forest for the first time made an appeal to my heart,
enthralling, irresistible, never to be forgotten.
At the earliest break of day we all started in the same order, and
with the sternest resolves. During the night the sailors had
constructed out of long bamboo poles a sort of light tripod, which,
serving as a tower of observation, enabled us to see over the top of
the high grass and reeds, and this proved of the greatest convenience
and advantage, troublesome though it was to drag along. We spent the
whole morning prowling about, but the jungle, which twelve hours
before had seemed so crowded with game of all kinds, seemed now
utterly denuded. At last, through a telescope from a tree-top, we saw,
or thought we saw, four or five elephants, or big animals of some
kind, grazing about two miles away. They were the other side of an
enormous swamp, and to approach them required not only traversing
this, but circling through it for the sake of the wind.
We plunged accordingly into this vast maze of reeds, following the
twisting paths made through them by the game, and not knowing what we
might come upon at every step. The ground under foot was quite firm
between the channels and pools of mud and water. The air was stifling.
The tall reeds and grasses seemed to smother one; and above, through
their interlacement, shone the full blaze of the noonday sun. To wade
and waddle through such country carrying a double-barrelled ∑450
rifle, not on your shoulder, but in your hands for instant service,
peering round every corner, suspecting every thorn-bush, for at least
two hours, is not so pleasant as it sounds. We emerged at last on the
farther side under a glorious tree, whose height had made it our
beacon in the depths of the swamp, and whose far-spreading branches
offered a delicious shade.
It was three o'clock. We had been toiling for nine hours and had seen
nothing--literally nothing. But from this moment our luck was
brilliant. First we watched two wild boars playing at fighting in a
little glade--a most delightful spectacle, which I enjoyed for two or
three minutes before they discovered us and fled. Next a dozen
splendid water-buck were seen browsing on the crest of a little ridge
within easy shot, and would have formed the quarry of any day but
this; but our ambition soared above them, and we would not risk
disturbing the jungle for all their beautiful horns. Then, thirdly, we
came slap up against the rhinoceros. How many I am not certain--four,
at least. We had actually walked past them as they stood sheltering
under the trees. Now, here they were, sixty yards away to the left
rear--dark, dim, sinister bodies, just visible through the waving
grass.
When you fire a heavy rifle in cold blood it makes your teeth clatter
and your head ache. At such a moment as this one is almost unconscious
alike of report and recoil. It might be a shot-gun. The nearest rhino
was broadside on. I hit him hard with both barrels, and down he went,
to rise again in hideous struggles--head, ears, horn flourished
agonizingly above the grass, as if he strove to advance, while I
loaded and fired twice more. That was all I saw myself. Two other
rhinos escaped over the hill, and a fourth, running the other way,
charged the native sailors carrying our observation tower, who were
very glad to drop it and scatter in all directions.
[Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS.]
To shoot a good specimen of the white rhinoceros is an event
sufficiently important in the life of a sportsman to make the day on
which it happens bright and memorable in his calendar. But more
excitement was in store for us before the night. About a mile from the
spot where our victim lay we stopped to rest and rejoice, and, not
least, refresh. The tower of observation--which had been dragged
so painfully along all day--was set up, and, climbing it, I saw at
once on the edge of the swamp no fewer than four more full-grown
rhinoceros, scarcely four hundred yards away. A tall ant-hill, within
easy range, gave us cover to stalk them, and the wind was exactly
right. But the reader has dallied long enough in this hunter's
paradise. It is enough to say that we killed two more of these
monsters, while one escaped into the swamp, and the fourth charged
wildly down upon us and galloped through our party without apparently
being touched himself or injuring any one. Then, marking the places
where the carcasses lay, we returned homeward through the swamp, too
triumphant and too tired to worry about the enraged fugitives who
lurked in its recesses. It was very late when we reached home, and our
friends had already hewn the tusks out of a good elephant which
Colonel Wilson had shot, and were roasting a buck which had
conveniently replenished our larder.
[Illustration: COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT.]
[Illustration: THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE" ON THE
WHITE NILE.]
Such was our day at Hippo Camp, to which the ardent sportsman is
recommended to repair, when he can get some one to show him the way.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] "I am informed by the courtesy of Mr. Lydekker of the British
Natural History Museum, that the true name of the white rhinoceros
found in Uganda is _Rhinoceros Simus Cottoni_. 'Burchell's white
rhinoceros' is the designation of the southern race; but I have
preserved in the text the name commonly used in Uganda."