one would not at once be able to understand and decipher my pictures in
my book, _With Flashlight and Rifle_. It is necessary when one looks
at them to understand, in some degree, how to read between the lines;
one must make an effort to grasp their more elusive features; in short,
one must devote oneself to the study of them with a certain gusto, a
certain intelligence. There was a further difficulty arising from the
fact that the illustrations could be reproduced only by a process in
which unfortunately much of the finer detail of the originals is lost.
The use of the process, however, was necessary for various reasons.
There can be only two ways of securing the best possible result in
the execution of pictures of such subjects. The ideal method would be
for heaven-sent artists, after years of study, to give us works of
this class, and combine in these masterpieces the strictest truth with
the finest craftsmanship. But this requires a thorough study of each
separate species of animal seen from afar and at close quarters--and
how is this possible, seeing that one gets only momentary glimpses?
The other method is that of photography, the picture on the negative,
which can claim the advantage of documentary accuracy, and at the same
time leaves a certain scope for the artistic sense of the operator. So
the greatly improved photographic methods of to-day can step in, at
least as a substitute and makeshift, in the absence of works of art
such as the genius of one man may give us. Considering the extreme
difficulty of taking portraits of living animals in their wild, timid
state, such pictures can only in a few instances lay claim to technical
photographic perfection. But at least so far as my own taste goes, a
certain lack of sharp definition in the picture (often deliberately
sought for in taking other objects) is not only no disadvantage, but is
even desirable. As a confirmation of this idea of mine, I may mention
the opinion of an American journalist, who declares that my picture of
a herd of wild animals given on page 327 of _With Flashlight and Rifle_
to be the most perfect thing of the kind he has seen, and the most
pleasing to him, and compares it to the work of a Corot.
[Illustration: PICTURE OF A FEMALE HIPPOPOTAMUS FROM LE VAILLANT’S BOOK
OF TRAVELS, PUBLISHED MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]
It must be noted that _if the animals are drawn so as to stand out
separated from the landscape which is a needful accessory of the
picture, and brought forward into the foreground in an obviously
selected pose, they must appear unnatural to the eye of the expert_.
Such pictures cannot fail to give an unnatural impression, for in the
freedom of the wilderness the animal world never presents itself in
this way to the eyes of man. In their full significance as masterpieces
of nature, all the various aspects of the animal world are first
manifested to us in close connection with their environment. It has
been a keen satisfaction to me to find that many world-renowned artists
have appreciated warmly the beauty of these photographs, and have
given expression to this feeling. I have been told, for instance--what
I myself had already noticed--that numbers of the pictures, especially,
those showing birds on the wing, bear a great resemblance to certain
famous works of Japanese painters[12] of animal life, works that seem
to dive into the secrets of nature. It has been brought home to me,
indeed, both by hundreds of letters and thousands of opinions expressed
in conversation, that the pictures have excited almost universal
interest, and that my labours have not been in vain.
Fully to enjoy the peculiar beauty of such photographs of living wild
animals, the best way is undoubtedly to see the pictures considerably
magnified by means of the magic lantern. On account of the special
character and strangeness of most of the objects shown, I have the
lantern slides lightly tinted. This colouring can be done without
in the least altering the picture in its details, and its object is
merely to secure greater effectiveness. Approval from all sides,
both from artistic circles and from the public, satisfies me as to
the correctness of this proceeding. Only in this way do photographic
pictures shown by transmitted light produce the full impression of
beauty and naturalness; they seem to transport the spectator directly
to the far-off wilderness.
There must be some good reason for the widespread interest manifested
in these pictures of the life and ways of animals, some of them still
so little known, and all of them living in remote solitudes. It seems
to me that the cause is deep-seated--that deep down in the heart of
the highly-cultured civilised man there are involuntary yearnings after
the sensations of wild, healthy, primeval nature. The progress of
mankind from the so-called barbaric stage to the highest civilisation
has been accomplished in so short a time, in comparison with the whole
period of man’s existence, that it is easy to understand how such a
longing may survive. In every man there must be something of this
craving for light and air and primeval conditions.
[Illustration:
_Camelo-pardus feu Giraffe._
A GERMAN PICTURE OF THE GIRAFFE DATING FROM ABOUT TWO HUNDRED YEARS
AGO.]
“The conflict of man with the animal world,” says Wilhelm Bölsche,
“has passed away unsung and uncelebrated. The civilised man of to-day
has hardly a recollection of the endless lapse of time during which
mankind had to struggle with the beasts of the earth for mastery.”
Let us for a few moments turn our gaze backwards to that far past.
In epochs that the learned date back by hundreds of thousands of
years, we find attempts made by the cave-dwellers to execute artistic
representations of nature as they saw it. The artist of prehistoric
times set to work with his rude instruments to draw in merest outline
on a smooth rock-face, on a tusk taken in the chase, or on some such
material, the things that had particularly attracted his thoughts or
stimulated his efforts. Specimens of these primitive works of art
have been handed down to us. In the first place there are pictures of
animals, scratched upon ivory, and notwithstanding all their crudeness,
sketched with sufficient ability to enable us to-day to recognise with
certainty the objects which the artist tried to depict. Such sketches
scratched on ivory, showing various kinds of animals (some of them now
extinct) and forming the oldest documents of the animal-sketcher’s art,
have been found in the caves of the south-west of France, in the old
dwelling-places of the so-called “Madeleine” hunters of La Madeleine
and Laugerie Basse. The museum at Zurich also possesses similar
primitive documents from the Kesslerloch cave, near Thaingen, in the
canton of Schaffhausen.
[Illustration: HOTTENTOT HUNTERS--A SKETCH DATING FROM 200 YEARS AGO.
(Some South African tribes actually hunt the lion on foot with
javelins, and I have myself more than once observed the courage
of the East African natives in similar circumstances.)]
It is indeed not surprising that the cave-dweller of those days took
his models from the ranks of the animal creation. All his thoughts
and efforts were directed to the chase; he had no resources but in
this pursuit, and he had to carry on, day and night perhaps, a
fierce struggle for existence with wild beasts. One can thus follow
the development of the human race through the course of time from the
primitive sketches of beasts down to our own days, in which it has
been reserved for the hand of man to execute masterpieces inspired
by genius, and in which man makes the sun to serve him in depicting
and preserving representations of all that lives and moves, creeps
and flies. By means of the sketches of animals laboriously scratched
on pieces of ivory by the Cave men of Southern Europe, we make the
acquaintance of the long-haired prototypes of the living elephants
of to-day. These animals were the most coveted big game in Europe.
Clearly recognisable sketches of reindeer tell us that a climate like
that of the northern steppes prevailed at the time; others of horses
show that the wild horse was then to be found in Europe; those of the
aurochs prove the existence of that animal. There is a remarkably close
resemblance between the style of all these drawings and that of the
rude sketches made by the Esquimaux of our own day. Some such Esquimaux
sketches of animals on walrus tusks, at the most a hundred years old,
are to be found in the Berlin Ethnographical Museum. Interesting,
too, are the sketches of giraffes from the hands of ancient Egyptian
artists. They show us that the artist of those days in drawing animals
allowed a loose rein to his fancy and imagination. Thousands of years
must separate these representations of animals from the sketches of
Asiatic wild life which Sven Hedin discovered at Togri-sai-Tale near
Lôb-nor. They are scratched on bright green slate, and depict yaks,
wild asses and tigers, and the hunting of them with bow and arrow.
They appear to be of the same kind as the animal-sketches made by the
South African Bushmen, discovered by Fritsch in the year 1863. These
cave pictures show us various members of the fauna of Cape Colony,
which has already been to so great an extent exterminated. During
the period of the Middle Ages a more perfect style of representing
animals was gradually evolved, but even about the year 1720 we find
representations that are inaccurate to an incredible extent, and,
indeed, so recently as the early part of last century, one sees in
the travels of the French naturalist Le Vaillant, in the picture of a
female hippopotamus, a proof that the development of animal-drawing had
as yet made little progress.
[Illustration:
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATIONS OF GIRAFFES AND OTHER ANIMALS.
(THE BIRD AT THE TOP ON THE LEFT IS PLAINLY RECOGNISABLE
AS THE SHOE-BILLED STORK--_BALAENICEPS REX_. NOW IT SEEMS
ONLY TO BE FOUND IN THE MARSHES OF THE UPPER NILE. I HAVE TO
THANK PROFESSOR HOMMEL OF MUNICH FOR THESE ILLUSTRATIONS,
WHICH ARE TAKEN FROM “MONUMENTS ET MÉMOIRES DE L’ACADÉMIE DES
INSCRIPTIONS ET BELLES LETTRES.”)]
[Illustration:
SKETCHES OF ANIMALS MADE BY THE BUSHMEN. (DISCOVERED IN SOUTH
AFRICA BY PROFESSOR G. FRITSCH IN THE ‘SIXTIES, AND REPRODUCED
BY HIS KIND PERMISSION.)]
But what a difference in drawing and technique has come about in less
than a hundred years! One need only compare the pictures of those
times with the works of our own days, to be convinced that, besides
artistic execution, there is now an increasingly exacting demand for
the precise truth. Indeed, one of the first points to be insisted on
is that photographic pictures _shall not be altered, worked up--in
word, in any way “retouched.”_ Only on this condition can they really
claim to be--that which in a special sense they ought to be--_true to
nature, absolutely trustworthy “nature-documents.”_ This distinguishes
the photograph from works of art executed by the hand of man, which
must conform to each individual conception of the artist.
It is a hard saying that the modern cultured man is becoming,
continually more and more estranged from nature. But in this matter
let us take the standpoint of the optimist, who says to himself that
there must be a reaction--a conscious, deliberate return, which indeed
will represent the result of the highest stage of culture. There is
an increasing perception of the existence in our home landscape of an
ideal worth, that we have not yet been able sufficiently to estimate.
To-day already there is a movement on all sides, and the demand is
heard, ever stronger and clearer, for the protection of the beauties
of nature. We must protect Nature in the widest sense of the word. And
even if, in the stern progress of evolving civilisation, much that
remains in the treasury of primitive nature must be destroyed, we shall
be able long to preserve and rejoice in much else.
[Illustration: A SMALL HERD OF FEMALE BLACK-TAILED ANTELOPES RUNNING
AWAY THROUGH HIGH GRASS.]
And here come into play the healthy desire of man in his primitive
state, the cry for light and air, and all the beauty of nature. It
is hardly a hundred years since we in Europe learned to value the
landscape beauties of unspoilt nature. English writers of travels a
century ago still spoke of Switzerland with aversion; it was for them
a horrible, dismal mountain country. And it is easy to understand how
man in his hard struggle for the necessaries of life regarded, and was
forced to regard, nature around him as on the whole unfriendly and
menacing. But since those times there has been a change for the better,
even though it cannot be denied that many men require very specially
adjusted spectacles to enable them to enjoy this or that beauty of the
nature around them! Thus the landowner feels a pleasing satisfaction
at the sight of his cornfields. And yet these cornfields are hardly
anything else but an artificially formed bit of bare velt, on which at
certain times a short-lived vegetation grows up, whilst at other times
the naked soil presents itself to the eye--uninviting, stripped of all
adornment, arid and empty. Thus, too, the man who loves wine feels
that well-cultivated vineyards are a beautiful sight; but it may be
doubted whether he would do so if, say, only cotton-pods grew on the
vines! In ancient times, as Humboldt shows, with the Greeks and Romans,
as a rule, only country that was “comfortable to live in” was called
beautiful, not what was wild and romantic. Yet Propertius[13] and many
others praise the beauty of nature left to itself, in contrast with
that which is embellished by art. Then we have a long way to travel
through the Middle Ages, when the Alps are described to us as “dismal”
and “horrible,” till we come to the nature-studies of Rousseau, Kant,
and Goethe. At first there were very few to sympathise with them.
Their view gradually prevailed, in spite of many backward eddies. Thus
Hegel had only one impression of the Swiss Alps, that of a performance
tiresome on account of its length--a judgment not far removed from that
of the Savoyard peasant who declared that people who took any interest
in snow-covered mountains must be insane.
On the other hand, we find in Eastern Asia, and especially among the
Japanese, from the earliest times, the most ardent love for nature, and
there even the poorest knows how to adorn his home with flowers, and to
turn the beauty of the landscape to similar account.
A great part of the interest felt in natural beauty is perhaps to
be traced to extraneous considerations. On the other hand, here in
Germany we see most of our people full of feeling for our glorious
forests and for our German scenery in general. We have to face the
prospect, however, of a silenced countryside--a countryside without
song or music.[14] That is a matter for anxiety. Insects, birds,
quadrupeds, life and movement should be a part of the landscape. This
idea should continue to attract more and more adherents. German thought
and feeling are altogether in unison on this subject, and it is to
be hoped that the cry for the protection of the beauties of nature,
for the preservation of the plant and animal worlds, and all that is
picturesque in our native landscape, may continue to find expression.
The League for the Preservation of the Homeland in Germany gains daily
new supporters.
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
BEARERS ON THE MARCH.]
Men like Professor Conwentz and many others have been working for years
in this direction, and carrying on a most successful propaganda. This
action for the preservation of the Homeland, taken in the highest and
broadest sense of the word, must tend to evoke and foster the love of
nature and its beauties in ever wider circles.
In other countries, too, steady progress is being made towards the
same goal, and the importance of these considerations has long been
recognised. In England and in America a way has recently been found to
give practical effect to the idea of the protection of the beauties of
nature by measures well calculated for this end. In this connection,
too, a refined æsthetic culture is gaining ground. I do not at all
close my eyes to the difficulty of regulating the conditions bearing on
this matter. But in this connection we must not shrink from decisive
measures. Those who come after us will be the first to prize and esteem
these measures at their full value.
What I have here described as something to be desired and worth
striving for at home must also hold good for the whole world--the
preservation of all that is characteristic, all that belongs to
primitive nature, wherever it is to be found.
The beauties of nature are most abundant, and in our time they are
all--all--threatened with destruction and in need of protection. Where
we can save and preserve any of them, our hands should not remain idle.
But where this is not possible, let us secure “nature-documents,”
paintings, representations of all kinds as true to life as may be.
In this way we shall, at least, save for future ages memorials of
enduring worth, for which our children’s children will give us thanks.
[Illustration:
A RHINOCEROS MOVING SLOWLY THROUGH THE GRASS OF THE VELT--TAKEN
WITH THE TELEPHOTO-LENS AT A DISTANCE OF 120 METRES, AND
WHERE THERE WAS NO COVER. THE ANIMAL LOOKED REMARKABLY
LIKE AN ANT-HILL. ON ITS BACK ONE SEES A BIRD--(_BUPHAGUS
ERYTHRORHYNCUS_, Stanl.)--HUNTING FOR TICKS.]]
III
New Light on the Tragedy of Civilisation
Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, says in
his lately published work, _Out-door Pastimes of an American Hunter_:
“The most striking and melancholy feature in connection with American
big game is the rapidity with which it has vanished.”
He makes a critical investigation of this disturbing fact, and he
most strongly advocates restrictive laws and the establishment of
reservations for wild animals. He puts himself at the head of every
effort directed towards the protection, as far as may be, of the animal
world and of wild nature, and shows by word and deed how even in a
brief period remarkable results can be obtained in this direction.
At the same time, on every page of his striking work, the President
shows that he is in favour of the practice of the chase within proper
limits, and thus he by no means takes the side of extreme partisans in
this matter. His efforts are of the greatest service to the cause, and
will no doubt have extremely valuable results in the United States,
where, owing to its peculiar circumstances, the natural treasures of
the country were, till very lately, recklessly wasted.
The establishment of the Yellowstone National Park was largely the
President’s work. In this vast territory no shot may be fired. It forms
an inviolable national sanctuary, within whose boundaries life of all
kinds is safe. Several similar reservations are already established,
or their establishment is projected. Strict protective laws have been
some of them brought into operation throughout the States, and some
of them gradually extended to various districts according to their
circumstances. Whole tracts (as, for instance, Alaska) have been closed
for years by law against the hunter. In short, a period of thoughtless
ravage has been followed by an era of self-control with a swiftness
that no one would ever have expected under the conditions prevailing in
America.
The facts I have noted give one something to think about. When in
such vast regions of the world measures of this kind are found to be
necessary, there must have been strong grounds for them. And, in fact,
primitive nature and all its glories were in as serious peril in the
United States as in many other parts of the world. The cutting down
of enormous stretches of forest, and the destruction of the stately
representatives of the animal world, went on at giant speed in the
United States. The almost complete extinction of the splendid American
bison, that once roamed in millions over the prairies of the United
States, is one of the most startling facts illustrating the destruction
of wild animals through the introduction of civilisation. This fact had
no slight influence in procuring the enactment of severe measures.
In a land like the United States such measures are possible,
advantageous, and practicable. In other countries, too, which are in
a settled condition, similar regulations have everywhere come into
force of late years. Thus, for instance, the remnants of the fauna of
Australia are now protected by stringent laws. But quite different,
and much more difficult, are the conditions of the problem with regard
to Africa. There, more than anywhere else, the time has come for
protective regulations. But how can these measures be enforced, however
well they may be thought out? We must keep before our eyes the terrible
example of the disappearance of the animal world of South Africa, as
the result of the extremely rapid spread of civilised life. We can now,
with the help of statements made by trustworthy writers, survey the
various phases of this utter destruction of animal life during the last
century, and so form an idea of what awaits other parts of the Dark
Continent.
Powerful voices have been raised of late in favour of the preservation
of African wild life, and this especially in England. In this respect,
Mr. Edward North Buxton is most prominent in pressing for thorough
measures of protection for the African fauna, throughout the wide
possessions or spheres of interest of the British Empire. In England,
too, many strong pleas have been made in support of the view that
even relatively speaking noxious animals should not be deprived by
man of the right to a certain amount of protection. Thus Sir H. H.
Johnston, the former Governor of the Uganda Province in Central
Africa, says in his preface to the English edition of my book _With
Flashlight and Rifle_, that in his opinion the weasel, the owl, and
the primitive British badger of the existing fauna ought not to be
entirely sacrificed to the pheasant--a beautiful enough bird, but,
after all, one that must always remain an “interloper”; that the egret,
the bird of paradise, the chinchilla, the sea-otter,[15] and such-like
creatures are “æsthetically as important,” and have the same right
to existence, as a woman beautifully dressed in the spoils of these
animals. Good pioneer work in this direction must result from the
noble-hearted resolve of the Queen of England to put herself at the
head of the “Anti-Osprey Movement,” organised to save the royal heron
from threatened extinction.
There can be no doubt that the complete extermination of any species of
animal must excite in the mind of a reflecting man a sense of injustice
and wrong; and that this complete destruction of certain species can
only be to the interest of all men in general when such animals, of
whatever kind they may be, are entirely noxious and quite useless.
No epoch in the world’s history can be set in comparison with ours in
so far as it has been the witness, in the course of a few decades, of
almost daily progress and improvement in connection with industry,
culture, and the whole field of human knowledge. And, moreover, no
epoch has been so penetrated with the great thoughts of progressive
humanity. The continual employment--in ways that are ever more adroit,
ever more complex--of all the resources offered by nature to man,
seems at the same time to blind him to certain grave misdeeds that he
is actually perpetrating every day. These great crimes against the
harmony and order with which nature surrounds us--crimes that it is not
easy to make any amends for--are the disfigurement and poisoning of
watercourses, the pollution of the air, the laying waste of a portion
of the plant world (namely, the forests), and the extinction of some of
the animals that live with us.