are always those that come back alluringly in my recollections.
However truly the artist may be able to reproduce all these various
impressions, there is one kind that will always be missing from his
pictures, namely, all the fleeting _movement_. To take as an
instance only one out of an abundance of forms, who can reproduce in
pictures the endless variety of birds, the world of winged life! Every
day added to my knowledge of these multitudinous flocks, through the
increase day by day of my bird collection, which I obtained at the cost
of much labour, and which has been the means of giving to science many
hitherto unknown species. As I added each new bird to it, I added also
to my knowledge of these beautiful creatures, as yet so little known,
and slowly, very slowly I became familiar with them. What splendour
of forms and colours! In what enormous flocks does the feathered race
inhabit the wilderness and the primeval forest! The Biblical account
of the flocks of quails in the desert sounds to us like a legend, and
yet it is no legend. At times when we too were marching across the same
kind of ground, there flew past us with a whirr of many wings huge
flocks of quails, that sought and found their safety in flight. At
times I have also seen similar flocks of snipe. How long has it been
since both these kinds of birds appeared in such flocks in our country
at home?
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
HUNGRY VULTURES NEAR MY TENT ON THE TREELESS VELT.]
The endless variety of form and colour, the movements of the animals
which the eye perceives under the ever-changing tropical light, that
shows everything brilliantly and sharply defined, all this taken
together makes up memory-pictures of a charm that nothing can surpass.
But he only can picture them to himself who has gone forth and made
them his own.
The huge sea-turtle comes creeping along, emerges from the waters of
the Indian Ocean, and makes for the sandhills to lay its eggs there.
Its giant track on the sand leads me to its nest. To my astonished eyes
this peculiar track looks as if a ploughshare had torn through the
ground.
The Indian Ocean, which is the home of this huge sea-turtle, shelters
also in quiet bays the strange Dugong or sea-cow, and great is the
surprise of even the natives themselves when from time to time they
capture in their nets this remarkable creature, which is becoming rarer
every year.
[Illustration: FORMATION OF A FLOCK OF FLAMINGOES IN FLIGHT.]
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
FLIGHT OF FLAMINGOES (TAKEN AT SHORTER RANGE. THERE WERE THOUSANDS IN
THIS FLOCK).]
In the lagoons one sees emerge from the surface the head of a great
giant snake, a good five yards long, the African python; others I have
come upon suddenly on the open velt. There are continually thrilling
moments! It may be that memory conjures up for us the delightful
fairy-like image of a rare dwarf antelope seen perhaps once only in
the shades of the forest, a dwarf antelope that, with strange large
eyes and ears alert, watches one’s approach, and then like a flash of
lightning disappears in the thickets; it may be that in memory one sees
the reddish brown, mud-smeared body of a giant elephant emerge from the
midst of some densely tangled primeval forest; it may be that a tree
suddenly bursting into bloom yields me a wonderfully beautiful new kind
of bird, which I grasp in my hand, delighted with its robe of feathers;
it may be that suddenly the massive giant form of a rhinoceros appears
before me in the tall grass, unexpected, menacing, standing as if
chiselled out of stone; it may be that my free gaze ranges without
limit over the wide prospect, and sees in primitive abundance the
strange life of the tropics; in every case the impressions received
seem to the beholder fascinating beyond description.
Monotonous as the surroundings of the landscape may appear to the
newcomer, poor and barren though the velt may seem to be for weeks at
a time, yet, enlivened and permeated by the mighty flood of all this
strange animal life, it has a beauty and a charm whose influence no one
can escape who makes his way into the midst of it with open heart and
eyes.
He who looks around him with clear-sighted vision, and tries to see
more than others, has revealed to him the beauties of Nature in the
greatest and most wonderful way, and is drawn in the highest sense
of the word to admiration of them. Here is verified, as Sir Harry
Johnston says in his preface to my first book, “the old nursery story
of eyes and no eyes.”
It is thus that I lie for long hours in the wilderness, and observe,
admire and enjoy. What a wealth of impressions is brought before the
eyes among these ever-changing, at first strange but gradually familiar
sights, in the midst of the foreign-looking landscape, bathed in a
light that has a marvellous influence, and in its full power is almost
blinding.
Now the dwarfs, and again the giants of the animal world rivet our
attention. But it is especially the _primeval abundance_, the great
profusion of large and small wild life, that gives an impression that
is now delightful, now overwhelming. One must have seen, with the eye
of the hunter, gigantic old bull-elephants in the primeval forest,
great herds of rhinoceroses and giraffes in one single day, thousands
of zebras and antelopes gathered together--one must have felt all this
profuse wealth of life, to be able to understand its full beauty and
grandeur.
Yet there are days when one looks around in vain for all this life
and activity, when, on account of the weather, or some other reason,
the animals do not show themselves so freely. One must also take due
account of the extensive periodical migrations of the African fauna.
_Many an erroneous judgment as to the alleged scarcity of wild life, in
districts in which other hunters pursued the chase at an earlier date
with success, is to be thus explained._
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
THIS TELEPHOTOGRAPH OF STORKS ON THE WING WILL GIVE SOME IDEA OF
THE HUGE FLOCKS IN WHICH THEY START ON THEIR NORTHERN MIGRATION IN
FEBRUARY.]
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
WHITE STORKS GATHERING FOR THEIR NORTHERN MIGRATION TO EUROPE.]
But, on the other hand, there are also days when such an abundance
of animal forms presents itself to our eyes, that the most
lively imagination can form no idea of all this profusion. On such
days, I have often wished that one could have a gigantic photographic
apparatus, an instrument that would be capable of making a record of
all I saw. But on such days, also, I have more than once made a mental
apology to explorers whose lives have long closed in death. When, for
instance, in former years I had looked over the sketches of the late
Cornwallis Harris, sketches showing the life of the South African fauna
as he saw it about the year 1837, I more than once had my doubts about
the correctness of his representations of it. As the result of what I
myself have seen, I have quite given up such doubts.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF RHINOCEROSES KILLED BY THE BOERS ON THE SHORE
OF ONE OF THE MERKER LAKES.]
The original sketches left to us by Cornwallis Harris (which I must
say do not always rise to a high level From the artistic point of
view[36]) are coloured sketches accompanied by descriptions, and
show us such multitudes of wild animals that they seem to border on
the fabulous. For we see in them elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes,
buffaloes, zebras and antelopes, all gathered together in crowds, and
thus one inclines involuntarily to the opinion that all these have been
brought together in one picture merely to give illustrations of the
various species. But my own observations have shown me that our artist
is perfectly correct. One sees how necessary it is to make documentary
records of such observations. The men of a later time, as I plainly
realise, may be able to place before themselves a picture of all this
primitive abundance of animal life only with the greatest trouble and
by means of earnest study of every authority bearing on the matter.
Enormous periods of time must have gone by to develop all the beauty
and splendour of this so varied and so highly organised life. My
thoughts range over far distant times. I see, looking so near that it
seems as one could touch it with one’s hands, one of the mightiest
volcanoes of our earth gradually unveiling itself and stripping off its
robe of clouds. The volcanic regions below it remind me of the story of
how all my surroundings were developed.
Born in fire, and evolved, differentiated, and formed to so much
beauty, which no hostile hand has yet come to destroy, the scene around
me is so splendid that my eyes keep ranging over it, more and more
eager to contemplate all its splendours.
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
CRESTED CRANES IN FLIGHT.]
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
IN A WONDERFULLY SHORT TIME VULTURES AND MARABOUS FLY DOWN FROM AN
EXTREME HEIGHT IN THE AIR TO FALL UPON ANY DEAD ANIMAL.]
A strange feeling comes over me. I think of all the beautiful spots of
our old world. They have all been taken possession of under carefully
devised arrangements and methods, well protected by the eye of the
law, and often only occasionally open to access, and then on condition
of payment. But the beauty I am contemplating has now been hopelessly
abandoned to intruders, who have neither knowledge nor taste nor sense,
and who are at this moment so barbarously destroying it.
But these thoughts must give way to others that are more pleasant and
consoling. How wonderful to be able to revel in this wilderness, to
feel in oneself the influence of all these splendours, notwithstanding
all dangers and all difficulties, however great! Everything around us
undulates and shimmers, bathed in a dazzling sea of light. Gradually
the colouring of plain and hills, the dome of the sky and the whole
surrounding landscape, changes to duller and less definite tints. The
sun-illumined air rises in waves from the earth, and the various strata
of it form an ever-changing chaos of reflected light. Over all there is
deep peace. A spell that accords with the mood of the moment seems to
stream down from the dome of the sky over this solitude, lying so far
from the noisy activity of the world.
All that I here behold has been going on since those far times,
directed by natural law, in ever-recurring succession. But to-day for
the first time a member of the complex society of civilisation takes
delight in this mountain rising amidst all this primeval beauty.
Who could possibly set down this poetry upon paper--the poetry of the
velt and its wild inhabitants, the moods of East African Nyíka? The
master of colouring has not yet arisen who could give us a picture of
these mighty gatherings of wild herds, and of these deserts that seem
overcrowded with animal forms, that yet live so peacefully together,
nor can the master of the pen, though he may have been able by his
words to conjure up some idea of them in the mind.
One who has perhaps felt and enjoyed their spell more than any one else
is Alfred Brehm. But he has travelled only in regions that had long
been under the influence of man and his activity. He has only once
seen the king of beasts, and has never looked upon the giraffe--whose
beautiful eyes the Arab compares with the eyes of his beloved--and many
other forms of the African fauna.[37] Nevertheless he has done wonders,
thanks to his deep feeling for his subject, his intimate understanding
of it, and his incomparably poetical power of description. He has
given us imperishable pictures in words that are among the most
beautiful that have ever been written about Nature. Our old famous
teacher, Dr. Schweinfurth, has seen and described similar scenes. With
these two we may rank in equal honour the name of the German explorer
Richard Böhm,[38] who unhappily lost his life so tragically and at such
an early age on the shores of Lake Upämba in Southern Urúa, of which
he was the discoverer. Many others might also be named who were deeply
influenced by these primeval splendours. But the fauna of South Africa
has vanished unsung and untamed, before any artist or master of words
arose to place in a fitting way its beauties on record for all time!
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
TELEPHOTOGRAPH OF A HERD OF WATERBUCK (_COBUS ELLIPSIPRYMNUS_, Ogilb.)
RUNNING AWAY.]
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
ORYX ANTELOPES (_ORYX CALLOTIS_, Thos.); “CHIROA” OF THE SWAHILI, “OL
GAMASSAROK” OF THE MASAI): A MOST DIFFICULT ANIMAL TO STALK.]
Masters of words like Ludwig Heck, by whose skilful pen the life of the
mammalia has been lately described anew for us in Brehm’s _Tierleben_,
and like Wilhelm Bölsche, would perhaps have been capable of grasping,
and reproducing the impressions that the traveller feels in those far
lands. But they have never trodden these distant countries, and they
must therefore confine themselves to describing artistically and yet
truly what they have never actually seen, from ideas based on their own
clear understanding of the observations of others.
The sun is setting. It is time for me to come down from my hill and
return to my camp. The sun goes to his rest in flaming splendour, there
is a glowing radiance of violet and purple light; soon dark night will
surround me. Thoughtfully I tread my homeward way, with my mind richly
stored with impressions, but anxious as to my efforts to describe all
that I have seen, and doubtful as to my success.
“To have passed a thousand and more days, a thousand and more nights
in the wilderness with a great longing in my heart in some way to
grasp and make my own all the splendour I have seen and all its charm;
to have again and again delighted in the beauty of the Nyíka: this
does not make me capable of reproducing it. And even if after many
decades of years I could fully comprehend it, I should never succeed
in reproducing it in its full significance and bringing it home to the
minds of those who have never looked upon it with their own eyes.”
So runs a passage in my diary.
Descriptions of things similar to those that I have told of in
inadequate words in these slight sketches of the Nyíka district of East
Africa may be read of other regions of our earth. The life and activity
of the Arctic fauna, of those gigantic creatures of to-day, the whales,
and of the Polar bears, the musk oxen, the wild reindeer, the walruses,
the seals--those most sagacious creatures--and the life of many other
animal forms--all these together are waiting for the hand that will
describe them in word and picture and put on enduring record for all
time this changing life. Thus only will a new existence be given to
those forms of life for which the sentence “Vae Victis!” has gone forth.
May the master soon appear who will be able to give us a noble and
true picture of the East African Nyíka in all its vast proportions.
For, as the night is now descending on the wilderness, so will an
everlasting night soon come down upon all the life and movement that I
have tried so inadequately to describe in merest outline.
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
GRANT’S GAZELLES.]
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
HARTEBEESTS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE WESTERN ’NDJIRI SWAMPS.]
[Illustration: A PAGE OF MY DIARY SHOWING HOW I NOTED MY MOVEMENTS AND
OBSERVATIONS BY MEANS OF A ROUGH MAP.]
About a century ago the “Twilight of the Gods” (_Götterdämmerung_)
began for all the wild life of the Cape region of South Africa. Even
before these hundred years had run out it was ended; this abundant
flood of life had disappeared....
[Illustration: BATELEUR EAGLE IN FLIGHT.]
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
LIKE A ROSY RED CLOUD THE FLAMINGOES FLY DOWN ON THE MARGIN OF THE
NATRON LAKE.]
[Illustration: A FRANCOLIN PERCHED ON A THORN-BUSH.]
VII
The Voices of the Wilderness
The German sportsman knows well the mysterious charm that speaks to the
listener, when in the woods in spring he hears the note of the woodcock
and the cry of the ptarmigan, and when in autumn he hears the call of
the stag to its mate. It must be that the listener is subject to some
atavistic influence, some impulse rooted in the dim past now quickening
into life.
Let him who understands this charm follow me through the equatorial
wilderness, and listen with me to the music of songs and notes that we
may call the language of the Nyíka. We shall hear it there on every
side, by day and by night. True, fully to understand this language
one should have King Solomon’s magic power, which made its possessor
understand the speech of animals, or like Siegfried have dipped one’s
hand in the blood of the dragon, and thus have acquired the gift of
holding converse with the birds.
This much is certain, in the wildernesses of Africa this primeval
language is still to be heard. In our hunting grounds at home the
voices of the aurochs, the bison, the ibex, the bear, the lynx, and
the wolf have been silenced, and many other voices that have belonged
to the wild open country since primeval days have all but died away. I
have indeed learned to understand only a few words of this language of
the wilderness, though I have heard thousands of its sounds. But I may
be able to tell something about it.
What a strong and deep impression this world of sound makes upon the
traveller at so many hours of the day and night! Every region, every
different kind of country has its own characteristic harmony. One does
not always hear it--it depends upon the season of the year and the time
of the day, on the changes of weather, and much else. But when one has
become even to some small extent familiar and conversant with these
various voices, one enjoys this music-language Of the Nyíka with a
sense of deep delight and ever growing understanding. Sometimes it is
most difficult to find out the names of the individual speakers. Often
they keep very quiet; they seem to be like great vocalists on tour:
they appear suddenly, and then disappear again for a long time, without
letting one see any more of them. Then the traveller may often listen
long, in vain, for the singer--gone without leaving a trace behind. But
it is not only the soloists that charm us. There is also the combined
effect of all the voices of nature uniting in one vast impressive
chorus. This has made such an impression upon me that I shall try,
so far as my limited powers permit, to describe it to the reader.
This musical language of the wilderness is in itself powerful, rich
and impressive, but all this in a still greater degree for him who,
observing things with the eyes of a seer, knows many of the voices that
resound in it will not be heard much longer. Although for long, long
ages, through hundreds of thousands of years, this tumult of sound has
been heard, these voices, or many of them, will soon be silent victims
of civilisation! They are going, and with them many of the euphonious
names of places with which the natives have distinguished every spot,
but which the Europeans, as they penetrate into the country, feel
themselves obliged to change.
It may seem that I myself am not quite guiltless of such misdeeds.
It is true that I named an island, that resort of the wild buffaloes
in the Pangani River, “Heck Island,” in honour of Professor Ludwig
Heck. But the island had till then no name whatever. One feels sad, on
glancing over the map of Africa, to note the degradation of so many
old traditional names, which is in no way justified, and is a sign
of the hasty and violent introduction of civilised life. “The Boers
are not people who think much about natural history,” says a writer
somewhere. And in fact, through their agency, the euphonious names of
the various wild species of South Africa are now to a great extent
already obsolete. They hastily gave vulgar-sounding names of their own
to the wild animals.[39] Thus the oryx antelope became the “gemsbock,”
and the cow-antelope, because it was tenacious of life and difficult
to kill, the “hartebeest.” The gnu, on account of its wildness, was
called the “wildebeest,” the bustard the, “pauw,”[40] the hyena the
“wolf,” and the giraffe--incredible though, it may seem--the “kameel”!
Hand in hand with this went the changing of place-names: so we read of
“Hartebeests Fontein,” “Olifants River,” “Kameeldoorn,” “Zwartkop,” and
we have a whole series of unpleasant, and sometimes utterly ugly names
by the introduction of which the beautiful aboriginal names of various
places have become obsolete. Thus not only do the primitive inhabitants
of the land disappear, but their names, too, are blown away upon the
wind.
Countless are the voices that resound by day in the Nyíka. But by night
these voices speak still more mysteriously and wonderfully to him who
listens to them, bringing him into still closer union with nature. From
the multitude of these voices I choose a few only.
Old memories come back to me! It is in the year 1896. I have just
landed, and am sitting in my night shooting-encampment by an inlet
of the sea near Dar-es-Salaam. A concert of the voices of nocturnal
birds mingles with the sharp buzz of the mosquitoes. Again and again
one hears a strange cry. Unspeakably sad and monotonous, this peculiar
sound rings out over the waters of the inlet; in the distance a
changing answer comes back in response to it.
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
FLIGHT OF SANDFOWL.]
I did not then suspect _that it would take me nearly a year_ to be
absolutely certain that this sound was uttered by an extremely shy and
restless kind of cuckoo!
This sound of the African night always made the strongest impression
upon me, and remains indelibly in my memory. All that one heard from
near at hand, or from the distance miles away, had its origin not in
man’s voice or in human activity of any kind, but most come from birds
and beasts to a great extent unknown to us. One had to interpret, to
conjecture, to build up theories. Often one struck upon the correct
solution. But often enough, too, the interpretation one accepted proved
to be false, and then one’s anxiety to find out the true solution,
aroused anew, was doubly keen. The first time I heard it, I had no
difficulty in interpreting for myself the cry of the monkeys harassed
in the night by leopards, a screaming of a kind one cannot easily
forget, plainly expressing the greatest terror. The first time one
heard the neighing of the herds of zebras it was much more difficult to
recognise the sound, and the gobbling cry of the ostrich had at first
a still stranger effect. But as soon as I had heard the voice of the
zebras a few times, it was clear to me that the extinct _quagga_ of
South Africa must have derived its name from its cry. If one puts the
accent on the second syllable, and pronounces the _g_ softly and deep
in the throat, one has, as one repeats it, a wonderful reproduction of
the cry of the zebra as I heard it myself.[41]
What a pity that all this cannot be put on permanent record by some
such apparatus as a gigantic phonograph! But unfortunately we are still
a long way from such a possibility.
No one will be surprised at my keeping specially in mind that endlessly
melancholy cry of the cuckoo in the darkness. How lonely and empty our
German woodlands would seem without the cuckoo and the cuckoo cry! As
a matter of fact the African primeval forest _never_ hears the same
cry that has become so clear to ourselves. Our cuckoo, migrating in a
few days all the way from the north to the equator, flies in restless
haste through wood and plain, but _he is silent_. His cry is heard
only in our country at home. But in the East Africa district of Pori,
amongst many other cries those of two species of cuckoo are heard in
rivalry. These are the sickle cuckoo--the “Tipi-tipi” of the Swahili--a
reddish-brown fellow that flutters in heavy flight everywhere about
the bush, the reedy bogs and hill-slopes; and the solitary cuckoo
(_Cuculus solitarius_, Step.), about whose cry I was for a long time
mistaken. The unceasing, low cry of the former, the sickle cuckoo, if
it is heard even a few times, can never again be forgotten. It sounds
like--“Dut-dút--dududu--dut-dút.” One hears it by day and also in the
darkest night, contrasting strongly with the sharply defined, clear
note of our European cuckoo, though the latter listens in silence
to the cry of his cousins all through the winter under the equator.
This cry seems to me, with its low, dull, softly prolonged tones--so
different from the louder cry of its northern relative--to be quite in
keeping with its mysterious tropical home. For the sickle cuckoo knows
all its deepest mysteries, and no bird ranges so unweariedly through
the densest thickets and over the most inaccessible regions. In the
most hidden, solitary, and unknown spots[42] it would come fluttering
up from the ground at my feet, often startling me. It seemed to me as
if the bird wanted to call my attention to newly discovered mysteries,
as its “Dut-dút--dududu--dut-dút” came sounding to me, now here, now
there, low, soft and melodious, by day under the brooding noonday heat,
and just the same in the midnight hours.