avocetta_, L.), one of the most charming forms of the bird world known
to us, transports me by magic to the distant and mournful lakes of
the Masailand wilderness. What the dwarf bustards (_Otis gindiana_,
Oust.) keep calling out to each other with their continually repeated
“Rágga-ga-rágga” is not to be discovered. But their cry, which has
kept the fancy of the natives busy since olden days, is as inseparably
associated with regions on which the grass grows high, as the voices
and cries of the sandfowl, the francolins, and, above all, the jarring
outcries of the guinea-fowl, on the velt. All the manifold voices of
doves, cuckoos, parrots, hornbills, bee-eaters, shrikes, orioles,
starlings, finches, weaver-birds, sylvians, and the rest, calling,
exulting, rejoicing, uttering cries of alarm or complaint, have woven
themselves into my recollections of happy days and days of toil.
Thus there still rings in my ear the triple note of the yellowish
green bulbul (_Pycnonotus layardi_, Gurn.), which, like our sparrow,
is present everywhere, till one almost tires of it. Most curious
is the friendly play which the handsomely coloured glossy starling
(_Spreo superbus_, Rüpp.) carries on with a weaver-bird (_Dinemellia
dinemelli_, [Hartl.] Rüpp) in flights like those of our sparrows. It
comes back to me all the more vividly when I recall the notes uttered
by these two birds, which, though such close friends and taking such
delight in each other’s company, are so distantly related. The curious
warbling of the honey-finder (_Indicator indicator_, Gm.), which often
guides the man who follows it to a wild bees’ nest, also easily makes
a permanent impression on the ear of the traveller.
And there are many other bird-voices that delight any one who takes
pleasure in sound. When silvery moonbeams streamed over the camp, the
night-jars (especially _Caprimulgus fossei_ [Verr.] Hartl.) buzzed
and hummed forth their strange song everywhere around. No matter how
remote and desolate the wilderness in which the traveller laid down
his head to rest, these goat-suckers were to be heard. Their voice
makes a strong impression on us even in our own country in the lonely
woods, but its effect is much more striking, on the far-off equatorial
velt. With noiseless soft beating of its wings the bird comes gliding
past us; its wings almost touch us. When it pours forth its song, its
monotonous sleepy song, I could listen to it for hours. In the daytime
it starts up suddenly from the ground here and there in front of you,
uttering the feeblest of cries, that it is impossible to represent. In
the next instant it vanishes like some huge moth, and even the sharpest
eye cannot distinguish it amongst the dry branches and leaves, or
clinging close to the rocky ground. The song of the night-jar is among
my most vivid recollections of the bird-voices of Africa.
In the neighbourhood of water, wherever it may be, and in the thick
undergrowth, wherever the African wilderness extends, you hear the call
and cry of a peculiar bird-voice. It rings out through the stillness
with a deep double piping note, that impresses itself in a lasting way
on the ear. It is the voice of the handsome organ-shrike (_Laniarius
æthiopicus_, Gm.). These shrikes, which mate permanently, always utter
this note in such quick succession, one of the pair after the other,
that at first you think you are listening to only a single bird. This
beautiful bird-note indicates the proximity of water, and thus it has
acquired quite a special significance in these countries.
Finally there is no sound from the throat of a bird that I call to mind
so plainly, or so continually, as the song of the African nightingale
(_Erithacus africanus_, [Fschr.] Rchw.). I have very frequently heard
this beautiful song during the months of our winter, in many districts
round Kilimanjaro. When I heard it unexpectedly for the first time, I
was most deeply moved by it. Ten years ago I heard it during a day’s
march in the wooded gullies of the great volcanic mountain, and it
was most clear and full and beautiful. I never expected thus to hear
this northern bird-voice in the tropics. Later on, when I was camped
at a considerable altitude in the primeval forests of Kilimanjaro,
I was saluted with the cries of northern migratory birds, that,
wheeling round the mountain, seemed to be flying over its everlasting
snowfields. It was a strange coincidence in those Christmas days, the
song of the northern nightingale, and those northern birds of passage
on the wing under the equatorial sun! It is worth noting that this
voice of the nightingale was the only genuine northern bird-song
that I ever heard in Africa. That our nightingale also sometimes
breeds there is indicated by the discovery of its nest by the late Dr.
Fischer. But the problem of the extraordinary identity in character of
this nightingale with its northern sister still awaits solution. Many
difficult observations will have to be made in order to investigate it
thoroughly.
What a contrast to this song of our northern nightingale is presented
by the voices of the hyenas and jackals, the strange cry uttered by
the leopard, all the sounds emitted by the antelopes, and finally the
indescribably startling, harsh-sounding bellow of the crocodile!
But neither individually nor collectively can the effect of all these
voices be expressed in words. They associate themselves with the forms
of a flora untouched by the hand of man, and the unceasing throb of
animal life. I think of them all together as a theatre of nature now
flooded with sunlight, now in the mysterious darkness of night, or with
glistening moonbeams playing over it. What impresses one so much is not
merely these individual voices, but the way in which all the myriad
voices mingle in one mighty chorus.
If this symphony of nature is to be written down, it must be by
some master who will combine in one marvellous melody these musical
utterances that are so mighty and impressive, so full of mystery
and charm, and so often dying away in the deepest and most delicate
cadences. None of these tones should be missing, no note of them all
should be struck out.
I should like to set in contrast with this mighty primeval harmony of
the wilderness the sounds and voices of the modern industrial world,
which gradually and unwittingly we take to be something natural. He
who would feel all its greatness and perfection must keep himself far
away for weeks and months from the screaming whistle he hears on the
railway, and the howling siren of a steamship.
Then there is the insect world! Those flower-covered bushes have
attracted a multitude of great droning beetles. They hasten to them
in heavy flight. On the ground a host of scarabæus beetles are busy
with their special work. The ceaseless sharp chirps of the cicadas
sing their continual song. Through all its variations there goes on
this hum and buzz of the millions and millions of the lower creation.
And joined with it there ring out the thousands and thousands of songs
of the birds; the powerful voices of the great mammals bellow over
plain and bushland, through swamps and primeval forests, over dale and
hill. The concert of the feathered songsters is suddenly silent, as,
it may be, the harsh cry of the leopard resounds, or the mighty, dull,
rumbling roar of the king of the desert thunders over the earth; or
the trumpet-like cry of the elephant vibrates through the woods; or
harsh war-cries from human lips, battle-songs of primitive men, are
heard--but heedless of it all, even at these moments, day and night
resound the weak voices of all the myriads of lesser creatures of the
animal world. But he who penetrates into this wilderness must have
receptive senses to understand the full beauty of it all. For him this
harmony exists wherever the primitive animal world lives its life.
[Illustration:
ON THE WEST SIDE OF KILIMANJARO I FOUND A BROOK, CALLED BY THE
MASAI “MOLOGH.” ABOUT TEN MILES FROM THE WESTERN ‘NJIRI SWAMPS
IN THE DRY SEASON IT SUDDENLY DISAPPEARS AMONG THE STONES AND
REACHES THE SWAMPS BY AN UNDERGROUND CHANNEL.]
Glorious and grand, too, is the language of Nature when she herself
raises her primeval voice, associated with no sound of life that we
can perceive. Thus it is in the hours of storm by night, when on the
plain, or in the primeval forest, or on the hill slopes, the thunder
roars round the little camp, and the crackling lightning comes down
in zig-zags. Then the rumbling thunder, the rushing downpour of the
water-floods, the roar of the storm-wind, speak with an impressiveness
that is beyond all description. Then in their hour of death the
giants of the primeval forest, the mighty, venerable trees, suddenly
themselves find a voice that strikes loudly on the ear: they groan
in the embrace of the wind, and under its fury crash thundering to
the ground. Then, when the earth and the rocks under our feet seem to
shake, when the powers of Nature are let loose in all their might,
when weak little man in his small tent, alone in the midst of all this
violence, listens to the sounds, alone and abandoned like the sailor
on a frail plank in the midst of a raging ocean, then it is that the
wilderness sings its greatest, noblest, most wonderful song.
The traveller may yet return to the African wilderness and hear once
more the voices of the smaller denizens of the wild. The chirping of
cicadas will lull him to rest, or the buzzing of the mosquitoes forbid
it. Their chirping and buzzing will bear witness that these waves of
life roll on untroubled and uninjured by the incoming of civilisation.
But the greater voices will become rarer and rarer. Soon the trumpeting
of the elephant, the roar of the lion, the bellow of the hippopotamus
will be heard no longer.
But to-day one can still hear all these sounds which I have described,
and which our most remote ancestors listened to all day and all night
in the ages when there still lived in Europe a fauna very similar to
that which we find dying out in East Africa. By day and night they go
forth in trees and thickets, by swamp and reed-bed. The song of birds
is accompanied by the monotonous deafening chorus of the bullfrogs.
Even in the traveller’s tent the crickets chirp, and the night-jar
buzzes and buzzes past it, and tells and whispers of the nightly life
and movement of the animal world, in its monotonous mysterious song.
A jackal holds a conversation with the evening star. In the dark night
the deep bass of the hyena is heard; and then it laughs aloud, in a
weird, shrill, shrieking treble. This laugh, seldom uttered, but when
heard making one’s heart shudder, is not a thing to forget; on feverish
nights it plagues one still in memory. No one need jest about it who
has not himself heard it. He who has heard it understands how the Arabs
take the hyenas to be wicked men living under a spell.
Now at last the lion raises his commanding voice, and one thing only
is wanting to the whole nocturnal spell--the noisy trampling of timid
and harassed droves of zebras and other herds of wild things. But if
the ground of the velt, hardened by the burning sun, rings once more to
the thundering hoof-beats of the zebras, the eye fails in the darkness,
and only our ears perceive by their numberless sounds the waves of
life that are surging around us; and then indeed the listener comes
to full consciousness of how rich the animal-language of the Nyíka
still is.... Nowhere else in the world of to-day do all the voices of
the wild resound more impressively, and for him who listens to this
language there is no escape from that mysterious spell--the Spell of
the Elelescho!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cf. Reichenow, _Die Vögel Afrikas_.
[2] _El moran_ = the “young men,” _i.e._ Masai warriors.
[3] Dr. Richard Kandt, _Caput Nili_. (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.)
[4] I gave the skull of this specimen to the Berlin Natural History
Museum.
[5] As late as the year 1859 the Masai warriors menaced the places
on the coast between Tanga and Mombassa! Even in the eighties the
explorers Thomson and Fischer had to submit to their demands. To that
flourishing period of the Masai belongs the origin of their view that
even if the Bantu Negro races have cattle, they must have been stolen
from the Masai, for, as say, “God gave us in earlier days all the
cattle on the face of the earth.”
[6] According to Hollis, the singular of the word is “O-‘l-leleshwa.”
[7] As Hollis tells us.
[8] The pachyderms seem to feel no ill effects from the natron-bearing
water; but for men the water of the lake--at least, near my
camp--proved very unpleasant. Our drinking water was obtained from a
small marsh near the shore of the lake.
[9] John Hanning Speke, one of the discoverers of the Victoria Nyanza,
has already remarked that the Arabs know well how to manage their
slaves, and to tame them like domestic animals; that they are able to
entrust them with business matters, and send them out of their own
dominions into foreign countries, without the slaves ever attempting to
escape from their masters.
[10] The native elephant-hunter--the “Wakua”--use as a rule several
small iron bullets with a heavy charge of gunpowder.
[11] Singular: en-dito = the young maiden.
[12] Cf. also _Ostasienfahrt, Erlebnisse und Beobachtungen eines
Naturforschers_, etc., von Dr. Franz Doflein, Leipzig, 1906.
[13] Cf. Friedlander, _Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms_.
[14] In the market of Nice alone, according to official statistics,
from November 1, 1881, to the beginning of February 1882, 1,318,356
little song-birds were put up for sale.
[15] Strict regulations have lately been put into force for the
preservation of the last-named species. But, as the result of the
merciless persecution to which it has been subjected, the sea-otter is
all but extinct.
[16] While this book is passing through the press several
correspondents have sent me an article published by Freiherr von
Schrötter-Wohnsdorf in the _Monatsheften des Allgemeinen Deutschen
Jagdschutsvereins_ of August 24th, 1906. According to this article,
during the year 1906, by ministerial orders, in four of the chief
forest districts of East Prussia, _sixty-seven head of wild elk_ were
killed off, though hitherto the few remaining living specimens of
the elk have been so carefully preserved both on public and private
estates. This thorough-going course was adopted for the sake of the
preservation of the woods from damage by the animals. That this should
have been done in the case of a disappearing species of wild animal,
hitherto so carefully preserved, and of which private individuals were
allowed to shoot only male specimens, is in open contradiction with
those views as to the necessity of protecting the rarer beauties of
nature, which are making such progress every day. It seems therefore
fitting that I should note the fact here as showing how well grounded
is my opinion that the progress of civilised culture is destructive to
those treasures of nature that have come down to us from primeval times.
[17] The author believes that he cannot better give expression to
his views as to the preservation of the beauties of nature, than by
reproducing an article on the appearance of the stork in the Soldin
district, by Herr M. Kurth. He writes in _Die Jagd, Illustrierte
Wochenschrift für deutsche Jäger_, May 13, 1906:
“As for the stork-shooting appointed by the District Committee of the
districts of Soldin, Landsberg and Ost-Sternberg for the period from
March 1 to June 15, it is to be remarked that the opinions held by
sportsmen as to the damage done by storks, especially in reference to
small game, are very much divided, and that not much can be put to the
reckoning of ‘Brother Longlegs’ of those misdeeds that figure heavily
in the accounts of other robbers, such as the crane, the magpie, and
all kinds of native birds of prey, and the hedgehog, marten, and
polecat. These one and all carry off nestlings, and most of them
attack young leverets also. Now if we are to go for the stork, it
should of course be done when he is to be found together in too great
numbers; and this is entirely the idea of the District Committee. The
neighbourhood of Balz bei Vietz on the Eastern Railway has always
been remarkable for the number of its storks’ nests. One finds two of
them on nearly every one of the old barns, a nest at each end of the
roof. It was so even thirty years ago, and so it is to this day. But
the proprietors of the barns never agree to the nests of the storks
being destroyed, or any opposition made to the settling there of
these trustful and friendly birds. And for what reasons precisely has
‘Friend Adebar’ settled in such numbers in this district? Well, here
the far-spreading meadows of the Warthe, with their full scope for
extended flight, offer him all the food he wants and to spare, and
here the frogs’ legs must be particularly good. It may be that now
and again a young partridge or a leveret strays into Mother Stork’s
kitchen, but that is the exception. Now if people keep strictly to
the object indicated by the District Committee, namely to bring down
the numbers of the storks where there are too many of them, one may
let it pass. But how many will out of a mere shooting-mania take aim
continually at the harmless birds!--though such are never genuine
sportsmen. How can this be checked? And it should not be forgotten
that in the first week of April our African guests are to be found in
hundreds along the Warthe brook, whence they then disperse to various
parts of the neighbouring districts. Now it is to be hoped that no one
will assume that the stork is to be found here ‘in too great numbers,’
and that therefore ‘one may blaze away at him.’ In some years this
may possibly be the case, but if he were scared out of the district
our landscape would be the poorer by the loss of the bird’s welcome
cry, as has happened in the case of the heron and the cormorant in our
district. This last-named bird comes now only seldom, and then only one
at a time, to the Netze, near Driesen. There was a heronry formerly
near Waldowstrenk in the Neumark district, but it disappeared ten
years ago. We must hope that this will not be the fate of the stork,
whose appearance has so many links with the poetry of our childhood,
and that we shall not be deprived of his presence. What a pleasing
sight it is when ‘Brother Longlegs’ with dignified walk stalks beside
the mower at haymaking time, looking so confiding and fearless! And
what a joy it is to old and young when the first stork of the season
wheels in circles over the homestead, when for the first time he comes
down to his old nest, and announces his arrival with a joyful outcry!
Must not every sympathetic and thoughtful lover of nature be filled
with sorrow and indignation when, on the pretext of petty thefts, but
probably out of mere wanton love of destruction, attempts are made
to drive out of our country this friendly bird, which is so pleasing
an ornament of the landscape? It would really be a crime against the
out-door beauty of our native land, and against nature all around us,
if out of narrow-minded selfishness we were to extirpate the stork, as
happened in recent times to that most splendidly coloured of our birds,
the kingfisher, on mere suspicion of its being a ‘great destroyer’ of
fish. Love of nature, joy in nature, is a valuable element in German
feeling, and therefore, dear fellow sportsman, let us maintain our good
character!”
[18] We are indebted to the English hunters of those days for all the
information we possess as to the wild life of South Africa at that
time. If there had not been amongst them men who knew also how to
handle the pen, we should have been almost entirely without trustworthy
information as to that period. I may take this opportunity of saying a
word for the English “record-making sportsman,” who is not unfrequently
the subject of false and unfounded invectives, which I can only
describe as mostly full of fanciful fables. Other lands, other ways,
and there are black sheep in every nation. In any case we may take
English ideals of sport as our example, and also the regulations drawn
up by English authorities for the protection of the animal world.
[19] In a review of my book _With Flashlight and Rifle_ (German
edition).
[20] Sir William Cornwallis Harris must be considered as a quite
trustworthy authority. His works are indeed the most complete
first-hand evidence we have as to the state of the fauna of South
Africa at the time.
[21] On the part of the Government and the local authorities everything
that is possible is being done to settle this difficulty. But
unfortunately their efforts seem to have little success.
[22] Cf. my book _With Flashlight and Rifle_, p. 736, where a statement
by Professor P. Matschie, the Custodian of the Royal Zoological Museum
at Berlin, will be found, bearing out the truth of what is here
remarked.
[23] During the last few years handsome groups have also been set up in
the museums of other places, such as Munich, Stuttgart, and Carlsruhe.
[24] The ibex, which was once also common in Germany, has been found by
Dr. G. Merzbacher in the central Tian-Shan region in the form of _Ibex
sibirica merzbacheri_: and two years ago by G. Leisewitz in such great
numbers that the appearance of flocks of hundreds of them was a daily
experience.
[25] The Hudson Bay Company put on the market in the year 1891 1,358
skins of the musk ox (_Ovibos moschatus_), but only 271 in the year
1901. In the year 1878 the same company sold 102,715 skins of the
Canadian beaver, but only 44,200 in the year 1892. A striking example
of the results of excessive exploitation of hunting grounds!
[26] Besides other sources, I take these data from an interesting
article by C. Brock, in the periodical _Die Jagd_. This writer
estimates the area devoted to the chase in the German Empire at
54,000,000 hectares; the number of shots fired in a year at game at
16,000,000, besides some 6,000,000 shots fired at animals that are not
game. He rightly notes that for the individual the whole business of
sport is a losing or non-productive occupation, but one of productive
value for the households of the country folk, as about 130,000,000
marks are annually spent upon it.
[27] Professor Haberer lately found strychnine in use in various ways
in many places in Eastern Asia.
[28] See, amongst other writings of his, _Outdoor Pastimes_, by
Theodore Roosevelt.
[29] On the destruction of the turtle-dove (_Turtur turtur_, L.)
during its migration to Greece, see Otmar Reiser, Curator of the
National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, _Materialen zu einer Ornis
Balcanica_. At Syra one sportsman shoots as many as a hundred in a day;
at Paxos, according to the Grand Duke Ludwig Salvator, they are killed
in heaps. The lands of the Strophades Islands are completely equipped
with huge falling snares and shooting-stands for the systematic
massacre of the “Trigones.” Everywhere in Greece when the cry of
“Trigones!” is heard, fire is opened upon the newcomers.
[30] Expeditions in uninhabited districts have sometimes been entirely
supplied by shooting wild animals.
[31] Cf. Schlobach, _Deutsch-Ostafrikan_. Zeitg. 1 Beiblatt, 10
Februar, 1906.
[32] Houston Stuart Chamberlain, _Immanuel Kant_.
[33] According to the latest observations of Professor Yngwe Sjöstedt
these nut-galls are inhabited by three different species of ants.
[34] Cf. also Prof. Yngwe Sjöstedt on the destruction of wild animals
by the Boers in the Kilimanjaro district, in the _Täglichen Rundschau_,
Berlin, 1906. Professor Sjöstedt travelled through these districts for
the purpose of making a collection of their fauna for the Copenhagen
Museum, and visited the Merker Lakes with a view to securing a
hippopotamus.