Books of sporting, travel, and adventure in countries little known to
the average reader naturally fall in two classes-neither, with a very
few exceptions, of great value. One class is perhaps the logical result
of the other.
Of the first type is the book that is written to make the most of far
travels, to extract from adventure the last thrill, to impress the
awestricken reader with a full sense of the danger and hardship the
writer has undergone. Thus, if the latter takes out quite an ordinary
routine permit to go into certain districts, he makes the most of
travelling in “closed territory,” implying that he has obtained an
especial privilege, and has penetrated where few have gone before him.
As a matter of fact, the permit is issued merely that the authorities
may keep track of who is where. Anybody can get one. This class of
writer tells of shooting beasts at customary ranges of four and five
hundred yards. I remember one in especial who airily and as a matter
of fact killed all his antelope at such ranges. Most men have shot
occasional beasts at a quarter mile or so, but not airily nor as
a matter of fact: rather with thanksgiving and a certain amount of
surprise. The gentleman of whom I speak mentioned getting an eland at
seven hundred and fifty yards. By chance I happened to mention this to a
native Africander.
“Yes,” said he, “I remember that; I was there.”
This interested me-and I said so.
“He made a long shot,” said I.
“A GOOD long shot,” replied the Africander.
“Did you pace the distance?”
He laughed. “No,” said he, “the old chap was immensely delighted. 'Eight
hundred yards if it was an inch!' he cried.”
“How far was it?”
“About three hundred and fifty. But it was a long shot, all right.”
And it was! Three hundred and fifty yards is a very long shot. It is
over four city blocks-New York size. But if you talk often enough and
glibly enough of “four and five hundred yards,” it does not sound like
much, does it?
The same class of writer always gets all the thrills. He speaks of
“blanched cheeks,” of the “thrilling suspense,” and so on down the gamut
of the shilling shocker. His stuff makes good reading; there is no
doubt of that. The spellbound public likes it, and to that extent it has
fulfilled its mission. Also, the reader believes it to the letter-why
should he not? Only there is this curious result: he carries away in
his mind the impression of unreality, of a country impossible to
be understood and gauged and savoured by the ordinary human mental
equipment. It is interesting, just as are historical novels, or the
copper-riveted heroes of modern fiction, but it has no real relation
with human life. In the last analysis the inherent untruth of the
thing forces itself on him. He believes, but he does not apprehend; he
acknowledges the fact, but he cannot grasp its human quality. The affair
is interesting, but it is more or less concocted of pasteboard for his
amusement. Thus essential truth asserts its right.
All this, you must understand, is probably not a deliberate attempt
to deceive. It is merely the recrudescence under the stimulus of a
brand-new environment of the boyish desire to be a hero. When a man
jumps back into the Pleistocene he digs up some of his ancestors'
cave-qualities. Among these is the desire for personal adornment. His
modern development of taste precludes skewers in the ears and polished
wire around the neck; so he adorns himself in qualities instead. It is
quite an engaging and diverting trait of character. The attitude of mind
it both presupposes and helps to bring about is too complicated for my
brief analysis. In itself it is no more blameworthy than the small boy's
pretence at Indians in the back yard; and no more praiseworthy than
infantile decoration with feathers.
In its results, however, we are more concerned. Probably each of us has
his mental picture that passes as a symbol rather than an idea of the
different continents. This is usually a single picture-a deep river,
with forest, hanging snaky vines, anacondas and monkeys for the east
coast of South America, for example. It is built up in youth by chance
reading and chance pictures, and does as well as a pink place on the
map to stand for a part of the world concerning which we know nothing at
all. As time goes on we extend, expand, and modify this picture in the
light of what knowledge we may acquire. So the reading of many books
modifies and expands our first crude notions of Equatorial Africa. And
the result is, if we read enough of the sort I describe above, we build
the idea of an exciting, dangerous, extra-human continent, visited by
half-real people of the texture of the historical-fiction hero, who have
strange and interesting adventures which we could not possibly imagine
happening to ourselves.
This type of book is directly responsible for the second sort. The
author of this is deadly afraid of being thought to brag of his
adventures. He feels constantly on him the amusedly critical eye of the
old-timer. When he comes to describe the first time a rhino dashed in
his direction, he remembers that old hunters, who have been so charged
hundreds of times, may read the book. Suddenly, in that light, the
adventure becomes pitifully unimportant. He sets down the fact that “we
met a rhino that turned a bit nasty, but after a shot in the shoulder
decided to leave us alone.” Throughout he keeps before his mind's eye
the imaginary audience of those who have done. He writes for them,
to please them, to convince them that he is not “swelled head,” nor
“cocky,” nor “fancies himself,” nor thinks he has done, been, or seen
anything wonderful. It is a good, healthy frame of mind to be in; but
it, no more than the other type, can produce books that leave on the
minds of the general public any impression of a country in relation to a
real human being.
As a matter of fact, the same trouble is at the bottom of both failures.
The adventure writer, half unconsciously perhaps, has been too much
occupied play-acting himself into half-forgotten boyhood heroics. The
more modest man, with even more self-consciousness, has been thinking of
how he is going to appear in the eyes of the expert. Both have thought
of themselves before their work. This aspect of the matter would
probably vastly astonish the modest writer.
If, then, one is to formulate an ideal toward which to write, he might
express it exactly in terms of man and environment. Those readers
desiring sheer exploration can get it in any library: those in search
of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty of it at any book-stall.
But the majority want something different from either of these. They
want, first of all, to know what the country is like-not in vague and
grandiose “word paintings,” nor in strange and foreign sounding words
and phrases, but in comparison with something they know. What is it
nearest like-Arizona? Surrey? Upper New York? Canada? Mexico? Or is it
totally different from anything, as is the Grand Canyon? When you look
out from your camp-any one camp-how far do you see, and what do you
see?-mountains in the distance, or a screen of vines or bamboo near
hand, or what? When you get up in the morning, what is the first thing
to do? What does a rhino look like, where he lives, and what did you do
the first time one came at you? I don't want you to tell me as though I
were either an old hunter or an admiring audience, or as though you were
afraid somebody might think you were making too much of the matter. I
want to know how you REALLY felt. Were you scared or nervous? or did you
become cool? Tell me frankly just how it was, so I can see the thing as
happening to a common everyday human being. Then, even at second-hand
and at ten thousand miles distance, I can enjoy it actually, humanly,
even though vicariously, speculating a bit over my pipe as to how I
would have liked it myself.
Obviously, to write such a book the author must at the same time sink
his ego and exhibit frankly his personality. The paradox in this is only
apparent. He must forget either to strut or to blush with diffidence.
Neither audience should be forgotten, and neither should be exclusively
addressed. Never should he lose sight of the wholesome fact that old
hunters are to read and to weigh; never should he for a moment slip
into the belief that he is justified in addressing the expert alone. His
attitude should be that many men know more and have done more than he,
but that for one reason or another these men are not ready to transmit
their knowledge and experience.
To set down the formulation of an ideal is one thing: to fulfil it is
another. In the following pages I cannot claim a fulfilment, but only an
attempt. The foregoing dissertation must be considered not as a promise,
but as an explanation. No one knows better than I how limited my
African experience is, both in time and extent, bounded as it is by East
Equatorial Africa and a year. Hundreds of men are better qualified than
myself to write just this book; but unfortunately they will not do it.