We camped along this river for several weeks, poking indefinitely and
happily around the country in all directions to see what we could see.
Generally we went together, for neither B. nor myself had been tried out
as yet on dangerous game-those easy rhinos hardly counted-and I think we
both preferred to feel that we had backing until we knew what our nerves
were going to do with us. Nevertheless, occasionally, I would take Memba
Sasa and go out for a little purposeless stroll a few miles up or down
river. Sometimes we skirted the jungle, sometimes we held as near as
possible to the river's bank, sometimes we cut loose and rambled through
the dry, crackling scrub over the low volcanic hills of the arid country
outside.
Nothing can equal the intense interest of the most ordinary walk in
Africa. It is the only country I know of where a man is thoroughly and
continuously alive. Often when riding horseback with the dogs in my
California home I have watched them in envy of the keen, alert interest
they took in every stone, stick, and bush, in every sight, sound, and
smell. With equal frequency I have expressed that envy, but as something
unattainable to a human being's more phlegmatic make-up. In Africa one
actually rises to continuous alertness. There are dozy moments-except
you curl up in a safe place for the PURPOSE of dozing; again just like
the dog! Every bush, every hollow, every high tuft of grass, every deep
shadow must be scrutinized for danger. It will not do to pass carelessly
any possible lurking place. At the same time the sense of hearing
must be on guard; so that no break of twig or crash of bough can go
unremarked. Rhinoceroses conceal themselves most cannily, and have a
deceitful habit of leaping from a nap into their swiftest stride. Cobras
and puff adders are scarce, to be sure, but very deadly. Lions will
generally give way, if not shot at or too closely pressed; nevertheless
there is always the chance of cubs or too close a surprise. Buffalo lurk
daytimes in the deep thickets, but occasionally a rogue bull lives where
your trail will lead. These things do not happen often, but in the long
run they surely do happen, and once is quite enough provided the beast
gets in.
At first this continual alertness and tension is rather exhausting; but
after a very short time it becomes second nature. A sudden rustle the
other side a bush no longer brings you up all standing with your heart
in your throat; but you are aware of it, and you are facing the possible
danger almost before your slower brain has issued any orders to that
effect.
In rereading the above, I am afraid that I am conveying the idea that
one here walks under the shadow of continual uneasiness. This is not in
the least so. One enjoys the sun, and the birds and the little things.
He cultivates the great leisure of mind that shall fill the breadth of
his outlook abroad over a newly wonderful world. But underneath it all
is the alertness, the responsiveness to quick reflexes of judgment and
action, the intimate correlations to immediate environment which must
characterize the instincts of the higher animals. And it is good to live
these things.
Along the edge of that river jungle were many strange and beautiful
affairs. I could slip along among the high clumps of the thicker bushes
in such a manner as to be continually coming around unexpected bends. Of
such maneouvres are surprises made. The graceful red impalla were here
very abundant. I would come on them, their heads up, their great ears
flung forward, their noses twitching in inquiry of something they
suspected but could not fully sense. When slightly alarmed or suspicious
the does always stood compactly in a herd, while the bucks remained
discreetly in the background, their beautiful, branching, widespread
horns showing over the backs of their harems. The impalla is, in my
opinion, one of the most beautiful and graceful of the African bucks, a
perpetual delight to watch either standing or running. These beasts are
extraordinarily agile, and have a habit of breaking their ordinary fast
run by unexpectedly leaping high in the air. At a distance they give
somewhat the effect of dolphins at sea, only their leaps are higher and
more nearly perpendicular. Once or twice I have even seen one jump over
the back of another. On another occasion we saw a herd of twenty-five or
thirty cross a road of which, evidently, they were a little suspicious.
We could not find a single hoof mark in the dust! Generally these beasts
frequent thin brush country; but I have three or four times seen them
quite out in the open flat plains, feeding with the hartebeeste and
zebra. They are about the size of our ordinary deer, are delicately
fashioned, and can utter the most incongruously grotesque of noises by
way of calls or ordinary conversation.
The lack of curiosity, or the lack of gallantry, of the impalla bucks
was, in my experience, quite characteristic. They were almost always the
farthest in the background and the first away when danger threatened.
The ladies could look out for themselves. They had no horns to save;
and what do the fool women mean by showing so little sense, anyway! They
deserve what they get! It used to amuse me a lot to observe the utter
abandonment of all responsibility by these handsome gentlemen. When it
came time to depart, they departed. Hang the girls! They trailed along
after as fast as they could.
The waterbuck-a fine large beast about the size of our caribou, a
well-conditioned buck resembling in form and attitude the finest
of Landseer's stags-on the other hand, had a little more sense of
responsibility, when he had anything to do with the sex at all. He was
hardly what you might call a strictly domestic character. I have hunted
through a country for several days at a time without seeing a single
mature buck of this species, although there were plenty of does, in
herds of ten to fifty, with a few infants among them just sprouting
horns. Then finally, in some small grassy valley, I would come on the
Men's Club. There they were, ten, twenty, three dozen of them, having
the finest kind of an untramelled masculine time all by themselves.
Generally, however, I will say for them, they took care of their own
peoples. There would quite likely be one big old fellow, his harem of
varying numbers, and the younger subordinate bucks all together in a
happy family. When some one of the lot announced that something was
about, and they had all lined up to stare in the suspected direction,
the big buck was there in the foreground of inquiry. When finally they
made me out, it was generally the big buck who gave the signal. He
went first, to be sure, but his going first was evidently an act of
leadership, and not merely a disgraceful desire to get away before the
rest did.
But the waterbuck had to yield in turn to the plains
gazelles; especially to the Thompson's gazelle, familiarly-and
affectionately-known as the “Tommy.” He is a quaint little chap,
standing only a foot and a half tall at the shoulder, fawn colour on
top, white beneath, with a black, horizontal stripe on his side, like
a chipmunk, most lightly and gracefully built. When he was first made,
somebody told him that unless he did something characteristic,
like waggling his little tail, he was likely to be mistaken by the
undiscriminating for his bigger cousin, the Grant's gazelle. He has
waggled his tail ever since, and so is almost never mistaken for a
Grant's gazelle, even by the undiscriminating. Evidently his religion is
Mohammedan, for he always has a great many wives. He takes good care of
them, however. When danger appears, even when danger threatens, he
is the last to leave the field. Here and there he dashes frantically,
seeing that the women and children get off. And when the herd tops the
hill, Tommy's little horns bring up the rear of the procession. I like
Tommy. He is a cheerful, gallant, quaint little person, with the air of
being quite satisfied with his own solution of this complicated world.
Among the low brush at the edge of the river jungle dwelt also the
dik-dik, the tiniest miniature of a deer you could possibly imagine.
His legs are lead pencil size, he stands only about nine inches tall, he
weighs from five to ten pounds; and yet he is a perfect little antelope,
horns and all. I used to see him singly or in pairs standing quite
motionless and all but invisible in the shade of bushes; or leaping
suddenly to his feet and scurrying away like mad through the dry grass.
His personal opinion of me was generally expressed in a loud clear
whistle. But then nobody in this strange country talks the language you
would naturally expect him to talk! Zebra bark, hyenas laugh, impallas
grunt, ostriches boom like drums, leopards utter a plaintive sigh,
hornbills cry like a stage child, bushbucks sound like a cross between
a dog and a squawky toy-and so on. There is only one safe rule of the
novice in Africa: NEVER BELIEVE A WORD THE JUNGLE AND VELDT PEOPLE TELL
YOU.
These two-the impalla and the waterbuck-were the principal buck we would
see close to the river. Occasionally, however, we came on a few oryx,
down for a drink, beautiful big antelope, with white and black faces,
roached manes, and straight, nearly parallel, rapier horns upward of
three feet long. A herd of these creatures, the light gleaming on their
weapons, held all at the same slant, was like a regiment of bayonets in
the sun. And there were also the rhinoceroses to be carefully espied
and avoided. They lay obliterated beneath the shade of bushes, and arose
with a mighty blow-off of steam. Whereupon we withdrew silently, for we
wanted to shoot no more rhinos, unless we had to.
Beneath all these obvious and startling things, a thousand other
interesting matters were afoot. In the mass and texture of the jungle
grew many strange trees and shrubs. One most scrubby, fat and leafless
tree, looking as though it were just about to give up a discouraged
existence, surprised us by putting forth, apparently directly from
its bloated wood, the most wonderful red blossoms. Another otherwise
self-respecting tree hung itself all over with plump bologna sausages
about two feet long and five inches thick. A curious vine hung like a
rope, with Turk's-head knots about a foot apart on its whole length,
like the hand-over-hand ropes of gymnasiums. Other ropes were studded
all over with thick blunt bosses, resembling much the outbreak on one
sort of Arts-and-Crafts door: the sort intended to repel Mail-clad
Hosts.
The monkeys undoubtedly used such obvious highways through the trees.
These little people were very common. As we walked along, they withdrew
before us. We could make out their figures galloping hastily across the
open places, mounting bushes and stubs to take a satisfying backward
look, clambering to treetops, and launching themselves across the
abysses between limbs. If we went slowly, they retired in silence. If
we hurried at all, they protested in direct ratio to the speed of
our advance. And when later the whole safari, loads on heads, marched
inconsiderately through their jungle! We happened to be hunting on a
parallel course a half mile away, and we could trace accurately the
progress of our men by the outraged shrieks, chatterings, appeals to
high heaven for at least elemental justice to the monkey people.
Often, too, we would come on concourses of the big baboons. They
certainly carried on weighty affairs of their own according to a fixed
polity. I never got well enough acquainted with them to master the
details of their government, but it was indubitably built on patriarchal
lines. When we succeeded in approaching without being discovered, we
would frequently find the old men baboons squatting on their heels in a
perfect circle, evidently discussing matters of weight and portent. Seen
from a distance, their group so much resembled the council circles
of native warriors that sometimes, in a native country, we made that
mistake. Outside this solemn council, the women, young men and children
went about their daily business, whatever that was. Up convenient low
trees or bushes roosted sentinels.
We never remained long undiscovered. One of the sentinels barked
sharply. At once the whole lot loped away, speedily but with a curious
effect of deliberation. The men folks held their tails in a proud high
sideways arch; the curious youngsters clambered up bushes to take a
hasty look; the babies clung desperately with all four feet to the thick
fur on their mothers' backs; the mothers galloped along imperturbably
unheeding of infantile troubles aloft. The side hill was bewildering
with the big bobbing black forms.
In this lower country the weather was hot, and the sun very strong. The
heated air was full of the sounds of insects; some of them comfortable,
like the buzzing of bees, some of them strange and unusual to us. One
cicada had a sustained note, in quality about like that of our own
August-day's friend, but in quantity and duration as the roar of a train
to the gentle hum of a good motor car. Like all cicada noises it did not
usurp the sound world, but constituted itself an underlying basis, so
to speak. And when it stopped the silence seemed to rush in as into a
vacuum!
We had likewise the aeroplane beetle. He was so big that he would have
made good wing-shooting. His manner of flight was the straight-ahead,
heap-of-buzz, plenty-busy, don't-stop-a-minute-or-you'll-come-down
method of the aeroplane; and he made the same sort of a hum. His
first-cousin, mechanically, was what we called the wind-up-the-watch
insect. This specimen possessed a watch-an old-fashioned Waterbury,
evidently-that he was continually winding. It must have been hard work
for the poor chap, for it sounded like a very big watch.
All these things were amusing. So were the birds. The African bird is
quite inclined to be didactic. He believes you need advice, and he means
to give it. To this end he repeats the same thing over and over until
he thinks you surely cannot misunderstand. One chap especially whom we
called the lawyer bird, and who lived in the treetops, had four phrases
to impart. He said them very deliberately, with due pause between each;
then he repeated them rapidly; finally he said them all over again with
an exasperated bearing-down emphasis. The joke of it is I cannot now
remember just how they went! Another feathered pedagogue was continually
warning us to go slow; very good advice near an African jungle.
“Poley-poley! Poley-poley!” he warned again and again; which is good
Swahili for “slowly! slowly!” We always minded him. There were many
others, equally impressed with their own wisdom, but the one I remember
with most amusement was a dilatory person who apparently never got
around to his job until near sunset. Evidently he had contracted to
deliver just so many warnings per diem; and invariably he got so busy
chasing insects, enjoying the sun, gossiping with a friend and generally
footling about that the late afternoon caught him unawares with never a
chirp accomplished. So he sat in a bush and said his say over and over
just as fast as he could without pause for breath or recreation. It was
really quite a feat. Just at dusk, after two hours of gabbling, he would
reach the end of his contracted number. With final relieved chirp he
ended.
It has been said that African birds are “songless.” This is a careless
statement that can easily be read to mean that African birds are silent.
The writer evidently must have had in mind as a criterion some of our
own or the English great feathered soloists. Certainly the African
jungle seems to produce no individual performers as sustained as our own
bob-o-link, our hermit thrush, or even our common robin. But the African
birds are vocal enough, for all that. Some of them have a richness and
depth of timbre perhaps unequalled elsewhere. Of such is the chime-bird
with his deep double note; or the bell-bird tolling like a cathedral in
the blackness of the forest; or the bottle bird that apparently pours
gurgling liquid gold from a silver jug. As the jungle is exceedingly
populous of these feathered specialists, it follows that the early
morning chorus is wonderful. Africa may not possess the soloists, but
its full orchestrial effects are superb.
Naturally under the equator one expects and demands the “gorgeous
tropical plumage” of the books. He is not disappointed. The sun-birds
of fifty odd species, the brilliant blue starlings, the various parrots,
the variegated hornbills, the widower-birds, and dozens of others whose
names would mean nothing flash here and there in the shadow and in the
open. With them are hundreds of quiet little bodies just as interesting
to one who likes birds. From the trees and bushes hang pear-shaped
nests plaited beautifully of long grasses, hard and smooth as hand-made
baskets, the work of the various sorts of weaver-birds. In the tops of
the trees roosted tall marabout storks like dissipated, hairless old
club-men in well-groomed, correct evening dress.
And around camp gathered the swift brown kites. They were robbers and
villains, but we could not hate them. All day long they sailed back
and forth spying sharply. When they thought they saw their chance, they
stooped with incredible swiftness to seize a piece of meat. Sometimes
they would snatch their prize almost from the hands of its rightful
owner, and would swoop triumphantly upward again pursued by polyglot
maledictions and a throwing stick. They were very skilful on their
wings. I have many times seen them, while flying, tear up and devour
large chunks of meat. It seems to my inexperience as an aviator rather a
nice feat to keep your balance while tearing with your beak at meat held
in your talons. Regardless of other landmarks, we always knew when we
were nearing camp, after one of our strolls, by the gracefully wheeling
figures of our kites.