We are camped for the present on the edge of a plateau, overlooking a
vast plain that stretches a hundred miles or more to where Kilimanjaro
lifts his snow peaks to the blue. All over this yellow expanse of grass,
relieved in places by patches of dark bush, are great herds of wild game
slowly moving as they graze. Antelope and wildebeests, zebra and
hartebeests, there seems no end to them in this sportsman's paradise. At
night, attracted by to-morrow's meat that hangs inside a strong and
well-guarded hut, the hyaenas come to prowl and voice their hunger and
disappointment on the evening air.
The general impression in England, you know, was that in coming to East
Africa we had left the cold and damp misery of Flanders for a most
enjoyable side-show. We were told that we should spend halcyon days
among the preserves, return laden with honours and large stores of
ivory, and in our spare moments enjoy a little campaigning of a picnic
variety, against an enemy that only waited the excuse to make a graceful
surrender. But how different the truth! To us with the advance there has
been no shooting; to shoot a sable antelope (and, of course, we have
trekked through the finest game preserves in the world, including the
Crown Prince's special Elephant Forests) is to ask for trouble from the
Askari patrol that is just waiting for the sound of a rifle shot to
bring him hot foot after us. So the sable antelope might easily be
bought by very unpleasant sacrifice. All shooting at game, even for
food, except on most urgent occasions, is strictly forbidden, for a
rifle shot may be as misleading to our own patrols and outposts as it
would be inviting to the Hun.
This war had led us from the comparative civilisation of German
plantations to the wildest, swampiest region of Equatorial Africa. After
rain the roads tell the story of the wild game, for in the mud are the
big slot marks of elephants and lions and all the denizens of the bush.
But at the bases and back in British East Africa where there are no
lurking German Askari patrols, many fellows have had the time of their
lives with the big game. Afternoon excursions to the wide plains and
their bush where the wild game hide and graze.
We are often asked how we manage to avoid the lions and the other wild
beasts of the country that come to visit the thorn bomas that protect
our transport cattle at night? Strange as it may seem, we do not have to
avoid them, for they do not come for us or for the natives, nor yet for
the live cattle so much as for the dead mules and oxen. I dare say there
have never been so many white and black men in a country infested with
lions who have suffered so little from the beasts of the field as we
have.
In the first place, the advance of so great an army has frightened away
a very large number of the wild game. All that have stayed are the
larger carnivora, like the hyaena or the lion. And they are a positive
Godsend to us. For instead of attacking our sentries and patrols at
night, as you might imagine, they are the great scavengers and camp
cleaners of the country. Of vultures there are too few in this land,
probably because the blind bush robs them of the chance of spotting
their prey. Were it not for lions and hyaenas, we should be in a bad
way. For they come to eat all our dead animals, all the wastage of this
army, the tribute our transport animals are paying to fly and to
horse-sickness. For in spite of fairy tales about lions one must believe
the unromantic truth that a lion prefers a dead ox to a man, and a black
man to a white one. So you will not be surprised when I tell you that in
this army of ours of at least 30,000 men I have only had two cases of
mauling by the larger carnivora to deal with. And such cases as these
would all pass through my hands. There was only one case of lion
mauling, and that a Cape Boy who met a young half-grown cub on the road
and unwisely ran from it. At first curiosity attracted this animal, and
later the hunting instinct caused him to maul his prey. So they brought
him in with the severe blood-poisoning that sets in in almost all cases
of such a nature. For the teeth and claws of the larger carnivora are
frightfully infectious. This Cape Boy died in forty-eight hours. Yet one
other case was that of an officer who met a leopardess with cubs in the
bush when out after guinea fowl. She charged him, and he gave her his
left arm to chew to save his face and body. Then alarmed by his yells
and the approach of his companion she left him, and he was brought one
hundred miles to the railway. But he was in good hands at once, and when
I saw him the danger of blood-poisoning had gone and he was well upon
his way to health again.
The same experience have we had with snakes. The hot dry dusty roads and
the torn scrub abound with snakes and most of them of a virulently
poisonous quality. But one case only of snake-bite have I seen, and that
a native. The fact that the wild denizens of the field and forest are
much more afraid of us than we of them saves us from what might appear
to be very serious menace. Even the wounded left out in the dense bush
have not suffered from these animal pests, but the dead, of course, have
often disappeared and their bleached bones alone are left to tell the
story. One might think that the hyaena, the universal scavenger, would
be as loathed by the native as he is by us whose dead he disinters at
night, if we have been too tired or unable to bury our casualties deep
enough. But, strange as it may seem, the hyaena is worshipped by one
very large tribe in East Africa, the Kikuyu. For these strange people
have an extraordinary aversion to touching dead people. So much so, that
when their own relatives seem about to die they put them out in the bush
with a small fire and a gourd of water, protected by a small erection of
bush against the mid-day sun, and leave the hyaenas to do the rest. So
it comes about that this beast is almost sacred, and a white man who
kills one runs some danger of his life, if the crime is discovered. It
is hardly to be wondered at that the hyaenas in the "Kikuyu" country are
far bolder than in other parts. Elsewhere and by nature the hyaena is an
arrant coward. Here, however, he will bite the face off a sleeping man
lying in the open, or even pull down a woman or child, should they be
alone; elsewhere he only lives on carrion.
The German is not a sportsman as we understand the term, though the
modern young German who apes English ways, comes out to East Africa
occasionally to make collections for his ancestral Schloss. That the
Crown Prince should have reserved large areas for game preserves speaks
for this modern tendency in young Germany. The average German is not
keen on exercise in the tropics, he will be carried by sweating natives
in a chair or hammock where Englishmen on similar errands will walk and
shoot upon the way. This slothful habit leads us to the conviction that
very much of the country is not explored as it should be, and I have
been told by prospectors for precious minerals, who were serving in our
army, of the wonderful store of mineral deposits in German East Africa.
One noted prospector who fell into my hands at Handeni could so little
forget his occupation of peace in this new reality of war, that he
always took out his prospector's hammer on patrol with him, and chipped
pieces of likely rock to bring back to camp in his haversack. He it was
who told me of his discovery of a seam of anthracite coal in the bed of
a river near the Tanga railway. On picket he had wandered to the edge of
the ravine and fallen over. Struggling for life to save himself by the
shrubs and growing plants on the face of this precipice, he eventually
found his way to the bottom of the ravine, on the top of a small
avalanche of earth. Judge, then, of his astonishment when, looking up,
he saw that his fall had exposed a fine seam of coal. This discovery
alone, in a country where the railway engines are forced to burn wood
fuel or expensive imported coal from Durban, is of the greatest
importance. The experience of most of us seemed to be that the Germans,
in the piping days of peace, preferred elegant leisure in a hammock and
the prospect of cold beer beneath a mango tree to the sterner delights
of laborious days in thickly wooded and inaccessible mountains. One of
the first results of this campaign will be to bring the enterprising
prospector from Rhodesia and the Malay States to what was once the
"Schöne Ost-Afrika" of the German colonial enthusiast.
But big game hunting, except a man hunts for a living, as do the
elephant poachers in Mozambique or the Lado Enclave, soon loses its
savour to white men after a time. It is not long before the rifle is
discarded for the camera by men who really care for wild life in wilder
countries. Herein the white man differs from the savage, who kills and
kills until he can slay no longer. Strange it is to think that farmers
and planters in East Africa so soon tire of big game hunting, that they
do not trouble even to shoot for the pot or to get the meat that is the
ration provided for their native labourers, but employs a native, armed
with a rifle and a few cartridges, to shoot antelope for meat.
To one in whom the spirit of adventure and romance is not dead what more
attractive than an elephant hunter's life? To work for six months and
make two or three thousand pounds, and spend the proceeds in a riotous
holiday, until the heavy tropic rains are over and the bush is dry
again. But few realise the rare qualities that an elephant hunter must
have. He must be extraordinarily tough, quite hardened to the toil and
diseases of the country, knowing many native tongues, largely immune
from the fever that lays a white man low many marches from civilisation
and hospitals, of an endurance splendid, with hope to dare the risk, and
courage to endure the toil. For the professional elephant hunter is now,
by force of circumstance and white man's law, become a wolf of the
forest, and the hands of all Governments are against him. He must mark
his elephant down, be up with the first light and after him, must
manoeuvre for light and wind and scent to pick the big bull from the
sheltering herd of females. If the head shot is not possible, the lung
shot or stomach shot alone is left. And six hours' march through
waterless country before one comes up with the elephant resting with his
herd is not the best preparation for a shot. If one misses, one may as
well go home another eight hours back to water. But if you hit and
follow the bull through the thorny bush, you do not even then know
whether you will find the victim. If, however, you find traces three
times in the first hour, or see the blood pouring from the trunk--not
merely blown in spray upon the bushes--then the certain conviction comes
that within an hour you will find your kill. Then the long march back to
camp, all food and water and the precious tusks carried by natives,
often too exhausted at the end to eat. A man who cannot march thirty
miles a day, and fulfil all the other requirements, should relegate
elephant hunting to the world of dreams. All the big successful elephant
poachers are well known: most of them are English, some of them are
Boers, a few only French or American; but seldom does a German attempt
it or live to repeat his experience. Far better to shut his eyes to this
illicit traffic and assist these strange soldiers of fortune to get
their ivory to the coast, and then enjoy the due reward of this
complaisant attitude.