Part 11

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A HERD OF WHITE-BEARDED GNUS. IN THE BACKGROUND ONE OF THE CHARACTERISTIC HILLS OF THE MASAI UPLANDS.]

While the Masai warriors thus took their share in elephant-killing, and the Wandorobo stuck to their long, trusted poisoned darts and poisoned spears, the caravan folk attacked the elephants with powder and iron bullets, and slew whole hecatombs of them.

“Nowadays,” the leader of the caravan told me, “the chase is easier and less dangerous, and your firearms also give the man from the coast the power of hunting and killing the Fihl (elephant). For example, you know, sir, that my half-brother, Seliman bin Omari, is not a practised hunter. And yet, believe me, he and his people have brought down many, many elephants.”

But his banker on the coast, the Hindoo Radda Damja, certainly never hears one word of any elephant being killed by Seliman’s people:

“No one is so clever as he is at knowing nothing about elephants when questions are asked. The ivory is always something traded for with the natives, far, far away in the interior,” he adds, with a cunning wink. “The main point is that we all get pembe (ivory), and he gets plenty of it! I would like to work the business as he does, but, sir, I am not so clever in preparing amulets, and moreover, I don’t know as much as he does of the ways of the elephant.

“But it’s a pity that in all parts of the country the ivory is becoming very scarce, so one has to be going always farther into the interior, and one must try to find new ivory districts.”

Thus my Arab informant talked a long time with me. He told me much that was interesting and much that was new to me. He told me of caravans that had been massacred, cut off to the last man by the natives in remote districts: and again of caravans that had been not one or two,--no, as long as six years on the march, that had buried a lot of ivory and gradually got it down to the coast. Time counts for nothing here, for the people--that is to say, those who are not slaves--receive only the one lump sum agreed upon for the journey, no matter how long it lasts. His friends, with caravans mustering many hundreds, had carried hundreds and hundreds of barrels of gunpowder into the interior, they had sought everywhere for new districts abounding in ivory, and the result had been the slaughter of the elephants on all sides. Nevertheless he had not much to tell me of men having enriched themselves by this trade. However, this did not apply to the traders on the coast, who advanced the money. These lent money to the caravan leaders, who went into the interior, at the high rate of interest usual in the East, and thus became rich men. They had, of course, also many losses. It happened not seldom that one of their debtors was “lost” in the interior, which means that he simply did not come back, but chose to pass the rest of his life in exile. And in that case it would be a difficult matter for the creditor to take proceedings against him.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A MASAI DANCE--THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS THE PLAITED QUEUE WORN BY THE YOUNG WARRIORS (EL MORAN), WHO LEAP AS HIGH IN THE AIR AS THEY CAN. THE YOUNG WOMEN, WHOSE HEADS ARE CLIPPED COMPLETELY BARE, SING AND DANCE ROUND THEM.]

Then my informant told me how many of the elephant hunters still living had been carrying on their business already for a long time before any Europeans whatever thought of making a prolonged stay in the country. He told me also much that was interesting about the old trade routes extending far through Africa, and even to the Congo. He had friends and relatives who had already traversed these routes many times, and journeyed from the east coast even to the Congo, long before any European traveller. Many of the people of his caravan were able to tell from memory each day’s journey as far as the Congo, and give exact information about the chiefs who held sway in each district, and the possibility of getting supplies of various kinds of provisions, such as maize, millet, bananas, or other products of the country.

I cannot exactly say how long he had talked with me about elephants and elephant-hunting, about the ivory trade, and many other things. I only know one thing--that after some time his talk became more and more difficult for me to understand, that I strove in vain against an ever-increasing weariness, and that at last I saw neither the Arab nor the caravan--in a word, saw nothing more, felt nothing more.

I fell into a deep sleep in which, in my dreams, I had a lively argument with some Europeans, who would not believe so many elephants, buffaloes, and other wild animals had formerly been here, and who kept on objecting strongly that it was impossible that all this could have been the case so short a time ago.

When I woke up again I found myself in my lounging-chair, a primitive piece of furniture of my own construction. My black servant stood before me, and asked me if I would not rather go to bed.

I rubbed my eyes--it had all been a dream, then; the spell of Elelescho must have inspired me with it. How foolish to yield to this spell! But men will perhaps so yield to it when all this has become “historical” and the Masai and their lives and deeds have, like the Redskins of America, found their Fenimore Cooper.

Then may the spell of the Elelescho exert its rightful power; then may it make famous the slender, sinewy, noble Masai ol-morani as, amidst his fair ones, his “doiye,” he leads the song-accompanied dance as he goes out to war, and reigns the free lord of the wilderness! But to-day he bears on his brow the significant mark of an inexorable fate--that of the last of the Mohicans.

The spell of the Elelescho has departed from Lake Nakuro, once so remote from the world.

The lake is no longer remote.

Iron railway lines link it with the Indian Ocean. Vanished from it is the spell that I once felt both waking and sleeping; gone is the poetry of the elephant herds, the Masai, the Wandorobo, and the caravan life in all its aspects; gone all that I saw there. The traveller, if he would learn to know the primitive life and ways, whether of men or of the animal world, if he would know the primeval harmony that speaks to him in an overpowering language peculiar to itself, must press on into the wilderness farther away from these tracks. This harmony, whose special character is day by day disappearing, day by day is in an ever increasing measure destroyed, cannot be recalled under the new, the coming system, the system that abandons itself to restlessness--that, in a word, which we call modern industry, modern civilisation.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A MORE DISTANT VIEW OF THEM.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

FINALLY THEY DECIDE TO BEAT A RETREAT.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

EFFECTS OF HEAT AND MIRAGE.]

To-day one may perhaps read in the East African Gazette that Mr. Smith, the railway engineer, favoured by extraordinary luck on a hunting expedition, has seen one solitary bull elephant not far from Lake Nakuro! This is something quite out of the ordinary, and Mr. Smith is to be congratulated. Unfortunately his efforts during many years to have even one young East African elephant sent to London have been without any result. A young animal is no longer to be found. In the same number of this newspaper, under another heading, we read the report that the export of ivory this year by the Uganda Railway has been utterly disappointing; the quantity carried has been terribly small, hardly worth mentioning!

I had a talk lately with a travelling companion who had spent some time with me in the wilderness ten years ago, and who had just revisited those distant lands, availing himself of the railway. Alfred Kaiser, a widely travelled man, recalled to me the life we had lived together, when there was yet hardly a trace of European influence among the people of the interior by Lake Victoria. In memory we saw again the inhabitants of then hardly known Sotikoland receiving us mistrustfully on their frontier, thousands strong. Their glittering spears sparkle in the morning sun; chiefs, ministers, and court ladies of the Wakawiróndo appear in camp in most primitive costume; club-armed warriors regard us with the most open distrust; cowry shells and artificial pearls form their costume and are used as their money; sudden attacks and fighting are quite in the order of the day.

And now, only ten years later, Kaiser has seen the Masai at Lake Nakuro, English-speaking caricatures of civilisation.