Part 22

C. G. Schillings, phot.

FLIGHT OF FLAMINGOES (TAKEN AT SHORTER RANGE. THERE WERE THOUSANDS IN THIS FLOCK).]

In the lagoons one sees emerge from the surface the head of a great giant snake, a good five yards long, the African python; others I have come upon suddenly on the open velt. There are continually thrilling moments! It may be that memory conjures up for us the delightful fairy-like image of a rare dwarf antelope seen perhaps once only in the shades of the forest, a dwarf antelope that, with strange large eyes and ears alert, watches one’s approach, and then like a flash of lightning disappears in the thickets; it may be that in memory one sees the reddish brown, mud-smeared body of a giant elephant emerge from the midst of some densely tangled primeval forest; it may be that a tree suddenly bursting into bloom yields me a wonderfully beautiful new kind of bird, which I grasp in my hand, delighted with its robe of feathers; it may be that suddenly the massive giant form of a rhinoceros appears before me in the tall grass, unexpected, menacing, standing as if chiselled out of stone; it may be that my free gaze ranges without limit over the wide prospect, and sees in primitive abundance the strange life of the tropics; in every case the impressions received seem to the beholder fascinating beyond description.

Monotonous as the surroundings of the landscape may appear to the newcomer, poor and barren though the velt may seem to be for weeks at a time, yet, enlivened and permeated by the mighty flood of all this strange animal life, it has a beauty and a charm whose influence no one can escape who makes his way into the midst of it with open heart and eyes.

He who looks around him with clear-sighted vision, and tries to see more than others, has revealed to him the beauties of Nature in the greatest and most wonderful way, and is drawn in the highest sense of the word to admiration of them. Here is verified, as Sir Harry Johnston says in his preface to my first book, “the old nursery story of eyes and no eyes.”

It is thus that I lie for long hours in the wilderness, and observe, admire and enjoy. What a wealth of impressions is brought before the eyes among these ever-changing, at first strange but gradually familiar sights, in the midst of the foreign-looking landscape, bathed in a light that has a marvellous influence, and in its full power is almost blinding.

Now the dwarfs, and again the giants of the animal world rivet our attention. But it is especially the primeval abundance, the great profusion of large and small wild life, that gives an impression that is now delightful, now overwhelming. One must have seen, with the eye of the hunter, gigantic old bull-elephants in the primeval forest, great herds of rhinoceroses and giraffes in one single day, thousands of zebras and antelopes gathered together--one must have felt all this profuse wealth of life, to be able to understand its full beauty and grandeur.

Yet there are days when one looks around in vain for all this life and activity, when, on account of the weather, or some other reason, the animals do not show themselves so freely. One must also take due account of the extensive periodical migrations of the African fauna. Many an erroneous judgment as to the alleged scarcity of wild life, in districts in which other hunters pursued the chase at an earlier date with success, is to be thus explained.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

THIS TELEPHOTOGRAPH OF STORKS ON THE WING WILL GIVE SOME IDEA OF THE HUGE FLOCKS IN WHICH THEY START ON THEIR NORTHERN MIGRATION IN FEBRUARY.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

WHITE STORKS GATHERING FOR THEIR NORTHERN MIGRATION TO EUROPE.]

But, on the other hand, there are also days when such an abundance of animal forms presents itself to our eyes, that the most lively imagination can form no idea of all this profusion. On such days, I have often wished that one could have a gigantic photographic apparatus, an instrument that would be capable of making a record of all I saw. But on such days, also, I have more than once made a mental apology to explorers whose lives have long closed in death. When, for instance, in former years I had looked over the sketches of the late Cornwallis Harris, sketches showing the life of the South African fauna as he saw it about the year 1837, I more than once had my doubts about the correctness of his representations of it. As the result of what I myself have seen, I have quite given up such doubts.

The original sketches left to us by Cornwallis Harris (which I must say do not always rise to a high level From the artistic point of view) are coloured sketches accompanied by descriptions, and show us such multitudes of wild animals that they seem to border on the fabulous. For we see in them elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, buffaloes, zebras and antelopes, all gathered together in crowds, and thus one inclines involuntarily to the opinion that all these have been brought together in one picture merely to give illustrations of the various species. But my own observations have shown me that our artist is perfectly correct. One sees how necessary it is to make documentary records of such observations. The men of a later time, as I plainly realise, may be able to place before themselves a picture of all this primitive abundance of animal life only with the greatest trouble and by means of earnest study of every authority bearing on the matter.

Enormous periods of time must have gone by to develop all the beauty and splendour of this so varied and so highly organised life. My thoughts range over far distant times. I see, looking so near that it seems as one could touch it with one’s hands, one of the mightiest volcanoes of our earth gradually unveiling itself and stripping off its robe of clouds. The volcanic regions below it remind me of the story of how all my surroundings were developed.

Born in fire, and evolved, differentiated, and formed to so much beauty, which no hostile hand has yet come to destroy, the scene around me is so splendid that my eyes keep ranging over it, more and more eager to contemplate all its splendours.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

CRESTED CRANES IN FLIGHT.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

IN A WONDERFULLY SHORT TIME VULTURES AND MARABOUS FLY DOWN FROM AN EXTREME HEIGHT IN THE AIR TO FALL UPON ANY DEAD ANIMAL.]

A strange feeling comes over me. I think of all the beautiful spots of our old world. They have all been taken possession of under carefully devised arrangements and methods, well protected by the eye of the law, and often only occasionally open to access, and then on condition of payment. But the beauty I am contemplating has now been hopelessly abandoned to intruders, who have neither knowledge nor taste nor sense, and who are at this moment so barbarously destroying it.

But these thoughts must give way to others that are more pleasant and consoling. How wonderful to be able to revel in this wilderness, to feel in oneself the influence of all these splendours, notwithstanding all dangers and all difficulties, however great! Everything around us undulates and shimmers, bathed in a dazzling sea of light. Gradually the colouring of plain and hills, the dome of the sky and the whole surrounding landscape, changes to duller and less definite tints. The sun-illumined air rises in waves from the earth, and the various strata of it form an ever-changing chaos of reflected light. Over all there is deep peace. A spell that accords with the mood of the moment seems to stream down from the dome of the sky over this solitude, lying so far from the noisy activity of the world.

All that I here behold has been going on since those far times, directed by natural law, in ever-recurring succession. But to-day for the first time a member of the complex society of civilisation takes delight in this mountain rising amidst all this primeval beauty.

Who could possibly set down this poetry upon paper--the poetry of the velt and its wild inhabitants, the moods of East African Nyíka? The master of colouring has not yet arisen who could give us a picture of these mighty gatherings of wild herds, and of these deserts that seem overcrowded with animal forms, that yet live so peacefully together, nor can the master of the pen, though he may have been able by his words to conjure up some idea of them in the mind.

One who has perhaps felt and enjoyed their spell more than any one else is Alfred Brehm. But he has travelled only in regions that had long been under the influence of man and his activity. He has only once seen the king of beasts, and has never looked upon the giraffe--whose beautiful eyes the Arab compares with the eyes of his beloved--and many other forms of the African fauna. Nevertheless he has done wonders, thanks to his deep feeling for his subject, his intimate understanding of it, and his incomparably poetical power of description. He has given us imperishable pictures in words that are among the most beautiful that have ever been written about Nature. Our old famous teacher, Dr. Schweinfurth, has seen and described similar scenes. With these two we may rank in equal honour the name of the German explorer Richard Böhm, who unhappily lost his life so tragically and at such an early age on the shores of Lake Upämba in Southern Urúa, of which he was the discoverer. Many others might also be named who were deeply influenced by these primeval splendours. But the fauna of South Africa has vanished unsung and untamed, before any artist or master of words arose to place in a fitting way its beauties on record for all time!

C. G. Schillings, phot.

TELEPHOTOGRAPH OF A HERD OF WATERBUCK (COBUS ELLIPSIPRYMNUS, Ogilb.) RUNNING AWAY.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.