Part 17

I was able by degrees to gain on the satiated animals. A wonderful memory that! Clear morning light, a sharp breeze from over the swamps, the yellowish velt with its whitish incrustation of salt--a few bushes and groups of trees--and ever before me the lions, beating their reluctant retreat, now clearly visible, now almost out of sight.

I try a shot. But they are too far--it is no use. Puffing and panting, I feel my face glow and my heart beat with my exertions. At length one lioness stops and glances in my direction. I shoot, and imagine I have missed her. All three rapidly disappear in a morass near at hand. All my efforts seem to have been in vain.... Eight days later, however, I bag the lioness, and find that my ball has struck her right through the thigh.

It may happen that a lion caught in a trap gets off with the iron attached to him, and covers vast stretches of country. The pursuer has then an exciting time of it. If the animal passes through a fairly open district the issue is probably successful. But I have sometimes been obliged to wade through a morass of reeds for hours at a stretch. The hunter should remember that the irons may have gripped the lion’s paw in such a way that he may be able to shake them off with a powerful effort. Then the tables may easily be turned, and the lion may clasp the hunter, never to let him go again.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

CARRYING A LIVE HYENA BACK TO CAMP.]

On another occasion I caught two full-grown lions in one night. They had roamed about quite near my camp night after night. They had frightened my people, and had been seen by the night sentinels; but in the daytime no one had been able to catch a glimpse of them. At last one night a sick ass, that had been placed as a bait, was torn away. The trail of the heavy irons led, after much turning and twisting, to a reedy swamp. Here it was impossible to follow the tracks further. Several hours passed before I succeeded finally in finding first one lion and then the other. To kill them was no easy matter. I could hear the clanking of the chains where they were moving about, but I must see them before I could take effective aim. Meanwhile one of the lions was making frantic efforts to free himself. Supposing the irons were to give way! But these efforts were followed by moments of quiet and watching. How the beasts growled!

* * * * *

I cannot agree with those who condemn indiscriminately the trapping of lions. Of course, it must be done for a good purpose. I should not have been able to present the Imperial Natural History Museum in Berlin with such beautiful and typical lions’ skins had I not had recourse to these traps.

A lion story with a droll ending came to me from Bagamo o. There a lion had made itself very obnoxious, and some Europeans determined to trap it. The trap was soon set, and a young lion fell into it. Several men armed to the teeth approached the place, to put an end to the captive with powder and shot. I cannot now exactly remember what happened next, but on the attempt of the lion to free itself from the trap the riflemen took to their heels and plunged into a pond. According to one version, the lion turned out afterwards to be only a hyena!

At one time there was a perfect plague of lions near the coast towns--Mikindani, for instance. Hungry lions attacked the townsfolk on many occasions, and even poked their heads inside the doors of the dwellings.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

MASAI MAKING GAME OF A HYENA WHICH HAD ATTACKED THEIR KRAAL AND WHICH I HAD TRAPPED AT THEIR REQUEST. THEY KILLED IT AT LAST WITH A SINGLE SPEAR-STAB THROUGH THE HEART.]

The extermination of wild life has been almost as great a disaster to the lions as to the bushmen of South Africa. Extermination awaits bushman and lion in their turn--not through hunger alone.

I was more fortunate in my attempt to get a fine example of the striped hyena (Hyena schillingsi, Mtsch.), which I had previously discovered, and in bringing it to Germany, where I presented it to the Berlin Zoological Gardens. On page 501 is to be seen a picture of one of this species caught in a trap. Orgeich, my plucky assistant, had armed himself with a big cudgel, for use in the case of the beast attacking him, but never lost his equanimity, and smoked his indispensable and inseparable pipe the whole time! Another illustration is of a hyena which was confined in the camp. This fine specimen, an old female, was very difficult to take to the coast. Something like forty bearers were needed to transport the heavy iron apparatus with its inmate as far as Tanga. This representative of its species was one of the first brought alive to Europe, and lived for several years in the Berlin Zoological Gardens.

It is less troublesome to obtain possession of smaller beasts of prey. Thus I kept three jackals (Thos. schmidti, Noack) in my camp until they became quite reconciled to their fate. It is very interesting to study the various characteristics of animals at such times. Some adapt themselves very easily to their altered circumstances; others of the same species do so only after a long struggle. The study of animal character can be carried on very well under the favourable conditions of camp life in the wild.

Although grown jackals may be fairly easily brought over to Europe, we had great difficulty with members of the more noble feline race, and above all with the King of Beasts himself. I learnt by experience that lynxes and wild cats were only to be tamed with great difficulty, and I once lost a captive lynx very suddenly in spite of every care.

These things are not so simple. This is why it is not yet possible to bring many of the most charming and most interesting members of the African animal world to Europe. I much wish that it were possible to bring full-grown lions over. I would far rather see one or two of them in all their native wildness and majesty than a whole troop of home-reared and almost domesticated specimens.

But the hours I devoted to my own attempts in this direction were not spent in vain. They were memorable hours, full of splendid excitement.

XII

A Dying Race of Giants

Every one who knows Equatorial East Africa will bear me out in saying that it is easier nowadays to kill fifty rhinoceroses than a single bull-elephant carrying tusks weighing upwards of a couple of hundred pounds.

There are only a few survivors left of this world-old race of giants. Many species, probably, have disappeared without leaving a single trace behind. The block granite sarcophagi on the Field of the Dead in Sakkarah in Egypt, dating from 3,500 years ago, are memorials (each weighing some 64 tons) of the sacred bulls of Apis: the mightiest monument ever raised by man to beast. Bulls were sacred to Ptah, the God of Memphis, and their gravestones--which Mariette, for instance, brought to light in 1851--yield striking evidence of the pomp attached to the cult of animals in those days of old.

But no monument has been raised to the African elephants that have been slaughtered by millions in the last hundred years. Save for some of the huge tusks for which they were killed, there will be scarcely a trace of them in the days to come, when their Indian cousins--the sacred white elephants--may perhaps still be revered.

John Hanning Speke, who with his fellow-countryman Grant discovered the Victoria Nyanza, found elephant herds grazing quite peacefully on its banks. The animals, nowadays so wild, hardly took any notice when some of their number were killed or wounded: they merely passed a little farther on and returned to their grazing.

The same might be said of the Upper Nile swamps in the land of the Dinkas, in English territory, where, thanks to specially favourable conditions, the English have been successfully preserving the elephants. Also in the Knysna forests of Cape Colony some herds of elephants have been preserved by strict protective laws during the last eighty years or so. Experience with Indian elephants has proved that when protected the sagacious beasts are not so shy and wild as is generally the case with those of Africa. For the latter have become, especially the full-grown and experienced specimens, the shyest of creatures, and therefore the most difficult to study.

Should any one differ from me as to this, I would beg him to substantiate his opinion by the help of photographs, taken in the wilderness, of elephants which have not been shot at--photographs depicting for us the African elephant in its native wilds. When he does, I shall “give him best”!

Photographed at Zanzibar.

THE HEAVIEST ELEPHANTS’ TUSKS EVER RECORDED IN THE ANNALS OF EAST AFRICAN TRADE. THEY WEIGHED 450 POUNDS. I TRIED IN VAIN TO SECURE THEM FOR A GERMAN MUSEUM. THEY WERE BOUGHT FOR AMERICA.]