Part 8

Not so long ago the African traveller found such scenes as these along the banks of every river. Nowadays, too many have been shorn of all these marvels. Take, for instance, the old descriptions of the Orange River and of the animal life met with along its course. No trace of it now remains.

I should like to give a picture of the animal life still extant along the banks of the Pangani. The time is inevitably approaching when that, too, will be a thing of the past, for it is not to be supposed that advancing civilisation will prove less destructive here.

So recently as the year 1896 the course of the river was for the most part unknown. When I followed it for the second time in 1897, and when in subsequent years I explored both its banks for great distances, people were still so much in the dark about it that several expeditions were sent out to discover whether it was navigable.

That it was not navigable I myself had long known. Its numerous rapids are impracticable for boats even in the rainy season. In the dry season they present insuperable obstacles to navigation of any kind.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A FISHERMAN’S BAG! THREE CROCODILES SECURED BY THE AUTHOR IN THE WAY DESCRIBED IN “WITH FLASHLIGHT AND RIFLE.”]

The basin of the Djipe Lake in the upper reaches of the Pangani, and the Pangani swamps below its lower reaches, formed a kind of natural preserve for every variety of the marvellous fauna of East Africa. It was a veritable El Dorado for the European sportsman, but one attended by all kinds of perils and difficulties. The explorer found manifold compensation, however, for everything in the unexampled opportunities afforded him for the study of wild life in the midst of these stifling marshes and lagoons. The experience of listening night after night to the myriad voices of the wilderness is beyond description.

Hippopotami were extraordinarily numerous at one time in the comparatively small basin of the Djipe Lake. In all my long sojourn by the banks of the Pangani I only killed two, and I never again went after any. There were such numbers, however, round Djipe Lake ten years ago that you often saw dozens of them together at one time. I fear that by now they have been nearly exterminated.

Here, as everywhere else, the natives have levied but a small tribute upon the numbers of the wild animals, a tribute in keeping with the nature of their primitive weapons. Elephants used regularly to make their way down to the water-side from the Kilimanjaro woods. My old friend Nguruman, the Ndorobo chieftain, used to lie in wait for them, with his followers, concealed in the dense woods along the river. But the time came when the elephants ceased to make their appearance. The old hunter, whose body bore signs of many an encounter with lions as well as elephants, and who used often to hold forth to me beside camp fires on the subject of these adventures, could not make out why his eagerly coveted quarry had become so scarce. Every other species of “big game” was well represented, however, and according to the time of the year I enjoyed ever fresh opportunities for observation. Generally speaking, it would be a case of watching one aspect of wild life one day and another all the next, but now and again my eyes and ears would be surfeited and bewildered by its manifestations. The sketch-plans on which I used to record my day’s doings and seeings serve now to recall to me all the multiform experiences that fell to my lot. What a pity it is that the old explorers of South Africa have left no such memoranda behind them for our benefit! They would enable us to form a better idea of things than we can derive from any kind of pictures or descriptions.

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I shall try now to give some notion of all the different sights I would sometimes come upon in a single day. It would often happen that, as I was making my way down the Pangani in my light folding craft, or else was setting out for the velt which generally lay beyond its girdle of brushwood, showers of rain would have drawn herds of elephants down from the mountains. Even when I did not actually come within sight of them, it was always an intense enjoyment to me to trace the immense footsteps of these nocturnal visitors. Perhaps the cunning animals would have already put several miles between my camp and their momentary stopping place. But their tracks afforded me always most interesting clues to their habits, all the more valuable by reason of the rare chances one has of observing them in daylight, when they almost always hide away in impenetrable thickets. What excitement there is in the stifled cry “Tembo!” In a moment your own eye perceives the unmistakable traces of the giant’s progress. The next thing to do is to examine into the tracks and ascertain as far as possible the number, age and sex of the animals. Then you follow them up, though generally, as I have said, in vain.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

CLATTER-BILLS SETTLING UPON THE BARE BRANCHES OF RIVERSIDE TREES.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

CLATTER-BILLS (ANASTOMUS LAMELLIGERUS, Tem.).]

The hunter, however, who without real hope of overtaking the elephants themselves yet persists in following up their tracks just because they have so much to tell him, will be all the readier to turn aside presently, enticed in another direction by the scarcely less notable traces of a herd of buffaloes. Follow these now and you will soon discover that they too have found safety, having made their way into an impenetrable morass. To make sure of this you must perhaps clamber up a thorny old mimosa tree, all alive with ants--not a very comfortable method of getting a bird’s-eye view. Numbers of snow-white ox-peckers flying about over one particular point in the great wilderness of reeds and rushes betray the spot in which the buffaloes have taken refuge.

The great green expanse stretches out before you monotonously, and even in the bright sunlight you can see no other sign of the animal life of various kinds concealed beneath the sea of rushes waving gently in the breeze. Myriads of insects, especially mosquitoes and ixodides, attack the invaders; the animals are few that do not fight shy of these morasses. They are the province of the elephants, which here enjoy complete security; of the hippopotami, whose mighty voice often resounds over them by day as by night; of the buffaloes, which wallow in the mud and pools of water to escape from their enemies the gadflies; and finally of the waterbuck, which are also able to make their way through even the deeper regions of the swamp. Wart-hogs also--the African equivalent of our own wild boars--contrive to penetrate into these regions, so inhospitable to mankind. We shall find no other representatives, however, of the big game of Africa. It is only in Central Africa and in the west that certain species of antelope frequent the swamps. In the daytime the elephant and the buffalo are seldom actually to be seen in them, nor does one often catch sight of the hippopotami, though they are so numerous and their voices are to be heard. As we grope through the borders of the swamp, curlew (Glarcola fusca, L.) flying hither and thither all around us, we are startled ever and anon by a sudden rush of bush and reed buck plunging out from their resting-places and speeding away from us for their life. Even when quite small antelopes are thus started up by the sound of our advance, so violent is their flight that for the moment we imagine that we have to deal with some huge and perhaps dangerous beast.

In those spots where large pools, adorned with wonderful water-lilies, give a kind of symmetry to the wilderness, we come upon such a wealth of bird-life as enables us to form some notion of what this may have been in Europe long ago under similar conditions. The splendid great white heron (Herodias alba, L., and garzetta, L.) and great flocks of the active little cow-herons (Bubulcus ibis, L.) make their appearance in company with sacred ibises and form a splendid picture in the landscape. Some species of those birds with their snow-white feathers stand out picturesquely against the rich green vegetation of the swamp. When, startled by our approach, these birds take to flight, and the whole air is filled by them and by the curlews (Glareola fusca, L.) that have hovered over us, keeping up continually their soft call, when in every direction we see all the swarms of other birds--sea-swallows (Gelochelidon nilotica, Hasselg.), lapwings, plovers (Charadriidæ), Egyptian geese, herons, pelicans, crested cranes and storks--the effect upon our eyes and ears is almost overpowering.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A MARSHLAND VIEW. AN OSPREY IN AMONG THE REEDS--THE BIRD FOR WHOSE PROTECTION QUEEN ALEXANDRA OF ENGLAND HAS LATELY PLEADED.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

SNOW-WHITE HERONS MADE THEIR NESTS IN THE ACACIAS NEAR MY CAMP AND SHOWED NO MARKED TIMIDITY.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

PREPARING TO SKIN A HIPPOPOTAMUS. THE PRESERVATION OF THE HIDE OF THIS SPECIMEN PROVED UNSUCCESSFUL. IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO PRESERVE HIPPOPOTAMUS-HIDES WITHOUT HUGE QUANTITIES OF ALUM AND SALT, BOTH VERY HARD TO GET IN THE INTERIOR OF AFRICA. THE SKIN OF THE HEAD IS THINNER AND MORE MANAGEABLE THAN THAT OF THE REST OF THE BODY.]

C. G. Schillings, phot.

HIPPOPOTAMI, POPPING THEIR HEADS OR EARS AND SNOUTS UP ABOVE THE SURFACE OF THE WATER.]

How mortal lives are intertwined and interwoven! The ox-peckers swarm round the buffaloes and protect them from their pests, the ticks and other parasites. The small species of marsh-fowl rely upon the warning cry of the Egyptian geese or on the sharpness of the herons, ever on the alert and signalling always the lightning-like approach of their enemy the falcons (Falco biarmicus, Tem., and F. minor, Bp.). All alike have sense enough to steer clear of the crocodiles, which have to look to fish chiefly for their nourishment, like almost all the frequenters of these marshy regions.

The quantities of fish I have found in every pool in these swamps defy description--I am anxious to insist upon this point--and this although almost all the countless birds depend on them chiefly for their food. Busy beaks and bills ravage every pool and the whole surface of the lagoon-like swamp for young fish and fry. The herons and darters (Assingha rufa, Lacèp. Daud.) manage even to do some successful fishing in the deeper waters of the river. And yet, in spite of all these fish-eaters, the river harbours almost a superabundance of fish.