In closed territory

r^A

EDGAR BEECHER BR0NSON

IN CLOSED TERRITORY

IN
CLOSED TERRITORY

BY

EDGAR BEECHER BRONSON

AUTHOR OF "REMINISCENCES OF A RANCHMAN," ETC.

WITH NEARLY loo ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS BT THE AUTHOR

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1910

COPYRIGHT
A. C. McCLURG & CO.

1910

Published February 26, 1910
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England

Some of the material in this volume has
previously appeared in "The Century Maga-
zine," the Associated Sunday Magazines, and
elsewhere, and is used here by permission.

R. R. DONNELLEY * SONS COMPANY
CHICAGO

TO THAT STANCHEST FRIEND

AND STEADIEST SHOT

WILLIAM NORTHRUP McMILLAN

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

BY THE AUTHOR

" I also recall his saying — 'The man who has not taken
his life in his hands at some time or other has not lived. ' '
— AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS.

— "Reminiscences of Robert Louis Stevenson."

PREFACE

TERRITORY" is a phrase that in-
spires longings and expresses conditions of the
sort that, in one form or another from the days of
Adam, have served out to mankind most of the sweetest
pleasures and bitterest pains experienced between earliest
sentient childhood and feeblest senile age. Never are we
so old or so young that we are entirely safe from the allure-
ments it suggests, the novel charms and new intoxications
with which our imagination close hedges every sinuous
turn of forbidden paths. The pitfalls it holds, alike for
toddling infancy, firm-treading prime, and halting, stum-
bling age, we never think of until into them we are deeply
and more or less hopelessly plunged.

Happy indeed, then, he who may be so fortunate as
to win free franchise to " Closed Territory," to traverse
it untainted, and to leave it unscarred.

A personal acquaintance with the British East African
Protectorate can scarcely fail to make any observant,
thoughtful Briton or American proud of his Anglo-
Saxonhood, of its boldness, its actual audacity.

This newest of British Colonies comprises 400,000
square miles of territory. It has a native black popula-
tion of 4,000,000, divided among something over a dozen
different tribes, each widely differing in language and
tribal customs from all the others, all warrior races per-
petually battling with each other until brought under
measurable discipline by British authority, the most
powerful the Kikuyu, the Masai, and the Wakamba.

vii

viii PREFACE

And yet this vast new apanage of the Empire is oc-
cupied and held for the Crown by a numerically puny
handful of about two hundred and fifty Englishmen!

This includes the Governor and his staff, the various
administrative departments, the military and police
departments — in fact, the entire civil list of the Pro-
tectorate, except the Post, Telegraph, and Railway
Departments.

Troops? No troops? Oh, yes; but what? A few
companies of East Indian Sikh infantry, doing police
duty along the Uganda Railway, and two battalions of
native Soudanese and Nubian Askaris! That is all!

And of this little group of two hundred and fifty white
men charged with the task of holding four million raw,
savage blacks in check, nearly four-fifths are stationed at
Mombasa, Nairobi, Kisumu, and other railway points,
while the outlying districts are held by a scant sixty men,
posted in little bomas (garrisons) scattered along the
coast and parallel to and never more than seventy-
five miles from the Uganda Railway, divided up into
"bunches" of three, two, or often no more than one
white man to each boma, often remote from support,
never with more than a handful of native troops under
their command!

It is a distinctly sporting proposition in government,
is that of British East Africa, with every man in the game
playing against what would appear superficially to be,
and what may at any time become in cruel fact, hopelessly
overwhelming odds. And yet one never hears a hint of
a thought of anything of the sort from the men themselves.
Quietly, coolly, and usually most efficiently are they
doing their work. "Playing the game," they themselves

-

PREFACE ix

would call it, in ultra-British idiom — and playing it
in a way to make a man proud to claim racial kinship
with them.

Four years ago there were not as many as a dozen
white farmers in the Protectorate. Now the white popula-
tion has risen to a total, including all officials, of perhaps
1,200, and of these 550 are resident in Nairobi, the capital.

Settlement, trade, sport, and travel are rigidly re-
stricted, by the Outlying Districts Ordinance, to the nar-
row policed belt lying along the railway, entirely within
the outer lines of boma outposts. Entry into the vast
areas comprising the "Closed Territory" lying to the
north and south of the "open districts," without a special
permit therefor from the Governor, is a penal offence.
And very rarely are such passes issued — for fear any
holding them may in some way incite or become the
victims of voluntary aggression by the shenzi (savages),
and thus cause disturbances the slender forces of the Pro-
tectorate might easily prove wholly inadequate to handle.

It was for me, therefore, a stroke of rare good luck,
for which I shall always feel deeply indebted to him, when
Lieut.-Governor the Hon. F. J. Jackson, C. B., C. M. G.,
consented to issue me a pass for entering certain " Closed
Territory," that enabled me to make a three months'
safari through the countries of the Loita Masai, the
Wanderobo, the Kavirondo, the Kisii, the Sotik, and the
Lumbwa, the more for that both the Sotik and the Kisii
had been in open, bloody revolt only a few months before
the date of my pass.

Lying midway between the two old Arab caravan routes
from the coast to Victoria Nyanza, one starting from
Mombasa and the other from Tanga, in what is now

x PREFACE

German territory, most of the country I traversed under
the pass still remains unmapped. It had never before been
entered by white men save by the Anglo- German Boun-
dary Commission, whose work of locating and marking
the boundary line between British and German East
Africa had been finished roughly four years earlier, and
six months earlier by the man I was fortunate enough
to secure as a mate for the trip, George H. Outram, him-
self formerly a Government official and a member of the
Boundary Survey party of 1894.

E. B. B.
NEW YORK CITY,
January I,

INTRODUCTION

THE story of the big game of Africa has been many
a year in the telling, but it remains ever new. The
freshness of it is perennial. To a lover of the
physical aspects of nature, the book of the average
African hunter contains such a wealth of wild-animal
hunting adventures that the physical geography and the
plant life suffer from lack of attention. It is not strange
that in his effort to portray the marvellous abundance of
wild-animal life in the most richly stocked game fields on
earth, the landscapes, trees, and plants seem to the hunt-
er like "trifles light as air."

I am glad of this opportunity to urge upon my brother
sportsmen the assurance that he who devotes all his atten-
tion to the game and its pursuit, and ignores the remainder
of Nature's open books of wild places, necessarily loses
much that rightfully is his. It is not all of hunting to
kill game. I would rather find a few animals amid
grand or beautiful scenery than many animals in dull
places. To every wild creature on earth, Nature has
given its own special and appropriate stage setting, of
rock and tree, or of field and stream. At least one-half
the time the accessories are, to the comprehending eye,
as interesting as the animal itself.

So long as the big game of Africa holds its own upon
the veldt, just so long will the public welcome new books
that strive to portray its moods and its tenses. I hold it

a

xii INTRODUCTION

to be the duty of every right-minded gentleman-sportsman,
who shoots wisely and not too much, to publish an account
of his observations, no matter whether he includes his
shooting records or not. From such dreadful tales of
sordid slaughter as those of Neumann, the ivory-hunter,
all people who care for the beasts of the field may well
pray to be spared.

Mr. Bronson's story is very much to my mind; and
on hearing that it was to appear in permanent form, I
was heartily glad. Through the chapters previously
published I had followed him with interest and delight.
He gratifies my desire to know the on-the-spot impressions
of the explorer and hunter; for it is this personal equation
that always brings the reader in closest touch with the
hunter and his surroundings. His careful and clear
descriptions of landscapes and the component parts of
his African geography are delightful; and his frequent
touches of humor, — phenomenally rare in books on
Africa, — are most welcome exceptions to the African
rule. Surely, a story of the Dark Continent need not
by necessity be sombre.

In perusing this and other recent tales of the great
game herds of the East African plains, the reader natur-
ally asks the question, What has the future in store for
the game? Will the onslaughts of sportsmen and res-
idents soon reach such a point of frequency that the game
will be killed more rapidly than it breeds?

It is upon the answer to this last question that the
future of the big game depends. As a rule, it is not by
any means the gentlemen-sportsmen, taking a modest
toll of the wilds, who exterminate the game. In the first

INTRODUCTION xiii

place, they are easily checked and regulated ; for all their
acts are known. In about ninety per cent of all the
extermination cases that are fully known, the commercial
hunters, and the resident hunters who kill game all the
year round, are the real exterminators. I think that in
most localities one case-hardened resident who is deter-
mined to live on the country can be counted upon to
destroy more animal life each year than five average
sportsmen who visit the same territory for brief periods.

In those portions of the East African plateau region
that are suited to agriculture, stretching from Bulawayo
to Uganda, the wild herds are bound to be crowded out
by the farmer and the fruit-grower. This is the in-
evitable result of civilization and progress in wild lands.
Marauding herds of zebras, bellicose rhinoceroses,
and murderous buffaloes do not fit in with ranches and
crops, and children going to school. Except in the
great game preserves, I think that the big game of British
East Africa is foredoomed to disappear, the largest
species first.

Five hundred years from now, when North America
is worn out, and wasted to a skeleton of what it now is,
the great plateau region of East Africa between Cape
Town and Lake Rudolph will be a mighty empire, teem-
ing with white population. Giraffes and rhinoceroses
are now trampling over the sites of future cities and
universities. Then the game herds, outside of the pre-
serves, will exist only in memory, and in the pages of such
books as "In Closed Territory" by Bronson, and in
other books by hunters who shoot for themselves and
write for the pleasure of their friends. For myself, I am

xiv INTRODUCTION

glad that I live in the days of big game, in Africa and
elsewhere; and as a natural corollary to a sportsman's
life, A. D. 1910, it is his solemn duty to do his level
best to insure that a good supply of wild life is left for
the sportsmen of 2010.

W. T. HORNADAY.

NEW YORK, January 15, 1910.

CONTENTS

PAOE

I. THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT i

II. OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY .... 14

III. KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, AND ELAND ... 32

IV. SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED . . . .44
V. FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS . . . '57

VI. ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES .... 75

VII. SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT .... 93

VIII. "CLOSE THING, THAT, RIGHT -On!" . . .113

IX. A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 127

X. IN THE TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE . . .142

XI. A MIGHTY SPEAR THRUST 165

XII. POTTING A PYTHON . ..... 177

XIII. THE LUCK OF THE GAME 195

XIV. Is CENTRAL AFRICA A WHITE MAN'S COUNTRY? . 209
XV. RUBBERING IN UGANDA 230

XVI. THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME .... 254
INDEX 285

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

THE AUTHOR — A HALT IN MABIRA FOREST . . . Frontispiece

THE AUTHOR'S PASS TO ENTER "CLOSED TERRITORY" . . . viii

OUTLINE MAP SHOWING BRITISH EAST AFRICA . . . . • a
WAKAMBA CHICKEN PEDLERS AND KIKUYU POSHO SELLERS AT

JUJA STORE (HADJI ALI IN WHITE) 4

THE SOMALI STAFF, JUJA FARM ....... 4

THE START OF THE SAFARI AFTER A REST ..... 5

"BRIDGE" ON GOVERNMENT ROAD, LUMBWA TO KERICHO . . 5

TOPI BULL HIT BETWEEN EYES AT 450 YARDS 10

TYPICAL KIKUYU WARRIOR ........ n

KILIMA N'JARO GIRAFFE, THE FIRST SPECIMEN OF THE SPECIES

TO BE BROUGHT TO THE UNITED STATES 16

THE AUTHOR AND WILL JUDD AND THE Two BUFFALO BULLS . 16
CROSSING LAKE MAGADI . . . . . . . .17

BETWEEN MAGADI AND THE MARA ....... 26

A GOOD PLACE FOR HIPPO .26

AN OLD VELDT MONARCH ........ 37

LESSER KUDU BULL 34

CAMP AMONG CANDELABRUM CACTI 35

ON THE SUMMIT OF THE MAU 35

ELAND BULL SHOT BY THE AUTHOR ...... 40

WANDEROBO BOWMEN 41

WANDEROBO WARRIORS ......... 41

AMONG THE LOITA MASAI ........ 46

LENDERUT RIVER CASCADE ........ 47

LENDERUT RIVER BELOW CASCADE ....... 47

KOYDELOT, MASAI WITCH DOCTOR, SMOKING HIS FIRST CIGAR:

His SON AND BROTHER BESIDE HIM .66

A MASAI BEAU AND BELLE: CHIEF KOYDELOT SEATED ... 66

MASAI BOWMEN . 67

WAKAMBA WARRIOR ......... 72

MARA RIVER CAMP AFTER A BIG Knx: PORTERS' FIRES SUR-
ROUNDED WITH ROASTING MEAT -73

ON ELEPHANT SPOOR IN OYANI RIVER BASIN, HABIA LEADING . 78
SOME OF TORONI'S WIVES SINGING BEFORE THE TENT, AND A

PATIENT AWAITING "DAWA" 78

KAVTRONDO SLEEPING SICKNESS VICTIMS 79

KAVIRONDO BELLES 79

xvii

xviii ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued

PAGE

THE VONGONIA OR "SAUSAGE" TREE: WITH THE RIND OF THE

FRUIT NATIVE HONEY BEER is FERMENTED .... 86

KAVIRONDO WAR DANCE 87

"His OSTRICH PLUMES" AND A KAVIRONDO WARRIOR ... 87

TORONI, MASAI CHIEF, AND A FEW MEMBERS or HIS FAMILY . . 94

WATER BUCK SHOT AT LOOSEANDGIDDY CAMP ..... 95
FOLLOWING BUFFALO SPOOR . . . . . . . .no

OUTRAM AND WOUNDED ANTELOPE CAUGHT BY PUGGE . . .no

ZEBRA STALLION, LYING AS HE FELL TO THE AUTHOR'S GUN . .m

TROPHIES, IN RONGANA CAMP 114

PORTRAIT OF JOHN ALFRED JORDAN 115

MATAIA AND HIS NEW WIFE, IN FRONT OF HIS HOUSE . . .128

MATAIA AND FOUR WANDEROBO 128

ENTERING RONGANA BUSH ON RHINO SPOOR 129

GEORGE H. OUTRAM, MATAIA, PUGGE, AND WANDEROBO HUNTERS . 144
ARAB TUMO (LUMBWA) CLIMBING TREE TO LOOK FOR ELEPHANT . 145

RESTING AFTER THE ELEPHANT KILL 156

NATIVES AWAITING INVITATION TO ELEPHANT FEAST . . -157

RESTING ON AN ELEPHANT'S FOOT 157

WATCHING THE GATHERING VULTURES AND MARABOUTS . . .160
THE AUTHOR AND JOHN ALFRED JORDAN IN RONGANA CAMP

AFTER THE ELEPHANT KlLL l6l

THE AUTHOR AND HIS Two SHIKARIS IN SOMALI FULL DRESS,

HASSAN YUSEF ON RIGHT, AWALA NUER ON LEFT . . .182

MOST ANCIENT WAKAMBA DANCE 183

JUJA'S BOER TREK WAGON: THOMPSON: GAZELLE AT RIGHT . .186

A FEW FLIES ON THEM (LOITA MASAI) 187

KONGONI (HARTEBEESTE) BULL, THE AUTHOR, HASSAN YUSEF,

AND THE PONTES WALLEYE AND LONG TOM . . . .190

GRANTI GAZELLE 190

ELEVEN FOOT, EIGHT INCH LION KILLED BY W. MARLOW ON

THE KOMO ........ r . 191

WATER PYTHON, SEVENTEEN FEET, FOUR INCHES LONG, KILLED

NEAR JUJA FARM 191

CLIFFORD AND HAROLD HILL, AND THE TREE PLATFORM OVER-
LOOKING THEIR BOMA 198

THE APPROACH TO DONGA BUSH ON FRESH LION SPOOR . .199
ON THE KAPITI PLAINS WITH THE HILLS' LION TRACKERS . . 199
THE AUTHOR'S FAREWELL TO JUJA HOUSE. (THE FAMOUS TEAM
OF WHITE ABYSSINIAN MULES, AT MR. ROOSEVELT'S SERVICE

WHILE AT JUJA.) . 202

WILLIAM NORTHRUP MCMILLAN'S NAIROBI BUNGALOW . . .203
MOHAMMEDAN MOSQUE, NAIROBI ....... 203

OPENING OF THE FIRST UGANDA EXPOSITION: ENGLISH CATHEDRAL
IN DISTANCE 212

ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued xix

PAGE

THE KAMPALA MERRY-GO-ROUND . . . . . . .212

GOVERNOR BELL AND STAFF ARRIVING AT FIRST UGANDA EXPOSITION 213
THE EXPOSITION OPENED BY GOVERNOR BELL: KING OF ANKOLE,

THE GIANT FIGURE ON LEFT ....... 213

DETAIL MAP OF B. E. A., SHOWING "CLOSED TERRITORY" AND

ROUTE OF AUTHOR'S LONG SAFARI ... . . 218

WAKAMBA WITCH DOCTORS . . . . . . . .222

YOUNG WAKAMBA WARRIORS LINED UP SINGING AND WAITING FOR

GIRLS TO SELECT PARTNERS ....... 223

THE DANCE AFTER PARTNERS WERE SELECTED . . . .223

"BWANA MARTINI" — JAMES MARTIN . . . . . .232

THE WAR CANOE LEAVING JINJA FOR BOGONGO .... 233

RIPON FALLS, VIEWED FROM THE EAST ...... 233

TAPPING RUBBER TREE IN MABIRA FOREST ..... 240

JAMES MARTIN AND HIS RUBBER TAPPING TOOLS . . . .241

"CREPE" RUBBER JUST OUT OF THE ROLL PRESS .... 241

BAGANDA DANCERS .......... 244

VISITING CHIEF AT MABIRA FACTORY, HIS STAFF AND BAND . . 245
WOUNDED WILDEBEESTE BULL ....... 264

IMPALA BUCK SHOT AT 600 YARDS ....... 264

MRS. DUIRS AND JlMMIE DUIRS, AND LlON SHOT BY CAPT. A. B.

DUIRS AT 30 YARDS ......... 265

ANGUS MADDEN, CHIEF OF POLICE, AT KERICHO BOMA . . .268
THE AUTHOR'S FAREWELL TO HIS KERICHO HOSTS .... 268

UGANDA RAILWAY TRAIN 269

SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S HEAD AND SKIN TROPHIES FROM "CLOSED

TERRITORY" 278

MORE OF THE TROPHIES 279

IN CLOSED TERRITORY

i

THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT

MY safari (caravan) was organized at Juja Farm
early in December, 1908. George Henry Outram,
an old Australian prospector of wide experience,
a veteran of Coolgardie, of Kimberley and Johannesburg,
had recently come in from a prospecting trip in the
ranges lying between the Mau and Kisii Escarpments,
close to the German border, from which he brought
back fine specimens of copper, graphite, and other ores,
and stories of lion, elephant, and rhino so thick and
troublesome they left him scarcely half his time for work.
The ore was in itself a potent lure, and the added tempta-
tion of a chance of two or three months in a country still
unoccupied save by wandering Wanderobo hunters, and
known only to perhaps a half-dozen white men, teeming
with the best specimens of many types of central plateau
big game extinct in most other sections and rare in all,
quickly decided me to go with him to his new diggings.

Our third mate on the trip was William Judd, prob-
ably the most experienced and capable hunter of African
big game now living, a man who hunts to get his own best
loved fun when no chance offers to go out professionally
as safari leader for visiting sportsmen, a man who has

2 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

shot from the Pungwe River, in far southern Portuguese
East, all the way north to Abyssinia, and to whose rifle
have fallen one hundred and fifty elephant and more
lion, rhino, and big game of all kinds, than he has been
able to keep count of.

Indeed, the trio of us made a rather strong "three of
a kind," perhaps not so very far below aces, for each was
pretty well trained to a finish in every sort of wild-life
hardship, and had a few laughs up his sleeve for any and
all difficulties that might be handed us.

The "staff" consisted of Regal Wassama, William
Northrup McMillan's head cook, a splendid old Somali,
wiry and active as a youth, with the keen eye and dignity of
an Arab chief and the culinary skill of the best French
chef, who, barring the time devoutly spent in saying his
five long daily prayers, gazing and genuflexing towards
Mecca, was unremitting in his care of us; Awala Nuer,
a slender, middle-aged Somali shikari, whose one good
eye was ever picking up game before mine had noted it ;
my own boy Salem, a Swahili, so constantly thoughtful
of my every want and so alert to fill it, that but for his sex
I would back him to make the best conceivable high
ideal of a wife ; and Molo, a Herculean, shaven-crowned
Kavirondo table boy who, while trying his best to please,
was ever chucking plates and knives and forks about as
he was trained to hurl the assegai and knob-kerri he was
carrying when I had first seen him, a few months before.

To carry our camp kit, supplies, and general outfit,
for a three months' trip required seventy wapagazi (por-
ters), all of whom were picked from the farm forces,
thirty-five stalwart Unyamwezi and Kavirondo, all trained
men, unflinching on a trek, and thirty-five raw shenzi

EGYPT

FRENCH
CONGO.

SOUTH ATLANTIC
OCEAN

*BiN

^

PROTEC

GERMAN

EAST
AFRICA

INDIAN
OCEAN

OUTLINE MAP
SHOWING

BRITISH
EAST AFRICA

GERMAN
. SOUTHWEST
AFRICA

,<&

THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT 3

(savage) Kikuyu, the former good for sixty pounds to the
man, the latter for no more than forty pounds.

At daylight of December 9, Outram started for Nairobi
with the safari, which also included seven little Abyssin-
ian mules for our own use, and twenty-two donkeys to
pack native food, chiefly beans and corn posho for the
watagazi, for the country to which we were going was
devoid of any form of native food except the meat of
wild game, which Kikuyu do not eat.

But the season was that of the "little rains," which at
the moment happened to be a steady all-day downpour
that turned the Athi Plains into a sticky marsh and com-
pelled camping short of town. When morning came,
Outram found that the Kikuyu, always faint-hearted,
had bunked to a man, timid of a long trek away from
their own country or sick of the weather.

To our disgust we found Nairobi stripped of fit por-
ters by the thirty safari outfits sent out in November,
so that we were compelled to take on another lot of Kikuyu
to fill the places of the deserters, — and to get them de-
layed us till the twelfth.

And the first day's march was quite enough to stop
and turn back any but an old-timer or the warmest of
raw enthusiasts, for throughout the day rain poured in
torrents, turning the alternating bush and rich meadow
lands of the Kikuyu hills into fields of sticky mud nigh
impossible for our porters to travel in. Thus at the end
of seven hours our men were dead beat, — and still we
were out only nine miles from Nairobi. However, safari
life in Africa is the best possible post-graduate course in
patience, and this was only a hint of probably a lot more
annoying delays ahead, so we made the best of it, hastily

4 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

pitched our tents on the Ambagathi River, and huddled
into them.

The next day the rainfall continued so heavy we de-
cided it would be folly to try to move except for a half-
mile plod through the mud in the afternoon for tea with
Lord Cardross, whose farm is the outermost one south
from Nairobi.

On the fourteenth the weather cleared sufficiently to
enable us to move at daylight. At 7 130 A. M. I made an
almost unpardonably early call on District Commissioner
McClure and his charming wife, who from his Southern
Masai Reserve Boma rules a district nearly as large
as New England, with thousands of wild Masai and
Wanderobo, the ancient lords of the domain, who still
remain practically its only tenants, — rules it, punishes
its marauding raiders, and checks its savage feuds with
no help but his own nerve and wits, a scant half-hundred
native police, and the ominous spectre of British Imperial
authority. Indeed, that very morning of my call he was
just starting out on a punitive trek after a band of Lenani's
Southern Masai, who the day before had raided a neigh-
boring Kikuyu kraal, killed a number of Kikuyu warriors,
and looted two hundred and seventy-eight cattle.

Here at Mr. McClure's boma, a scant twelve miles
from Nairobi, we left civilization behind us, — for one
might travel straight away a full thousand miles to the
south without finding any white man's habitation, — and
entered the great Ukamba Game Reserve, which for its
western half is also the home of the Southern Masai.

Early in the morning we crossed the west shoulder of
the Ngong range at an altitude of 6,500 feet, and then
began a rapid descent from the cool verdurous central

\\AKAMBA CHICKEN PEDLERS AND KIKUYU POSHO SELLERS AT JUJA STORE
(HADJI ALI IN WHITE)

THE SOMALI STAFF, JUJA FARM

n

THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT 5

plateau to the arid, volcanic wastes to the southwest,
camping at Ngong Spring, a feeble trickle of sweet water
that within a few hundred yards of its birth disappeared
in the burning sands of a deep, yellow-grassed, rocky
gorge. Here at this spring we met scores of practically
naked Kikuyu porters, men and women, loaded with three-
foot cakes of carbonate of soda from the vast natural
deposits of this salt in Lake Magadi, for the development
of which a ninety-mile railway is planned if the samples
then coming out prove satisfactory.

The meeting of these Kikuyu coming up out of the
south augured ill for our journey, for between Ngong
Spring and the Guaso Nyiro River, sixty-four miles to
the south, there is not a drop of living water. For this
five days' ordinary safari marching, the trail traverses a
horrid arid country hot as Death Valley, isolated black
volcanic uplifts rearing here and there high into the sky
their rugged, grassless slopes, the plains everywhere strewn
so thick with sharp fragments of volcanic rock the traveller
rarely has a chance to set foot upon soil, while the thin
growth of grass and thorny scrub on the levels and lower
hill slopes is for nine months of the year burned gray
as ashes and brittle as straw by the fierce equatorial sun
blazing twelve hours a day out of a cloudless sky, and
making the volcanic rubble so hot one can hardly hold
a hand on it for a second. Indeed, the route from
Ngong to Magadi is only possible after the season of the
big rains of the early spring months or after occasional
heavy intermittent showers, when, at four points on the
way, natural tanks worn by the brief torrential down-
pours in the iron-hard volcanic rock are filled and afford
a supply of fairly pure water until evaporation, occasional

6 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

soda porters, and the nomadic Masai herdsmen and their
flocks have exhausted it.

Hidden in rocky, trackless gorges or on the very edge
of lofty escarpments, the position of these tanks remains
to this day unknown to more than half a dozen white men,
but luckily for us, we had with us in Outram the first
white man to find these natural tanks, when, attempting
a trek across this country with a section of the Anglo-
German Boundary Survey Commission, five years before,
he had been forced to find water or perish.

So, doubtful if we should find any water short of the
Guaso Nyiro, and taking our chance of a complete wreck
of our safari in the next two days, we bore away into the
south at dawn of the fifteenth.

Within the first hour and a half we dropped two
thousand feet — from 5,400 to 3,400, — and it really
seemed that with every foot of drop in altitude there was
a rise of a degree in temperature.

But in the matter of water we were lucky. Seven
miles out we found a tank with just barely enough left
to freshen up our porters, mules, and donkeys, and
twelve miles farther on, the head of the safari at two
o'clock reached the "Big Water Holes," but only after
a march across a lava-strewn plain that seemed absolutely
molten with heat. There we found an abundance of
water in three huge natural tanks forty to fifty feet deep
and one hundred feet in diameter, that looked like min-
iature amphitheatres of some pigmy race, buttressed
without with tall basalt columns, terraced within by
varying stages of water-level erosion — the level then very
low, no more than four feet at the deepest.

Muddy the water was, to be sure, and, worse, thick

THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT 7

with the wash of the gulch above it, the higher crevices
of the tanks incrusted with dry donkey dung washed
down from soda caravan camps, and representing earlier
high- water levels; but if not luxury, it meant life to us
literally, for not a third of our porters would have reached
camp but for the water we were here able to send back to
them. And even at that the tough native porters came
crawling in with feet, indurated nearly to hoof hardness,
blistered, cracked, and bleeding from all-day plodding
over the ragged, burning rocks, an utterly wretched,
suffering, exhausted lot that made me wish I had never
heard of a safari.

But the two old-timers with me took it as a matter of
course and ministered as best they could to the real
sufferers, and then kept me roaring over their weird
prescriptions for the shammers, one of whom was forced
to take a strong whiff of an ammonia bottle, while another
was given a mixture of pepper, salt, and a spoonful of
oil from a sardine tin, and within half an hour each vowed
he was cured of all that hurt him, whatever it was.

At sunset the three of us strolled down to the tanks
for a bath. Our boys brought us buckets of water, and
each selected and retired to a niche in the face of the cliff,
which just below the tanks fell away a sheer seventy feet,
disrobed, and got busy with his sponge, to the immense
entertainment, apparently, of a tribe of blue monkeys
that sat on high pinnacles about us, chattering madly
over our droll doings.

Obviously another midday journey in the infernal
heat would completely cripple half our men, so the morn-
ing of the sixteenth we broke camp at 2:30 A. M, and
with no better light than a moon well along in its last

8 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

quarter, marched away through thorn scrub, up and down
rocky hills almost impassable in daylight, but safely and
truly piloted by the indomitable, never-hesitating Outram.
About 4 A. M. we jumped three rhino, that in the dusk
loomed up black giants twice their natural vast bulk,
but, luckily for our porters, they scampered away, for
it was far too dark to see a gunsight.

By 8 A. M. Outram led us up and across a lofty range,
whence to the west opened such a magnificent view as
I have never before seen of volcanic action on colossal
scale. West of us, and as far as eye could reach to north
and south, extended a series of six vast lava ridges or
terraces, one rising behind the other, with valleys from
five to fifteen miles wide between them, terraces approxi-
mately level of top, perpendicular of face, with scarce
any points of access to their summits, black or dull red
of color, the nearest and lowest probably 1,200 feet high,
the others ranging to the rear and rising higher and higher,
up to probably 3,000 or 4,000 feet. Like gigantic steps
they rose to the lofty summit of the great Mau Escarp-
ment, from which they appeared to have been rent away
and dropped to lower levels, the intervening valleys
representing tremendous sinks of surface caused by some
frightful terrestrial convulsion that must have shaken this
continent from end to end, and so fractured and crushed
the old underlying formations that throughout British
and German East Africa living streams and springs do
not represent fifteen per cent of the volume of those of
like rainfall in other parts of the world of less volcanic
disturbance, and so condemned this region to virtually
complete aridity.

Shortly thereafter we descended to a broad, grassy

THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT 9

plain full of zebra and Grand buck, — almost the first
game we had seen, by the way, since leaving Nairobi, —
and Outram led us a mile off our true course, where, hid
away beneath a high rocky ridge and immediately on the
edge of a lava cliff several hundred feet high, we found
several natural rock tanks of sweet rain water the Kikuyu
soda porters had not quite emptied. Already, at 9 A. M.,
the rocks were so hot one could scarcely hold a bare hand
on them, and porters and animals were exhausted, so we
camped for the day.

Far down beneath us, at the low altitude of 1,980 feet,
and at the lower end of the great Rift Valley or basin
that stretches hundreds of miles away north into Abys-
sinia, lay Lakes Magadi and N'garami, pinkish white
fields of soda winding away beyond eye-reach toward the
southern horizon, and looking like the winding-sheet they
have often in the past proved and must many a time again
become for unlucky adventurers into this veritable Valley
of the Shadow of Death.

At 4 A. M. of the seventeenth we were on the move,
descending the escarpment by a semi-perpendicular trail
toward the lake. Here a party of three East Indians with
a lot of natives and donkeys, soda freighters, tried desper-
ately to pass us, the leaders carrying water vessels.
Suspecting they knew the water below to be scant, Ou-
tram raced ahead to the tanks a mile short of Lake
Magadi, and held them against the Indians until our
safari arrived about 7:30; and lucky it was for us he did,
for one rock basin of perhaps sixty gallons of fairly clean
water and four others of semi-liquid mud represented
the total water supply, and the last drop of it was ex-
hausted in watering our men and animals.

io IN CLOSED TERRITORY

The situation was desperate. Ahead of us lay twenty-
five more arid miles, utterly waterless, before we could
reach the Guaso Nyiro River. Men and animals were
exhausted and footsore. Two or three carefully hoarded
quarts of water in our canvas bags was all we had left.
The men were ugly and wanted to turn back. After a
conference, we decided to lie there for the day and
attempt to win through by a forced night march.

The forenoon hours were tolerable within the shade
of the rocks, but after eleven the ravine became a blazing
inferno of heat, dull, breathless, that parched the skin
and seemed to dry up the very fountains of life. A tent
fly so little stopped the sun rays, one could not sit be-
neath it without a helmet on, — remove the helmet a
moment and one's brain felt a-crackle with the heat.

Shortly after eleven things began to happen, — first
bad, then good. The bad was the next worst thing,
after the prevailing drought, that could have struck us.
Our niapara (native headman) reported that, under
excuse of hunting water up the gorge, thirty-five of our
Kikuyu porters had deserted, and were racing up the
cliffs towards the tanks we had camped at the night
before. At first this seemed nearly our finish, for scat-
tering like quail and climbing cliffs like goats, one might
as well try to catch a shadow, while their going meant
the loss of over a fourth of our transportation. However,
when we came to figure that over seven hundred pounds
of our supplies were already consumed, and when we found
that our other porters remained stanch, we realized that by
packing our seven saddle-mules we could take care of
the excess loads our remaining porters could not carry.

Then a corking bit of good luck befell us. One of our

TOPI BULL HIT BETWEEN EYES AT 450 YARDS

TYPICAL KIKUYU WARRIOR

THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT n

loyal porters found, a mile away, a fine tank previously
unknown to Outram, that furnished sufficient water to
give all our men and animals an afternoon drink and per-
haps ten or twelve quarts besides for our twenty-five-mile
march, — meagre enough for forty-five men, but still
far better than none.

So at 5 P. M. we loaded the donkeys and Outram and
I led out across the lake, Judd following on the rear of
the porters.

Crunching over wide pinkish white desiccated areas,
slipping about in ashen gray slime, wading shallow
channels, a mile and a half brought us across the lake
and to the foot of a steep gorge that led to the top of the
next escarpment. South or west of Magadi no paths
exist but the game trails, so Outram led on and I remained
till Judd arrived, just before dark, and then pushed on
ahead to try to connect gaps in the straggling line of
porters and prevent their straying and getting lost.

Stumbling over grass-hid rocks and through belts of
thorn thickets, keeping in touch with the fore and aft
sections of the moving column only by constant calling
back and forth, it was desperately hard going. Once for
an hour Judd lost connection with our advance section,
and I sat alone on a hilltop, shouting vainly for him, until
I had lost all touch with the section ahead of me. At last,
however, by rifle fire we signalled each other, and his
tired and crippled men slowly crept up and joined me,
and we stumbled ahead as near the course as we could
guess, until finally a swinging lantern signalled us to the
camp Outram had chosen, — and glad we were to reach
him about 10 p. M.

No tents were pitched or beds made, but down we

12 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

dropped among the luggage and slept till the moon rose
at 2 A. M. of the eighteenth, when loads were again
resumed and the march continued.

Outram's work that night was the most remarkable
piece of night travel I have ever known. Travelling by
the stars, in a country where we were seldom able to
keep a straight course for a quarter of a mile, turning
sharply to right and left, on long detours to keep to ground
that would not pitch us over a cliff or bump us into an
insurmountable escarpment, the quarter-moon overcast
most of the time, the ground covered thick with loose
volcanic stones and often by solid walls of thorny scrub
we had to push through or wind around, — he brought us
just at dawn to the mouth of the one narrow gorge in
fifty miles that enables ascent to the next escarpment!
It was astounding.

Then came again the infernal sun, and men and
animals began to weaken. The footing was frightful, -
no footing, in fact, just slipping, wrenching, spraining over
loose ragged rock masses, until about 9 A. M. we sighted
far below us, in one of the deep valleys of the inter-
escarpment region, the line of tall green timber that
marked the course of the Guaso Nyiro, and then began
descent over smoother country.

But the last five miles were terrible, three across a
level plain through grass shoulder-high and dry as tinder,
and two through dense thorn thickets that made slow
winding going, and yet offered little shelter from the
scorching sun. The lead of our column reached this
plain in fair form, but full a third of them would never
have won through had not Outram and I hurried to the

THROUGH PATHLESS DESERT 13

river with the ten strongest lead porters and sent water
back to the stragglers.

We reached the Guaso Nyiro at n A. M., Judd and
about half the porters got in about i p. M., and ten more
straggled in during the afternoon; but it was mid-
forenoon of the next day before the remaining fifteen
found strength to push in across the plain with their
loads, a haggard, footsore lot that needed a day's rest, —
heavy sleep alternating with long sousings in the river, —
before we were able to resume our march.

The camp was ideal. Superb big thorn and ficus
trees, vine-clad, alive with monkeys and bright-hued,
sweet-voiced birds, a swift-flowing fifty-foot stream of
pure water teeming with fish (kumbari), and game every-
where about us, so thick that all through the valley and
at convenient stream approaches, paths wide as wagon
tracks were worn deep into the soil, — giraffe, Granti,
gerenuk, oryx, lesser Kudu, rhino and buffalo, guinea-
fowl, pau, spur-fowl, and partridge.

In less than an hour the three of us caught forty-five
fish, one-half to one-and-a-half pounders, while the boys
caught them by scores. That night we feasted on
kumbari a la Regal, that Frederick's sole a la cardinal
could not beat, and on roast guinea-fowl.

II

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY

MOVED out well beyond the game reserve to the
west of the Guaso Nyiro, the three of us were
out before dawn of the nineteenth after rhino or
buffalo. Within twenty yards of my tent we found where
a rhino had passed in the night, and lucky it was he
had not winded us. Only two months before, and at the
same place, Outram's camp was charged at night by a
rhino that actually trampled over one side of the blankets
in which his mate, Robinson, was sleeping. All about
us in the earlier morning hours buffalo had trailed in to
and out from water, but we did not see one; all had
trekked back into the thickest jungle, and were comfort-
ably sleeping off their night's jag of food and water.

All sorts of other game we saw by hundreds, but at
nothing did we shoot until, about 8 A. M., the sun became
unbearable and we decided to return to camp. Then I
stalked and was lucky enough to kill a bull giraffe that
measured fourteen feet, eight inches, from hoof to horn
end, and fifteen feet, nine inches, from tip of nose to tip
of tail, — a bull I later learned from R. J. Cunninghame
to be a true " Kilimanjaro giraffe" (Giraffa camelopar-
dalis tippelskirchi), a species of which no specim.cn then
existed in the United States. Ordinarily I should never
have thought of killing a giraffe, for they are wholly
harmless, but our boys' feet were in such bad shape that
marching unshod must remain impossible for some days,

14

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 15

and the giraffe's three-quarter-inch hide makes the best
sandals they can get. However, giraffes are so wary,
their colors when in timber blend so perfectly with pre-
vailing hues, their long necks are such convenient look-
out towers for their high-perched heads, that stalking
them successfully is so difficult that, as a rule, any
sportsman who gets one has a handsome run for his
money.

My bull proved no exception. We first sighted him,
with two cows, at a distance of about four hundred yards,
and in an open clearing where effort for nearer approach
was useless. My first shot, with a .405 Winchester,
broke his left hip and ranged forward, — and then the
three were off at the rolling, side-wheel, drunken-looking
gait of their kind. But before they disappeared into the
bush I put two more shots into him and Judd one.

Then we raced across the thicket and took up his
spoor. And a rare chase he led us, through thickets one
would never venture into in cold blood, for fear of face-
to-face encounter with and certain charge by rhino or
buffalo, — bush so thick we often could not see the length of
a gun barrel on any side of us. Once, on our right and
not ten feet from us, we heard the whistle of startled
buffalo and threw up our rifles for snapshots. But in-
stantly brush began to crash and hoofs to thunder over
the rocky ground, fortunately at right angles to our
course. Had they come our way, we were so tightly shut
in by thick bush that nothing could have saved one or
other of us from a collision that would make butting into
a freight train feel like a gentle bump. How many there
were we never knew, — indeed, neither of us had even a
glimpse of one of them.

1 6 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Within a few hundred yards the spoor became difficult
to follow, for it by turns followed or crossed scores of
other giraffe tracks, but what with occasional drops of
blood upon the ground or smears upon grass or bush, we
managed to stick to him.

Finally, after two miles at killing pace, streaming with
sweat and racing a foot ahead of my mates, — not be-
cause I was faster, but by their courtesy, — I sighted him
through a thicket just as he started off from a brief rest,
and gave him two more shots before he again got out of
sight. But, blowing like a finisher in the Marathon, I
placed the shots badly, and it was not until yet another
two miles had been covered at heart-breaking gait that
I again got him in range and brought him toppling down
with a shoulder-shot through the heart. His mates we
never saw again after their first disappearance.

The hoofs, tail, skull, and head, and a few feet of the
neck skin, were the only trophies I could manage to save,
for even had the boys not needed the hide for sandals I
could not have packed its tremendous weight.

Leaving a boy to guard the carcass from the marabout
storks, that in a short time would have left nothing but
clean-picked bones, we hurried back to camp and sent
the boys out, — and a happy lot they soon returned,
loaded with meat and hide with which their stomachs and
feet were soon stoutly reinforced.

The twenty-first of December we moved camp eleven
miles south, parallel to the course of the Guaso Nyiro,
to camp on the N'gari Kiti (clear water) River, traversing
a wide plain level as a floor, the last third of the journey
across alkali -incrusted, ashen-gray stretches in which our
mules sank to the fetlocks.

KILIMA N'JARO GIRAFFE, THE FIRST SPECIMEN OF THE SPECIES TO BE BROUGHT
TO THE UNITED STATES

THE AUTHOR AND WILL JUDD AND THE Two BUFFALO BULLS

CROSSING LAKE MAGADI

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 17

The N'gari Kiti is a roaring, rollicking, bold stream,
plunging down from a source near the crest of the Mau;
but four or five miles after leaving the south shoulder of
N'guraman Mountain on a brave dash for union with its
elder sister river, the Guaso Nyiro, it falls a pathetic
victim of its venturesome spirit, drunk dry by the thirsty
plain and then spewed up a mile farther down in the form
of a swamp that harbors every deadly thing, winged, reptil-
ian, quadruped, that Central Africa produces, — fever-
charged mosquitoes, python, rhino, buffalo, leopard, lion.
Outside of it few of its denizens are ever seen in daylight.

The last mile of approach to the N'gari Kiti is through
a jungle absolutely impassable to man, without use of
bush knives, except along game trails, but the bush is
cut in all directions by the trails of rhino, buffalo, and
giraffe, and, literally, almost wherever one can see the
ground there are the footprints of scores or hundreds of
the Big Ones. But the droll thing is that while these
big fellows have deep-cut paths along which they easily
race beneath low-arching, heavy-branched thorn and
other scrub, nevertheless a man can only follow them
crouched or on hands and knees half the time, — and even
so he generally finishes with arms and ears torn and
bleeding.

This was the first really gay night about any of our
eight camp fires. The day's march had not been hard,
the porters were at last well shod, a clear, cool stream
rippled merrily by, and the camp was full of meat.
Donkeys and mules were bomaed in a thorn zareba in the
centre of the camp, — for the big bad ones were so thick
about us it was more than an even chance something would
charge through us, and the stampede of one's animals

1 8 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

so caused is even more troublesome than the actual
kills, — our three tents were pitched on three sides of the
boma, and the porters' seven fires were ranged in an
outer circle about ours.

Then while we ourselves dined luxuriously on giraffe
tail soup and a ragout of giraffe tongue with tinned
tomatoes and potatoes that would make a gourmet sniff
at even green turtle soup, all our men were alternately
minding huge chunks of meat and fish roasting on sticks
at their fires, gorging themselves, singing and dancing,
cutting long strips of zebra meat for smoking and curing
on great square platforms of green boughs built for the
purpose over each fire, and calling the Kikuyu all sorts
of terrible pagan names for their stupidity in deserting
at the very door to this land of plenty.

And while we three white men of a Christian race
stuffed ourselves without preliminary or postprandial
grace, and our shenzi porters gracelessly gorged themselves
like beasts, scarce thirty feet from our table stood the
noble form of old Regal and the spare, ascetic-faced
Awala, musically intoning their evening prayer to Allah,
oblivious to all about as if alone in a monastic cell. It
was a majestic rebuke to us, a weird mystery to the shenzi,
whose voices were always lowered when the Somalis
began to pray, and who sat contemplating them in wide-
eyed wonder to the end of each prayer, awed, almost
silent, — as were we ourselves silent out of sheer respect
for a religion that can give men such perfect self-control
that no danger daunts them and no hardship or suffering
wrings from them a plaint.

Five times a day do they so pray, — at dawn, at high
noon, at four, at sunset, and before retiring, — nor can

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 19

anything interfere to delay these prayers, not even hungry
masters. And before addressing Allah, mouth, face, and
hands are carefully washed, the best turban wound about
the head, the freshest garments donned, the feet bared;
then, with a glance at the sun, if by day, or at the stars,
if by night, to get their compass bearings, they spread
their rugs, face toward Mecca, and begin a low droning
chant that at a little distance might easily be mistaken
for a well-intoned litany.

If I could find it in my heart to envy good old Regal
anything, and he is himself, in himself, a lot of things I
should like to be, it would be that profound faith in the
efficacy of his prayers which has served to endow a man
born a wild Somali warrior nomad and now for years a
cook, with the dignity of a cardinal and virtues that
would put no end of so-called "good men" to shame.
In my judgment, all lucky enough to reach the real
heaven of really good men, no matter what their faith,
will find there Regal Wassama.

The night passed without incident, save that to-
ward morning lions were heard grunting some distance
away.

By dawn of the twenty-second, as soon as we were able
to see our gunsights, we had finished our coffee, bread,
and bacon and were out with our rifles; for here was a
rarely good chance of record trophies, here where the
game is as undisturbed by hunters, bar the hidden pitfalls
and the silent spear and poisoned arrow thrusts of the
Wanderobo, as it was in the beginning of time, here where
trophy hunters had never come before.

It was an ideal morning, for heavy rain had fallen
throughout the night, making easy the spooring of fresh

20 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

tracks and softening dry grass and twigs until one's foot-
steps were noiseless.

From the moment we left camp our advance was
slow and cautious — on foot, behind us, the gun bearers
with our spare rifles, behind them the syces leading our
mules — on winding game paths so low we had to crouch
most of the time, where each turn of a bush might bring
one face to face at arm's length with any old jungle
warrior that would carry in his system as much of one's
lead — unless it was particularly well placed — as a man
could comfortably pack in a bandolier.

We moved down river towards the swamp and out
toward the wide alkali plain that extends south from the
swamp four miles to Lake Natron.

And it was a bit odd, our so going out in such infernal
country, for only the day before each of us had vowed that
any fool who liked, could go after rhino and buffalo in the
thorn jungle of the river and the tall grass and vine tangle
of the swamp, but he would have none of it; and now
there were we three plunged into it, as if just a matter of
course, prey each to the lure of the chase !

While the ground was covered with footprints made
the day before, apparently everything had gone out to
the open to feed or retired to the more secluded recesses
of the swamp, for it was not until we reached the edge
of the plain just at the upper end of the swamp that we
found the first spoor made since the rain had stopped.

But it was spoor worth while, — a giant rhino whose
footprints in the soft ground were a full twelve inches in
diameter. Evidently he had been out for a night's
ramble and feed in the plain, and had probably entered
the swamp no more than half an hour ahead of us.

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 21

Leaving mules and syces outside, we at once started
into the swamp on his spoor, easy to follow as a highway,
Outram in the lead, I next, and then Judd.

Sometimes the rhino followed paths, sometimes
crushed haphazard through the tangle, just as the fancy
struck him. Luckily the wind was quartering, across the
general line of his advance.

We were not hurrying any. In fact, our pace would
have made a passing funeral look like a Derby finish.
Feet fell silent as the very dew itself. The least unusual
sound reaching him meant either our losing him or his
charging us, about an even-money bet which.

It is droll, but in this sort of stalking big game I
always find myself having to fight a persistent inclination
to hold the breath to listen, — one seems to hear better
when not breathing, — which, if not resisted, keeps me as
hopelessly blown and unsteady for close shooting as if I
had just finished a hundred-yard dash, until I have now
long made it a practice, under such conditions, to keep
saying or thinking to myself, "Breathe deep and slow!"
Keep the lungs full and the hand is pretty sure to stay
steady.

I don't know just what time we entered the swamp,
but I should think it was within fifteen minutes of our
entry that about fifteen yards ahead of us we heard the
crunch of huge jaws and a mighty sigh of surfeit. The
old giant had apparently found shade to his liking and
was meditating a nap. Plainly he was unwarned of our
presence. Sound told us he stood beneath a large, wide-
spreading tree whose drooping branches met the thick
mass of tall grass and bush that lay between us and com-
pletely hid him from our sight. After perhaps four or

22 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

five minutes' waiting, nerves tense and every sense alert,
we thought we heard movement to his left and Judd
turned to me, bronze cheeks white as paper, but square
jaws set and eyes blazing battle, and whispered, "I believe
there are two or three with him, — if so, it 's apt to be hell
here."

And then a moment later another whisper came from
Judd, "I think I can see his rump; shall I stir him up a
bit?" and no more had I nodded assent before the roar
of his heavy .450 cordite rifle was followed with shrill
squeals of rage and pain, — twigs cracked, great limbs
snapped as the monster whirled toward the sound coin-
cident with his injury, plainly swinging for a charge.

Then I caught a glimpse of his neck, just back of the
ears, and sent two .405 hard-nose Winchesters into it,
and, an instant later, sighting the upper half of the head,
gave him a third. At this third shot he swayed about
in the bush for a few seconds and then crashed to the
ground. While I was shooting, Outram fired once with
his .303.

All was now still beneath the tree, and after a few
seconds we started clambering in to him, but, just as
the vast carcass came in view, he tried to rise, and Judd
gave him another .450.

But his effort to rise proved, when we got to him, to be
only the death throe. Judd's first shot had hit him in
the left hip and probably angled through the kidneys ; his
last had landed far back in the neck and below the spine.
Of my two first shots one was four inches behind the
ears, over and probably reaching the spine, the second
two inches back of and an inch below the first, while my
third had landed full in the curve of the head between

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 23

eye and ears, about three inches below the left ear
and a inch to the left of the centre of the "forehead."
Outram's .303 was a few inches lower in the head, crum-
pled up in the bone.

It was my third shot that killed him, and at the same
time exploded a fallacy I have read, to the best of my
recollection, in every book I have ever perused on rhino
shooting, viz., that it is folly to try to kill or even stop a
rhino with a frontal head shot, — that no rifle ball will
penetrate its massive frontal bone structure. For when
we came to remove the scalp and chop away the horns,
we found my .405 had driven through the frontal bone
and smashed the inner skull structure to fragments.

And it was a prize I had! Not a "record," but close
to it, a splendid old bull close to 3,000 pounds in weight,
with an absolutely perfect front horn of graceful shape,
23^ inches long and 24! inches in circumference at the
base, while the back horn was 10 inches long and 24 inches
at the base. His length from tip to tip was 12 feet, 7
inches, his height at withers, 5 feet, 9! inches, while the
circumference of his foot was 30 inches. He was killed
at 7: 15 A.M., little more than two hours after leaving
camp. To cut away his mask and horns, remove the
hoofs, and cut strips from his full inch-thick hide for
kibokos (whips) and canes, took us about two and one-
half hours.

The foregoing horn measurements were made the
night the rhino was killed. Thoroughly dried, the front
horn measured 22 inches on the outer curve and 22^
inches in base circumference, — the rear horn, 9^ inches
in length and 23 inches in base. Rowland Ward records
only one black rhino horn above 24^ inches in base (and

24 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

that one 24! inches) and only seven better than 22 inches,
and no rear horn above 23^ inches in base and only two
above 22 J inches, thus placing my N'gari Kiti giant high
among the top-notchers.

As soon as the trophies were secured and started for
camp we clambered out of the swamp, and then ambled
away south to the much larger swamp lying between
Shombol Mountain and Lake Natron, wherein the Guaso
Nyiro River finishes its career. There, Outram told us,
were buffalo in hundreds. A high ridge of dry ground
near the centre would, if we could reach it, command
a wide view down into the long grass where by day
the buffalo were browsing or asleep. To negotiate the
four miles of intervening alkali plain, floundering
through deep pools made by the previous night's rain,
and laboring through mud into which our mules sank
half-way to their knees, took more than two hours.

To the east of us the majestically buttressed summit of
Shombol, and to the west the lofty uplift of the southern
extremity of the Mau Escarpment, stood as a giant gate-
way, a worthy southern entrance, about five miles wide,
to the great Rift Valley, there immediately guarded, as
by a colossal fosse, by Lake Natron. This winding
along the foot of the Mau in its northern reaches, bends
east to and past the southern flanks of Shombol, per-
petually sentinelled by Sonya's beautiful volcanic cone
rising, midway of the gateway but miles to the south of it,
to a height, I should think, of at least 9,000 feet.

As we neared the swamp, scores of acres of slightly
raised and dry ground were found to be covered thick
with buffalo "sign," trampled and littered like a farm
barnyard. But try as we would, never a black back could

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 25

we see. So presently we started for a try to reach the
tall ridge in its midst that lay about three-quarters of a
mile from where we struck the swamp.

Here there was no bush, only tall swamp grass and
rushes, eight to fourteen feet high, and along the deeper
water channels a still higher and thicker growth of cat-
tails. For a few hundred yards the ground was boggy,
but not very bad, nor were the channels very deep.

When in about a thousand yards we heard the shrill
whistle of a buffalo a short distance ahead of us, but at
first could not see him. Presently, however, as he crashed
away past us, Judd caught a glimpse of him and tried a
snapshot, but apparently missed.

Then we chugged on through the marsh, a short dis-
tance farther finding ourselves -compelled to dismount
and wade, and then bumping into a broad, sluggish, one-
hundred-foot channel that fell away to a depth nearly
over one's head at the very edge and looked too ominous
of crocodiles to be attractive. So we back-trekked
and circled the north end of the swamp and finally found
a place where we could flounder through the channel
without quite swimming our mules. Then we prospected
along its western edge without result, until one of our
boys volunteered to try a crossing, won through, and poked
about for nearly two hours, finally returning with advice
of plenty of buffalo a half-mile away but a lot of hope-
lessly bad going intervening.

While the boy was gone, Outram whipped out a hook
and line, found a boy who was treasuring a titbit of the
rhino, and, commandeering it for bait, in a short time
landed about twenty pounds of fine kumbari, ranging
from one to three pounds in weight.

26 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

The boy back and the fish wrapped in green grass and
stowed in our saddle pockets, about 2 p. M. we started for
camp, on a wide circle to the west in hope of getting
quicker out of the soft alkali plain to hard ground. In
an altitude here below 2,000 feet, the heat on the open
plain was terrific. Great herds of Wildebeeste to the
west of us in the mirage looked big as elephants, while in
the shimmering heat waves Natron itself looked more
like a mirage than real water.

After about two miles we reached slightly higher
ground and better footing, along which we proceeded for
another half-hour without incident. It was then about
3 130 P. M. and we had come near to the southwest corner
of the N'gari Kiti swamp.

Tired with ten hours' constant going afoot and a-mule,
and drowsy with the heat, for some time I had been dozing
comfortably in the saddle, unmindful of game of any sort,
when suddenly I was roused by a low whistle from Judd,
to find him gazing, face muscles tense, into the tall grass
on my left. It needed only a glance to see that there
before us, a scant one hundred and forty yards away,
stood at last the royal quarry we had been seeking since
morning, — two splendid big buffalo bulls, their noses
up, pointed, sniffing to precisely locate a scented enemy,
their great heads and thick horns obscuring even their
massive shoulders!

Instantly we bounced off the mules, and scarcely were
our feet on the ground before here they charged, straight
at us.

All three of us opened fire together, but despite the
rain of lead, on they came without swerving until, at
about thirty yards, they turned to our left, toward Lake

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 27

Natron, for a few jumps, when the old fellow again
started to whirl upon us, but as he turned, Judd gave him
a .450 in the mid ribs that made him change his mind.

Within fifty yards of their first turn they disappeared
over a low ridge and we raced after them. When we
reached the top of the ridge, there below us, perhaps
twenty yards away, the two grim old warriors stood at
bay, badly wounded. But they were still full of fight,
facing us, and the moment we appeared again they
started a charge, but before they had made half a dozen
jumps, Judd downed the young bull with a .450 in the
shoulder and I the old bull with a . 405 in the centre of the
chest. And there, down and practically out as they
seemed, they still showed so much fight on nearer approach
that Judd advised, for safety, giving each a careful
finishing shot, which we did.

One of my -405's was found crumpled up inside the
skull of the younger bull, my first shot at him, and that
it had not bowled him over at once was remarkable,
while my first on the old fellow had caught him aft of the
shoulder and ranged back through the lung. Judd's
first had hit the young one in the hip. The old one
also proved the tremendous toughness of their fibre, for
Judd's . 450, which had entered the mid ribs and turned
his second charge, protruded but did not puncture the
skin on the opposite side, — we cut it out and I have it,
almost unblunted, after traversing a great seventeen-
hundred-pound carcass, that even a .450 cordite car-
tridge could not drive a hard-nose ball clean through.
Outram had landed in the pair three .303's, but they were
only flea bites to these giants.

The two bulls fell and lay dead within precisely nine

28 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

feet of each other, both, as seen in the photograph, falling
headed the same way, toward their enemy.

They were splendid specimens of two types of bull,
one absolutely in his prime, perhaps seven or eight years
old, with perfect, symmetrical, unbroken horns, and the
other a hoary old warrior, goodness only knows how old,
grizzled, and with both horns short by five to six inches
of their original length, broken and worn blunt and
smooth in battles unnumbered with the doughtiest of his
race.

The horns of the younger bull measured 41 1 inches
on their widest spread and 27 J inches from tip to tip,
while the breadth of the boss was 15 J inches.

The old bull measured 39! inches from tip to tip and
42 inches on the widest horn spread, with a i2j-inch boss.
They showed hard use and long, honorable service, did
these old, worn Nature's weapons, smooth and polished
like ebony from tip to base by mighty fence, wrench,
and tussle with the best metal of their kind, whereas
half the length of the younger bull's horns were rough
and corrugated, their fine, sharp points intact.

But the old bull brought me another trophy rarer
and that I prize even more than his splendid mask and
horns. While the men were working on the head, Judd
noticed a small black shaft about the diameter of a small
slate-pencil standing perpendicularly out of his right loin,
near the spine and six inches in front of the hip. Asking
the boys what it was, one answered, with a laugh,
"Other hunters have been out long before you, Bwana,
but their resas (cartridge) was not as good as yours;
that is a Wanderobo poisoned arrow." And so indeed it
proved when, after five minutes' cutting and tugging,

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 29

the arrow head was withdrawn from the bull's tough
back muscles.

It was a remarkable and probably unparalleled
example of the great power of the Wanderobo bow.
From its sharply barbed point to its base, the arrow head
was 5^ inches long, and 4j inches of its length had been
driven through the half-inch hide and on into the heavy
muscles of the loin!

Since it stood perpendicularly in the loin, it must
have been shot into the bull while he was passing beneath
a tree, or when he was drinking directly below some over-
hanging bank, both methods of attack favorites of the
light-armed Wanderobo.

While the Wanderobo poison is deadly to beasts within
five to twenty minutes when fresh, applied to arrow heads
in this dry climate it cakes to the hardness of enamel in a
few weeks and becomes harmless. Luckily for the old
bull, it was evidently such an old disenvenomed arrow that
had perhaps by mistake or as the last in the quiver, been
driven into him. The poison is made from the bark
of a bush much like a laurel, which is boiled down and
down until it becomes a thick, gummy, concentrated
extract. So prepared, it is thickly smeared over the
barbed head and three or four inches of the arrow's
shank or shaft. How the plant is known botanically, or
whether it is known at all, I am unaware^ but it bears
a purple fruit, quite the shape and about the size of a
small olive, which I understand is not itself poisonous.

So armed, the Wanderobo tackle and kill anything,
from the tiniest buck up to elephant, their favorite tactics
a silent shot from a brush shelter built within five to ten
yards of a much-used watering place. Such primitive

30 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

shooting covers one sees daily above springs and along
streams in mountains and plains of the Wanderobo
country.

And precisely as the Wanderobo is an artful economist
of energy in making his kills, so also is he a cunning labor-
saver in dealing with the meat he takes; for directly a
beast is so struck, off goes a runner to whatever near-by
forest glade or bush recess is for the moment harboring his
nomadic, houseless family and kin, and up they come on a
run, young and old, like ravening wolves, and there stop
until no scrap is left that even a vulture would covet, pack-
ing comfortably away in their stomachs what a white
man would first laboriously carry somewhere on his back
before getting the good of a bite of.

And this particular arrow head the old bull carried
would plainly have gone much deeper had it not struck a
rib, for as found the thin head was bent almost to right
angles with its shank by contact with bone!

That it was a very old wound was obvious, for not
only was it entirely healed, bar local irritation about the
head, but in places where the hard black enamel-like
coating of the poison was worn away, the shank was much
rusted.

While at the time I realized I had a superb trophy
in the head of the younger bull and a fine one in the older
bull, I never dreamed I was crowding records until, upon
my return to Juja, I got hold of the fifth edition of Row-
land Ward's "Records of Big Game," a short perusal of
which showed that of all the known best specimens of
Cape buffalo ever shot, over their entire range past and
present, from the Cape to Somaliland, very few have ex-
ceeded 1 1 inches in breadth of boss and none have equalled

OLD JUNGLE WARRIORS AT BAY 31

the 15 J inches of my younger bull, excepting a head shot
by F. C. Selous, whose measurements were 41 inches on
widest spread of horns, 24! inches from tip to tip of horns,
and i6j inches in measurement across face of boss, against
my 41 J, 27§, and 15 J inches for the same measure-
ments, thus giving my fellow second place in this par-
ticular, while only seven bulls reported have equalled the
12^-inch boss of my older bull. This record pertains only
to the big Cape buffalo proper; as for the smaller type of
Abyssinian, while only one boss is returned of more than
10 inches, nevertheless one splendid fellow killed by
Mr. R. A. Colvin had the breadth of 30^ inches, obviously
a magnificent freak.

It was 7 P. M. when we reached camp that night with
our buffalo trophies, for we were forced to do an extra two
miles by losing our way in the dense thorn jungle of the
N'gari Kiti valley, — in fact, we only regained camp at all
by exchanging rifle-shot signals. And while most happy,
a more tired and hungry trio would be hard to find, for we
had been out fourteen hours in the blistering sun on scant
water rations and without a morsel of food since our day-
light breakfast. However, a wash, a tot of whiskey, a
delicious giraffe tail soup, boiled buffalo tongue, and
beans done as your Boston aunt used to cook them, made
us fit for a pipe each, — and then we tumbled into our
blankets and a sleep that needed a deal of waking at four
the next morning.

Ill

KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, AND ELAND

FORCED to remain in our N'gari Kid camp the
twenty-third, to clean, cure, and dry the skins and
heads, I started out at dawn after gerenuk or les-
ser Kudu, both now very rare buck in British East Africa
and both, the latter especially, extremely hard to get,
always alert and off like the wind at first scent or glimpse
of you. Riding up to the crest of high, sandy, rocky ridges,
densely covered with thorn and sanseviera, the wild fibre
plant, the sort of country these bucks love, lying between
N'guraman and the Mau, Outram and I dismounted and
for five hours slipped along afoot, closely scanning every
opening about us with our glasses.

Everywhere we went the ground was covered with
fresh tracks of buck of all sorts, from little dik-dik up to
giant eland, and much giraffe and rhino and some buffalo
sign, and yet throughout the first five hours' tramp we
saw no animals save three herds of beautiful impala,
which we carefully avoided disturbing, and a few tribes
of tiny monkeys and giant apes, which barked and chat-
tered their surprise and then swung away through the
treetops.

Finally, about half-past ten, our quest was rewarded.
Suddenly out of his concealment behind a mimosa bush
sprang a Kudu bull, about one hundred and fifty yards
dead ahead of us, flashed like a meteor across a narrow
open glade, seen by me for no more than two seconds, and

32

KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, ELAND 33

then, disappearing on our right, headed past us and back
along the slope of the ridge we were following.

With little hope of again seeing him, but taking the
chance, I sprinted my best about one hundred yards to the
next opening in the bush, along the course he was taking,
and got there just in time to see him spring out of the
tangle into an opening in a field of sanseviera and stop for
an instant, head turned and listening, one hundred and
fifty yards below me. Knowing I had not a moment to
spare, I fired the moment I caught my bead on him, and
while I plainly heard the ball hit him heavily, away he
bounded, as strong apparently as when I first sighted him.

Running down to take up his spoor, however, I had not
gone ten feet before the heavily blood-reddened sanse-
viera leaves told me I had him. When I reached him
he was stone dead, shot through the upper third of the
heart by a .35 Mauser soft nose which had passed on
clear through and out of him, and yet he had made the
marvellous run of one hundred and eighty yards before
falling!

His horns were a beautiful pair measuring 31} inches
on the outside curve and 15 inches from tip to tip, their
perpendicular height being 24^ inches, a rare prize in these
days when very few African sportsmen's bags include
lesser Kudu of any sort.

That night we dined on buffalo tail soup, the liquid
thick and strong as beef tea, the meat deliciously sweet
and tender, far better flavored than even giraffe tail, and
on fried kumbari, followed by roast koorhaan, a bird about
the size of and as tender and well flavored as a spring
turkey.

The twenty-fourth we moved ten miles up the steeply

34 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

rising valley of the N'gari Kiti to a camp a thousand feet
higher (viz., at 3,000 feet) on a small tributary, the N'gari
Nyiro, our first stage on the ascent of the Mau. At this
camp we enjoyed a delightfully cool temperature, and it
was indeed a great relief from our fortnight in the hot
lowlands, where, bar our sleeping hours, we were con-
stantly streaming with sweat. Near the head of this
valley dwells a small tribe of Loita Masai, who disown
allegiance to Lenani, and who, besides the care of their
flocks and herds, and contrary to Masai tradition and
habits, till the soil and eat its produce.

Here, high up on the foothills of the Mau, we spent our
Christmas Eve, rather a silent one, — for me, I know,
a very sad one, — each filled with longings for those he
loved best.

Christmas Day we sent our donkey loads and twenty
porters on to the summit, under our headman, ourselves
remaining in camp to finish curing our trophies, for heavy
rain had fallen the night before and their drying was un-
finished, — for me a lazy day, the first real rest since the
start, spent alternately making diary notes, dozing, and
reading the latest New York Heralds (my latest!), of dates
from November i to 8, which till then I had not had time
to open, — papers with the first news I had read, other
than a three-line Reuter despatch, of the happy results of
our elections, and stating that President Roosevelt had
delayed his sailing date for Mombasa until March 24.
That would bring him here the end of April, still really
a month too early, for the big rains usually do not stop
before the end of May.

The morning of the twenty-sixth we were off at day-
light for the ascent of the Mau, over Outram Pass, the

CAMP AMONG CANDELABRUM CACTI
ON THE SUMMIT OF THE MAU

KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, ELAND 35

only accessible point known for nearly a hundred miles
north of the border. The buttressing foothills and higher
slopes of the range that seem to offer easy access to the
summit prove on trial only comparatively isolated up-
lifts, either hopelessly precipitous on the far side or lead-
ing to downright impassable cliffs above. While guide to
the Imperial Boundary Survey four years before Outram
discovered this pass, and there are now in the country
only two men besides himself who know it.

By desperate hard work, drenched within by per-
spiration and without by the sopping wet grass and
foliage, we reached the summit at 6,500 feet, being an
ascent from our camp of 3,500 feet in three hours. Three-
fourths of the way the thorn scrub on the mountain side
was so dense that progress was only possible afoot up
winding rhino trails so steep and shut in by creepers, one
could not ride. Then we got up out of the jungle, into a
more open, big-timber country of less steep slope, where
occasionally we could for a few hundred yards rest our
tired legs and bursting lungs. Just here we lost our first
donkey, of characteristic tsetse fly sickness, — and lucky
we were it was so far only one.

Just before arriving at the summit the real key to
the pass was reached, — a lofty knife-blade ridge scarce
eight feet wide, strewn with granite bowlders, which con-
nected the buttress we had ascended with the upper
escarpment. On either side this ridge fell away almost
perpendicularly for probably 2,500 feet, and along it we
rode for the several hundred yards of its length, so fagged
we did not mind chances of a mule stumble that might
easily toss man and beast over the edge, for often the
scattered bowlders compelled riding along its very lip.

36 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Unfortunately, heavy banks of cloud lay 1,500 to 2,000
feet below us on either side, and deprived us of what, on
a clear day, must be a most magnificent view to north,
south, and east.

The summit reached, we crossed a superb belt of big
timber, hardwood trunks five or six feet through, rising
sixty to eighty feet straight as a spear shaft and without a
limb, and then began a rapid descent through the rich-
est wild grass country I have ever seen, green, sweet,
juicy, and such a thick mat one could not walk a half-
mile through it without exhaustion. At 5,400 feet we
camped on a high bench above the headwaters of the
N'gari Kiti, which a few miles away drops to the arid
eastern plains through an impassable gorge. We found
all too tired to engage in the usual evening shoot.

The twenty-seventh we travelled ten miles west, most
of the time within a few thousand yards of the German
boundary, over the beautifully grassed, timbered, and
watered inter-range region of the Mau, much of it hard
going but nothing like the previous day's cruelty. Besides,
the air was exquisite, keen and bracing to a degree that,
for the first day since our start, made men and animals step
out as if they were really alive. We camped early, at
6,100 feet, on a boisterous little mountain stream to
hunt eland, the biggest and finest of the antelope family,
the larger bulls weighing up to fifteen hundred, now
extinct or rare in most parts. Here they are thick, to
judge by the trails. But as usual they are hard to see
when you want them, especially since they stick pretty
close in thorn scrub. We also hoped to bag here in the
tall timber of the higher ridges our legal quota of colobus
monkeys, — the big long-furred black and white chaps, —

KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, ELAND 37

most prized, by sportsmen, of all the monkey tribe. It
was a fine shooting country, thick belts of heavy forest
alternating with wide, open glades and thorny slopes.

Going out afoot at noon with Judd and our gun bear-
ers, within an hour we sighted several eland, some graz-
ing, others dozing among the mimosa, and stalked the
big bull of the lot to within an easy two hundred yards.
There I fired and hit him behind the shoulder with the
.405 so hard he staggered and nearly fell, but knowing
their great vitality and taking no chances, Judd and I
gave him two more each, when he stumbled behind a
thicket. But upon running up, sure we had him, it was
only to see his tail wig-wagging us a farewell as he en-
tered heavy timber four hundred yards away. Through
long grass and forest, trailing was slow and difficult, but
so Awala and I followed him for nearly four hours, when,
with night approaching and camp far behind, we had to
give him up.

No colobii did we see going out or back, but I shot two
birds of most beautiful plumage, both plantain eaters,
blue heads shading into green necks, with red wings and
long blue tails, a poor apology for what we went after,
but still lovely trophies.

The twenty-eighth missed being our red-letter day by
several sizes. Always difficult to keep a marching column
of porters in close order, in a trackless, rugged mountain
country, where the long grass is lined everywhere with the
passing of wandering game, the moment any stragglers
lose sight of the advance or rear, there is always a chance
of their getting lost. Molo, the burly Kavirondo table
boy, had been intrusted with a valuable twelve-bore
Purdy and the water bottles, and ordered to stay in reach

38 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

of my mule's tail. But by mid-forenoon I missed him and
halted the advance. A scant hour before I had killed
two kongoni for the porters, and he was then present.
But when first the quick-marching porters and then the
slow-moving donkeys came in, neither porters nor donkey
boys remembered seeing him since the last kill. So there
was nothing for it but to off-saddle and stop, and send
boys out with guns and whistles to try to signal him.

Finally, after four hours, he was brought in, worn out
and fagged from a five-mile detour south of our course
into German East Africa, all come of sheer stupidity,
careless indifference to his morning orders, and loss of
touch with the column.

Our luncheon was over and we were ready to resume
the march, so immediately he appeared I ordered him
stripped of the cartridge bag and gun, his insignia as a
tent boy, assigned him the heaviest load in the lot, and
told him if he was not in the night camp with the first ten
porters he would carry two sixty-pound loads the next
day. The result was amusing, for throughout a par-
ticularly hard afternoon's march, heavily burdened as
he was, he was never one hundred feet behind my mule.
But he got in surly and ugly, his great underlip pendent
somewhere in the vicinity of his knees.

Indeed, the fact is after all that the African black is
nothing but a grown-up child, on whom no punishment
short of a corporal drubbing counts. The load penalty
I had decreed only left him surly; but when, later, Judd
ordered him out with others to fetch firewood and he sat
tight by his fire and returned a surly stare, and Judd
hurled at him a heavy knob-kerrie that landed him a hard
smash on the shins, out he flew and did the work of three
men, cheerfully singing at his task.

KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, ELAND 39

Nor was Molo's getting lost our only mishap, for at
4 P. M. we awakened to the fact that all the donkeys and
over half the porters had lost touch with the advance and
strayed in the jungle. And by every ill token the lot
lost had all our tents, blankets, and the cook's mess kit.

We were then on the higher slopes of Lengijabi Moun-
tain, at a height of 6,800 feet, and the keen evening chill
of the high plateau had already driven us into our coats.
We built big signal fires of grass and green leaves that
sent up tall smoke columns, and searched with our glasses,
the lower country we had crossed, but all to no purpose,
until, about an hour before sunset, we sighted them cross-
ing a bit of open slope at least five miles away, headed
due north instead of west! So plainly there was nothing
to do but camp where we were, on a rocky slope steep as a
roof and at least four hundred feet above the nearest
water, — rain pools in the canyon below.

Of course a runner was sent after the stragglers, and
about 9 P. M. a few lead porters got in with a part of the
mess kit and we had a bit of supper, — most conveniently,
for no more were we laid down, somewhat sheltered in
wind-breaking nooks of the rocks, and wrapped in noth-
ing but our raincoats, before a pelting cold rain came on.
It drove us into a huddle about the camp fire for the
rest of the night, and caused heavy drafts on our phil-
osophy to concede, what was really the fact, that the boys
were little to be blamed for going astray in the frightful
tangle of deep gulches and thorn and cactus thicket our
afternoon's course had traversed.

However, by sun-up the last of the strayed porters
climbed into camp, for they had reached the bottom of
the canyon beneath us early in the morning but had
found ascent in the dark impossible.

40 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Here, again, we were upon a trek practically impas-
sable to any white man but Outram, for from Duck Creek,
our night camp of the twenty-ninth, to the Kibaibai Hills
and Springs, a distance of fifty-five miles, there are no
streams or springs, not a drop of water except natural
rain tanks he found while leading the advance of the
Boundary Survey. But, mystery to me though it was,
he was able to find them again, and straight to each he
marched, unerring, notwithstanding none lay near by
any prominent landmark, — - now plunging down to the
bottom of a deep gulch covered with scrub we had to crawl
through, again winding up a dry, rocky gorge like as two
peas to many others near by, again scrambling to the
summit of some lofty crag, undistinguishable by us from
its fellows. Only once in the four camps we made on this
fifty-five-mile dry belt did Outram fail to score true on the
water, and then he fetched it after a two hours' search.

The night of the twenty-ninth, after an easy march over
treeless uplands of the eastern slope of the Mau Plateau,
we camped about three miles from Mount Ol Albwa,
beside one of Outram's clear, cold rain pools and in a
thick grove of candelabrum cactus, — and took good
pains to stoutly boma our mules and donkeys inside a
narrow ring formed by our eight tents and camp fires,
for three lion were close to our camp the previous night,
and thence west they were about every night and might
give one a look-in any time. And by eight o'clock we
were not sorry we were well bomaed, for two big fellows,
big indeed if they were big as their deep voices, were hail-
ing from a distance of a few hundred yards, hailing us
with deep guttural grunts which, bar the fierce snarl when
attacking from short range, is about the only sound one

KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, ELAND 41

ever hears from the wild lion. Few men have ever heard
him "roar," and only one such case have I heard of where
he was not at the time in battle with one of his mates.

For fifteen minutes our serenaders slowly approached
us, and then their voices receded; off they were for a prowl
in another direction.

Now we were come again into a country alive with
game, wooded hills, ravines, and naked plains alike, —
eland, Wildebeeste, topi, Granti and Thompsoni zebra,
buffalo, giraffe, rhino, water buck, all thronged in for
fresh range, there made available during the rains, from
their dry-season haunts near the springs and small creeks
of distant better watered sections of the Mau.

So the next morning I went out with Outram after
eland. It was slow, hard work, of necessity afoot, for
the eland are few, and since they may be found running
with almost any mob of game, every bunch of zebra,
Wildebeeste, impala, or other buck one sees, one needs to
scan everything carefully with glasses, and then, if no
eland are present, slip softly past, without disturbing them,
to the next mob.

Shortly after sunrise and when well up on the north
slope of Ol Albwa, slipping along through the bush
some distance from Outram, seventy-five yards ahead in
a little opening I saw a group of — I did n't know what —
big black fellows with dull yellow tortoise-like spots,
great round ears, upstanding manes, and white-tipped tails,
coolly looking me over and snarling in concert. What-
ever they were I wanted one of those quadrupedal co-
nundrums, and dropped the biggest I could see, tall as a
big setter, with a ball through the shoulder — when off
out of sight scampered the eight or ten of his fellows.

42 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

When Outram came up and I asked him what it was
I had bagged, he replied:

"Wild dog — and you are in luck, for usually when
you kill one the pack is on you in a second, and it is up
in a tree or down their throats for yours. Why, during
the Survey Dr. Chevalier was treed by a pack of about
eighty, and notwithstanding he soon killed twenty or
thirty, — all he had cartridges for, — up the tree they
held him for five mortal hours."

So clearly I wras lucky, for I am none too well built for
tree-climbing, and the local variety of thorn tree is amaz-
ingly contrived to make desperate tough going for the
best climber.

A half-hour later, while crossing a small patch of three-
foot grass, out of it a few feet in front of me up stood the
wide-hooded, blue-black, hideous head of a seven-foot
m'piri or black cobra, poisonous as an adder, an ill-man-
nered beggar who spits at you and ruins the sight if he
hits an eye, so these Africanders say. This chap took a
snapshot at me, but if I can't climb trees I am ready to
back myself at heavy odds as a snake-dodger. I wanted
his skin, but before I could get the shotgun he had slipped
into thick bush where none of us cared to follow him.

It was eleven o'clock before we sighted eland, when a
herd of eight came over the summit, startled by a shot
by Judd on the opposite side of the mountain. We had
only an instant's glimpse of them, quite out of safe range,
and then they were lost in the bush. But we soon got
their trail and for six hours followed it, up and down,
through glade and bush, to a three-fourths complete
circuit of Ol Albwa's broad flanks. Only once more
did we sight them, still out of range.

KUDU, COBRA, WILD DOG, ELAND 43

But while the day yielded nothing tangible but the
wild dog and a buck shot for the porters, it was still a day
that had one's nerves a-tingle and every sense alert from
dawn till dark; for fresh rhino and buffalo sign was
everywhere, lion tracks made that same morning were
several times encountered on paths we had to follow to
hold to our eland spoor, and any turn of a bush might
have brought on a scrap that would take quick and
straight shooting to win.

The real reason for our stop of a day at Ol Albwa,
however, was in order to send back a lot of porters to
search for my Kudu head, which had been lost off one
of the donkey loads two nights before, when they were
astray in the thickets about Lengijabi. And it was de-
lighted I was when, upon reaching camp in the evening,
I found the men returned with it. For the Kudu was,
so far, my greatest treasure. Any man may have his
chance at a rhino or buffalo if he cares to incur the risks
of going after them, but few sportsmen have the luck to
bag a Kudu.

About Albwa, one of the gulches shows in the wash
great quantities of garnets of the sort always found in con-
junction with the Kimberley blue clay diamond formation,
but we found none of them "in place."

IV

SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED

THE last day of the old year 1908 we did a hard march
of sixteen miles, the first two-thirds over the roll-
ing, billowy, short-grassed Mau Plateau, through
almost solid herds of game as ignorant of man, his weapons,
and his guile as were the first of their species, — game that
at first fled madly at sight of us, and then often trotted
back, out of sheer curiosity, to near approach. The sight
carried me back to our own plains of the early 'yo's, for
in form, in color, and in action, though not in size or in
pelt, the Wildebeeste at a few hundred yards so closely
resembles the American bison, that any old-timer might
easily fancy himself transported back by some happy
miracle to the days of his youth and the old buffalo
range that now remain no more than a memory to the
few still living who once knew them.

During the morning I shot a particularly fine buck,
which Judd and Outram agreed was not a true Grand.
Unless a Robertsi, it was a hitherto unrecorded species.
Smaller of body bulk than the common Granti, its horns
had much greater spread and an entirely different curv-
ature. They measured 235 inches in height on the outer
curve and 19 inches spread, tip to tip. Clearly the buck
was no individual freak, for we saw so many like him
that it was perfectly plain he is the characteristic type
of southern Mau Granti.

The last third of this day's march was a descent of

44

SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED 45

a thousand feet through a maze of dry gulches and dense
thorn scrub that tore everything tearable to tatters, and
added a few more gashes to arms and hands that already
looked and felt as if they had done active service in a
leopard fight.

This night for the first time our hitherto unfaltering
guide failed to find readily the water-holes for which he
was steering. In fact, for half the afternoon our little
column was lost in three separate sections, each from the
others, and Outram lost to all of us; and it was not until
sunset that, by shooting, yelling, and smoke signalling,
Judd and I got the lot once more together, just as Outram
stumbled out of the thorns, rent and bleeding by his two
hours' prowl through the gulches, with the good news
that he had water.

And right where he got the water most others would
have sat and died of thirst. But a scant inch of slightly
damp clay at the foot of a high overhanging bank, a scant
dozen stalks of coarse marsh grass that looked as if it
would sell its birthright for a bit of real marsh, cuddling
close to the damp clay in the bottom of a sandy, stony
gulch, dry as a bone, had been enough to catch the eye of
this veteran of the West Australian desert. And after an
hour's digging with shovels and crowbars, we got a hole
in the sand that we found we could rely on to fill about once
an hour, and that full held about two buckets of good
water! Little enough for fifty men and thirty beasts,
but still enough.

And there that night, walled in by the close-crowding
thorn that left scant room for our camp, with less of water
within a day's march of us than the champagne gilded
youth and guilty age pour out of a New Year's Eve at

46 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Rector's, my tired mates and porters turned in. With no
sound in my ears but the sough of the night breeze
through the ghastly gray branches of the thorn scrub, the
yelps of jackals, the howls of marauding hyenas, and the dis-
tant grunts of two prowling lion, I sat alone and saw the
Old Year out and the New Year in, lost in sequent visions,
forming in the bright embers of my camp fire and disap-
pearing in their ashes, of many a merrier New Year's Eve
with dearly loved hands in reach and dearly loved lips
toasting me the best, visions of such nights at home, at
Sherry's and Delmonico's, at old Martin's and new, -
visions so clear and real that presently the sweet measures
of the Monte Cristo Waltz were delighting my ears,
voices babbling, glasses tinkling, laughter ringing — and
then, suddenly rousing to a realization of a fire turned all
ghostly gray as the shrouding walls of thorn and a night
as chill, if not as white, as many a New Year's Eve at
home, I rolled up in my blankets.

New Year's Day brought us out of the arid jungles
and into a beautiful park-like country, abounding in
clear, cold springs and streams. Just above Kibaibai
Spring, where we made our night camp, four years before
Outram and Leverson Gower had seen ten maneless
(bush) lions wrangling like a lot of dogs over a zebra
kill, and shot two of them from a near-by ambush.

Hereabouts rhino sign was thick, and about five
o'clock I hid myself in a rhino's bed, beneath low-droop-
ing boughs of a bush that completely shut it in, and
immediately beside a deep rhino path, full of fresh sign,
about a mile from camp, and there stayed till dark.
While no rhino came, it was an amusing evening.
Tommys, tiny oribi, and graceful impala entered and

SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED 4?

leisurely grazed or played across the glade, all about me,
often within fifty feet. Could I have stirred to make
adequate opening in my shelter, I should have gotten
some capital photographs, but the crackle of a twig would
have sent them off helter-skelter, and so I sat tight,
until, at sundown, all wandered off into the bush toward
the hills.

And then, just as I was about to leave, with great
clatter, chatter, and barking, and a noise of crashing
boughs like rhino smashing through bush, out trooped a
big tribe of great man apes, old and young, close to a
hundred of them, the biggest above four feet high, pap-
pooses holding to the scruff of their mothers' necks and
riding, comfortably on their backs, and fierce - faced,
long-fanged old men in the lead and out on the flanks.
For half an hour they pranced all around me there,
youngsters scuffling and capering, elders digging roots or
breaking great boughs and tearing bark, — apparently
taking in the dessert of the evening meal, for just as the
brief twilight was fading into night, and when I was
beginning to think I would have to shoot my way out to
get back to camp, off they ambled into the bush.

We nooned the second of January on the cascades of
the Lenderut River, which some day will be visited as a
remarkable bit of African scenery. While then no more
than a clear, cold, swift-flowing, loud-rippling brook, in
the "big rains" the Lenderut is a roaring torrent. Just
at our camp the river has cut its way through a great
dyke of close-grained gray crystalline granite, with a drop
of probably eighty feet in the half-mile, and, through some
freak of the combined chemistry of rock and water or
some wizard work of physics, along its bottom and its

48 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

sides up to high-water level were carved out in the hard
rock immense round tanks, some twenty feet deep and
big enough for a swimming bath. Indeed, one sees here
every sort of vessel represented, narrow-mouth vases,
tiny cups, and shallow saucers, all smooth and highly
polished of interior and lip as porcelain and all brimful of
sweet water, come of the recent rains. From a great pool
at the foot of the cascade Outram caught some fine
eight-pound kumbari, while I caught him and a bit of the
gorge with my camera, — the first time this world-old
cascade has come under snapshot fire.

That night's camp was the most beautiful of any on
this safari, beside an ice-cold brook, a tributary of the
Lenderut thickly lined with wild date palms and wild
figs, about a mile below its source in a dozen great springs
which covered nearly a square mile in area.

And that same square mile gave me about the un-
canniest and toughest two hours I ever had. Rhino and
buffalo tracks were thick about, and at five o'clock I took
Awala and a porter, crossed the brook, and strolled up
toward the springs on the chance of a shot. On the way
up we slipped past several herds of impala and other
buck, but it was not until we were near what I supposed
to be the source of the brook that anything happened.
There was a great crash and smash within the bush a
few yards on our right that sounded more like buffalo
than rhino. I waited a few minutes, on the chance they
would come out, and then crept down into the edge of the
thicket opposite the point at which we last heard them.
Peering within, the bush looked fairly open, — thick-
crowding giant ficus trees and palms, but not much under-
growth or vines. Directly beneath, the bank pitched

SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED 49

steeply down to what I then supposed was the single
source of the brook, and down it we softly slid and about
through the palms we tiptoed, eyes keenly watching for a
sight of the bush-smashers. But while the ground was
hard trampled all about, rough tree trunks often worn
smooth by the rubbing of giant bodies, nothing did we
see but baboons.

Presently, when the declining sun warned us it was
time to get out, I told Awala to lead out straight across
the bush for camp, for our course had bent from east
sharply north, and apparently the short-cut would save us
a mile or more.

On he led. As we advanced, the game paths became
fainter, and finally stopped altogether, bang up against
a solid wall of vines and bush, solid looking and as dense
a mass in fact as an ivy-clad wall. But through it,
scarce thirty yards away it seemed, was the bright light
of the open country. So through the vine wall we began
cutting our way with our knives, clambering over and
through them, up an ascent and down a declivity, only
to find ourselves literally swinging on a network of vines
fifteen feet above another brook.

The air was stifling; the labor exhausting; we were
drenched with sweat. But just beyond us lay another
patch of daylight that lured us ahe^d, — and so other
gleams of light lured us on over more rises and drops,
each drop with a new spring brook at the bottom, whose
presence we realized only by the murmur, except once
when Awala slipped off his vine perch into one of them,
taking a good ten-foot drop and a climb back up a vine,
a vine twisted and looking precisely like a half-inch
manila rope.

fo IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Oh, for the prehensile tail of one of the baboons
playing about among the branches above us and grima-
cing their amusement over the wretched stagger we were
making at their pet sort of semi-aerial travel, or for the
wings of the great vultures and marabout storks perched
in scores aloft on the highest trees, grimly weighing their
chances of fat picking against our chance of escape !

While still twilight without, black night was now
fallen within the jungle, and further progress ahead had
become impossible.

No alternatives remained except to pass the night
on any part of the wide vine hammock we liked to stop
on, or to attempt to feel our way back along the route we
had come, — which was not amusing, for we knew there
were several points where a slip through the vine floor
might mean a broken leg, or worse.

To be sure we were in a measure safe enough on the
vines, for nothing short of a leopard could get to us, and
I much doubt if even he could, but wringing wet as we
were, to stop there without a dry change of clothing or
cover meant fever or pneumonia.

So there was nothing for it but to try to back-track
ourselves, and back we turned. Sometimes, through
small openings in the leafy canopy above us, the young
moon helped us a bit, but most of the way it was feel
every step of advance with hands and feet. Heads
bumped limbs of trees, and leaves and twigs were so
constantly jabbing us in the face that, to save our eyes,
we crept ahead with closed lids, until finally we reached
the open game paths and were lucky enough to win out
into the open glades west of the main brook.

It was near nine o'clock when we reached camp,

SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED 51

where Judd and Outram had been signalling us with
shots and yells we plainly heard but had not answered, —
no use, for they could no more have gotten to us than we
to them.

The afternoon and night of the third we spent in the
lovely park-like country at the foot of Kibololet. Here
I shot my first topi bull, a beautiful member of the
family of larger antelope, unknown anywhere between
Mombasa and Uganda, but down there abundant, a
bright yellow of shank, a dark glossy brown of thigh,
with a shade of chestnut roan on back and ribs that
in certain lights glistens like highly burnished bronze.

While stealing close within the shadow of some bush
for the shot at this chap, out slowly into the glade in
front of me, two hundred yards away, came a great bull
giraffe, and then directly along behind him trooped
eight of his mates. Their lofty heads and necks much
the color of the surrounding bush, above which they
towered before entering the open, the impression of their
approach was quite as startling as if one were to see the
Singer, St. Paul, and Manhattan Life Buildings strolling,
Indian file, up Fifth Avenue. And when, after watching
them for perhaps twenty minutes browsing off the bush
tops, I bowled over the topi, all looked up in surprise
at the crack of the rifle, but not one moved until I entered
the open, — and then they lurched away, at about as
graceful a pace as one might expect of the Singer Building
out on stilts.

The fourth, the last day of our march to the Mara
River, was to see my first serious disappointment and
defeat, in fact two of them. We were then entering a
section where specially fine specimens of water buck are

52 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

found, with horns nearly a fourth longer and wider of
spread than in most other parts. Before nine o'clock I
sighted the biggest water-buck head I had ever seen,
stalked him, and gave him a .405 in the shoulder that
dropped him in his tracks, but within a half-minute he
was up and off. For two hours I trailed him before
finally losing him in the bush, sighting him twice, but
both times out of range. This was annoying, but I
knew there were plenty more like him and I should have
other chances.

But a far greater shock was in store. Next to the
sable, the roan antelope is far and away the most beau-
tiful and rare of his tribe, and few sportsmen in these
days get a chance at one, except by making a special
trip to some remote region where they are still found.
Outram had never seen or heard of roan thereabouts,
north and east of the Mara, but had promised me a sight
of them by a three days' trek west of the Mara to the crest
of the Isuria Escarpment.

And yet about noon, while Judd and I were well
ahead of the safari and within three miles of the river,
strolling along a thin fringe of bush eight hundred yards
below us was a great buck, strange to me but quickly
identified by Judd as a splendid roan. He was all alone,
— no other game near, — and had not seen us, so noting
his course angled toward us, down we dropped, flat in
the grass, and waited. On he came until within five
hundred yards. Then fortune again favored me, — a
fly bit him, or perhaps a snake gave him a scare, for,
suddenly, he swerved from his course straight toward us,
and bounded another one hundred yards nearer, before
again settling down to graze. Apparently he was a

SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED 53

certain gift. Presently, and when within an easy three
hundred yards, he again shifted his course and my best
chance was come, for thereafter he would be drawing
away. My shot knocked him flat, and Judd yelled,
"Got him! Got him! You've got your roan!" But in
an instant he was up again, and we saw that, firing at
him quartering as he turned, I had only broken his left
hip. Before he was fairly on his legs I gave him a second,
this time fair in the left shoulder, and down he dropped,
limp as an empty sack, and lay still. Then we shook
hands and I slung my gun strap over my shoulder and
we walked toward him — when, wonder of wonders,
up again he sprang, and before I could again cover him
he was out of sight behind the fringe of bush. For five
hours we trailed him through glade and bush with a
dozen of our best boys, but to no purpose. Twice we
sighted him at long range and twice I missed him, flurried
and short-winded with the chase.

I was heartbroken, for no such chance for a fine roan
was likely ever to come to me again. The next day I
had twenty boys out from dawn to dark searching for
him, under promise of a tempting reward, but all to no
purpose. And then I was sorry indeed any of my shots
had reached and torn his beautiful roan sides!

The fact is, the vitality of these African antelope
is past belief; their thick hides are such tough shields
that only a heart, spine, or head shot drops them to stay.
The very next day I knocked two water buck and one
topi flat as flounders at two hundred and seventy-five
yards with three successive shots. There they lay mo-
tionless while the herd of mixed game scampered away,
so lay for at least five minutes until my calls for the

54 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

boys to come and get the meat roused both water buck,
and off they bounded. And, come to the topi, I even
found the great .405 ball that had passed through his
heart had stopped well within the skin of the opposite
side, — a shot that would have passed clean through
an elk.

Outram's little fifteen-pound cross between an Irish
and a bull terrier, Pugge, caught up with one of the buck
and detained him, but not for long. Pugge's tactics are
always practical, if not scientific; disdaining fence for a
throat grip, she always goes for the first mouthful she
can get, usually fetching up with a leap that fastens her
teeth so near an actual tail hold that she hangs well above
and clear of reach of the sharp hind hoofs; and so often
have I seen her dangle and swing for five to ten minutes
till the buck went down. But this old water buck was
too strong and artful for her, and after tossing her about
for a few minutes, vainly trying to reach her with hoofs
and horns, he sidestepped and swung her a smash against
a thorn tree that put her out of the day's running.

Then the cunning old buck entered a belt of heavy
jungle two or three miles in length and a half-mile broad,
impassable to man except on buffalo paths, and along
these for two and a half hours Outram and I tracked him,
ourselves bent double or on hands and knees, beneath
boughs and vines, the buck by turns leaping water-
holes, entering the brook, and tramping up or down it,
doubling on his own tracks, passing out to the open as
if to cross a glade, and then slipping back into the jungle
a few yards away, all shrewd tactics to throw us off his
track, — so shrewd they deserved to win, as at last they did.

But the old bravo's escape was not for long. The

SEEN FROM A RHINO'S BED 55

very next morning about eight o'clock I shot a rather
good topi bull, with seventeen-inch horns, cunning as a
serpent, that after an hour's painstaking stalk compelled
me to shoot at four hundred and fifty yards, a head-on shot
that luckily caught him in the centre of the forehead.

While the boys were removing the head and skin I
took a circle for bush buck, and within five hundred
yards of where we had lost my wounded water buck the
day before, found his head, spine, and a few ribs, the
carcass eaten the night before by lion, and quarters and
shoulders later toted off by hyena. His identity was past
question, for one of the ribs showed fracture by the bullet
that passed through his lungs. And he was a good one
too, — horns 27 inches high and 19 inches in spread, the
tip of one horn splintered, whether in some battle for
mastery of his herd or in his last night's finish fight with
lion, I could only guess.

While taking this buck's head, I heard a shot a half-
mile away from Judd's .450. Returned to camp at noon,
I learned he had sighted a lioness at two hundred and
fifty yards in the edge of the bush, perhaps the one that
had retrieved my buck, and had wounded her, but had
felt it imprudent to follow her into the dense bush she
was in until, if badly hit, she had stiffened of her wound.

At 4 P. M. he and I went out with our gun bearers on
a prowl for her, he with a .450, I with a twelve-bore and
buckshot, the bearers with spare rifles. We easily found
where she had passed on into the jungle and for half an
hour were able to follow her spoor along buffalo paths.
But not a drop of blood could we find. Then we lost
all sign and had to give her up. Nor was I, personally,
deeply grieved. In the semi-twilight of the bush, never

56 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

able to see more than thirty feet in any direction, half
the time with ducking heads (to avoid entanglement with
vines and thorns) that prevented all outlook ahead or
about, the situation impressed one as unconducive to
longevity.

Returned to camp at dark, another bit of luck devel-
oped, — Outram had just come in with the head of the
second of the two water buck I shot the day before.
While no better than twenty-one inches in height and
sixteen inches in spread, the horns were much more grace-
ful than the head of No. i. Curiously, Outram had
found the head and close-picked spine within a quarter
of a mile of where No. i had been found — so, obviously,
two lion had dined well at my expense the night before,
to say nothing of the hyenas that wait, snarling, for the
lion's leavings, the jackals that wait upon the hyenas,
and the vultures and marabout storks that permit the
jackals scant time for more than a hasty nibble.

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS

TWENTY-THREE full days en route from Nairobi
to the Mara River, our first week's permanent camp
there was a constant delight.

The camp was pitched on a high bluff, forty feet above
its margin, beneath the dense shade of its heavily timbered
banks, just at the foot of rippling rapids that sang us to
sleep at night and greeted us with good cheer at our
dawn awakening.

Down to this point the Mara is a hastening, hustling
mountain torrent of the sort that gives one the impression
of pounding along at its best pace for fear another may
steal its logical tributaries; but here, become swollen and
opulent of its thrift and push, like Dooley's "Magnate"
preparing to "sell out the trust to the trustful," the Mara
steadies to a lounging, indifferent gait for a dignified
tender of its golden flood to Victoria Nyanza and Nile-
side commerce.

About us in early morning and late evening the taller
trees were alive with monkeys, — monkeys blue, gray,
black and white, tawny, monkeys tiny as kittens and big
as men, the long-haired and the short-furred, the younger
apparently out as investigation committees on our intru-
sion, swinging by their tails as low as they dared in wide-
eyed, wrinkle-browed study of our doings, the elders
usually grouped aloft in solemn conclave, receiving and
debating the reports of their committees. Obviously we

57

58 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

brought them a lot of shocks, the greatest, the discharge
of a gun in or near camp, which sent them barking to
cover for hours. But, oddly, our next greatest startler
to them was my daylight cold sponge-bath, which always
set their teeth clicking and voices madly chattering,
whether of sympathetic chills at thought of a cold dip so
early, or of superstitious fear of what must have looked
in the early dawn like a ghost-white figure disporting itself
in the water beneath them, we could only conjecture.

It is a country of wondrous strange contradictions, is
Africa. Near the end of the little rains, everywhere about
us in the open glades were the loveliest green meadow
lands, brilliant with flowers still, but the wild timothy
tops browning a bit, the home farmer's hint to oil and
sharpen his mower, and the cricket's chirp and the
droning chorus of abounding insect life helped to fix the
season as a waning home June. And yet cast the eyes
aloft to the broad belt of deciduous forest lining the river
and they there lingered lovingly on every brilliant hue with
which the early frosts of Autumn paint all northern tree life
except the pines and firs, while the ground beneath the
canvas veranda of my tent boasted a carpet of fallen leaves
bright tinted and variegated as any come of a Persian
loom.

Thus on the Mara does thrifty Autumn hustle Summer
aside and get the first cuddle in the soft lap of Spring.

Days never to be forgotten were those first seven on
the Mara. Up at 4 A. M. for a cold dip and light break-
fast ; off as soon as you can see your rifle sights ; at five, a
faint flush in the east, the usually tipsy-standing Southern
Cross then properly perpendicular in the southern sky,
while the two "pointers" of the Dipper are straight down,

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 59

indexing the position of the dear old Polar Star we there
never saw, both Dipper and Cross low down on the hori-
zon, almost nestled in the treetops; a well-oiled rifle in
your hand; your Somali spare gun bearer trailing behind,
and, far behind him, four shenzi porters to carry your
day's bag, and your syce and mule ; off through dripping
dew-bejewelled grass that under the sun's first rays glitters
like a sleet-clad northern landscape, — slowly slipping along
the edge of thickets, thumb on hammer, ringer in trigger
guard, every sense tense for whatever the next turn of the
bush may bring you in arm's length of — lion, rhino,
buffalo, or any sort of buck; always working carefully up
wind, trying to tread lightly as a cat; out into an animal
kingdom virgin of man and his wiles as Adam found the
denizens of Eden ; out and up, ever rising toward some ridge
crest, shapes tiny and of vast bulk springing ghost-like out
of the half light, creeping, halting, peering for some trophy
that may win you admission to the Valhalla of Rowland
Ward's record trophy elect; stealing in wide detours past
the undesirable, to avoid startling them, — for set a single
beast agog and off presently thunders everything on four
legs within a thousand yards of you, notice to the teeming
herds near and far that some peril is at hand.

So on and on you go, carefully scanning each new group
with your glasses, until presently aloft towers a pair of
horns of majestic spread that marks a monarch worthy
of best craft, then up for safe range you steal, crouching
from bush to tree and tree to rock, crawling belly tight
to mother earth through sheltering grass if all other cover
lacks, until presently, mind and muscle atuned to perfect
concert, your cheek cuddles close to your rifle stock and
down goes your quarry of a well-placed shot. Out at

6o IN CLOSED TERRITORY

once comes the tape and quickly settles your fate. Then
on and on you go throughout the livelong day, for a new
victory or at least a try for one.

While fine specimens of buck of all sorts fell to our
guns, not a single one of the big fellows did either of us
see, with the single exception of the lioness sighted by
Judd. And yet the grunts of lion were heard about our
camp every night. We dropped kills for them at evening,
but upon crawling up, behind anthill or bush, for a sight
of them at dawn, never found anything but the skeleton
wreck of Leo's repast ; we found their fresh spoor, often not
an hour old, entering jungle paths, but try to follow them
as we might, stooping, clambering, on hands and knees
among the vines and thorns, we always failed to sight
them.

Buffalo sign was thick about, often of mornings in the
wet grass so fresh it was almost unexplainable why we
had not seen them, and always we found the bush a net-
work of their paths.

All up and down the river hippo paths worn from
three to eight feet deep alternated with crocodile slides,
and yet, bar one eighteen-foot crocodile shot by Outram,
no hippo or crocodile did we see.

Even though these big fellows are all-night prowlers
and feeders, lying up in concealment usually by day,
out early of mornings and late of nights as we were, pok-
ing into their retreats as, none too wisely, we often did,
it was miraculous how we managed to miss sighting them,
but so miss them we did.

When Outram was last on the Mara it was impassable,
booming bank full, but now its waters were fallen to such

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 61

an extent that we were able to ford the island rapid along-
side our camp, and by a day's work of the wapagazi
digging cuttings in the perpendicular west bank and
hacking bush, to get our saddle mules across. The
result well repaid us, for all sorts of game were even more
abundant there than north of the river. Working into
the hills to the west, we were out no more than three miles
before we caught a glimpse of a herd of Masai cattle
in the glades below a belt of heavy forest high up on our
right. Riding toward them, in half an hour we sighted
the Masai village and approached.

It was the usual Masai munyata, a tall and thick
zareba of thorn, probably three hundred feet in diameter,
the long, low, round-topped thatch-and-wattle huts,
thickly plastered, top and sides, with cow dung that, dried,
makes them cool by day and tight and warm by night,
ranged in a solid circle around the inner wall of the
zareba. And every night within this circle of huts their
flocks of fat-tailed, piebald sheep and their herds of
sleek, square-built, hump-necked cattle are penned, and
the one gate of the zareba tightly closed and guarded
throughout the night against predatory neighbors.

Nor with the gate rushed and the centre of the village
occupied are the Masai at the mercy of a native enemy.
Each hut is a tiny castle, of effective protection against
arrow and spear. The single doorway of each hut, in-
stead of opening at right angles to the inner wall, opens
laterally with it for six or eight feet, when a sharp turn
opens to the interior. These entrances are so low and
narrow that only one person at a time may enter,
crouched almost to hands and knees — thus, if an enemy,

62 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

offering a hopelessly exposed neck to the short shrift of
the Masai short sword, while tiny arrow loopholes com-
mand all approaches.

These Masai were once the most powerful race of the
eastern plateau, notwithstanding they were far fewer nu-
merically than the Wakikuyu or the Wakamba. Slen-
der, graceful, sinewy men, a light chocolate in color, with
regular features, often with thin, straight noses and little
of the pendulous negroid lip, probably the offspring of
some great ancient Galla raid and trek that lodged itself
among its vanquished, the Masai are the gentlemen par
excellence of the British East African plateau. Hire to
white men as tenders of flocks they sometimes do, but no
menial task, no other form of labor will they perform.
They plant no crops and in diet subsist entirely upon their
flocks and herds, now that game-killing by natives is
forbidden and in a measure stopped. Their chief diet is
mixed milk and blood, the latter drawn from the necks
of their butter-fat bullocks.

Our approach created a sensation. Lads herding
sheep and women fetching water from a near-by spring
flitted away through the bush like shadows, and we were
halted some time a hundred yards from the gate before a
group of elder men and young warriors came out, alert,
suspicious, nervously clutching their spears. Presently,
however, they recalled Outram from old Boundary Survey
days of five years before, and, assured we were not Ger-
mans, of whom they hold a guilty fear, due to their
notoriously frequent raids on natives and settlers in Ger-
man territory, their suspicion was allayed. Excepting
the members of the Survey Commission and one lone

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 63

professional elephant hunter, no white men had ever
before been among them, they told us.

As none of the men with us spoke Masai, we had to
send back to camp for an interpreter. Upon his arrival
we learned the sultani (chief) of this munyata was young
Koydelot, a handsome lad of no more than twenty-two,
son of the head witch doctor of a half-dozen neighboring
munyatas. Shortly thereafter the elder came with a
half-dozen of his headmen, himself habited in a handsome
gray monkey-skin cloak, looped over the left shoulder and
covering him to the thighs. Gravely seated behind his
straight-planted war spear upon a little round six-inch-high
stool, carved from a single piece of hardwood, surrounded
by the skin-clad group of his bow and spear men, Koydelot
was not without a certain crude dignity, which he succeeded
in maintaining until one of the party plucked a short blade
of grass, rolled it into a pellet, pressed it apparently into
the toe of his boot, exhibited empty hands, made upward
passes over legs and body, and then plucked it from
his mouth. Koydelot rolled off his stool with wonder and
shied away. Indeed, shortly thereafter the beginnings of
a good entente between us were almost hopelessly ruined
when another of the party exhibited to the Masai a lovely
full set of teeth, and then, after a seemingly violent
wrench at the lower teeth, showed an empty under jaw!
Off into the bush some scurried and away from us all
withdrew in wide-eyed, gaping wonder and dread of
creatures with such uncanny attributes. Nor did we
make much further progress with them till a third got out
a press-the-spring-and-it-flies-shut tape measure. At
first most of them, the women especially, seemed to take

64 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

it as a pocket edition of some sort of snake, but once
we convinced them it had no fangs, each had to have
his or her play with it for the next half-hour.

This meeting with the Masai solved for us what had
been a serious problem. All the time Judd could spare
was expired, and he was then planning an attempt for a
short-cut to some station of the Uganda Railway, one
hundred and thirty to one hundred and sixty miles north
of us. But to the north and northwest intervened the
Isuria and Lumbwa ranges, gashed with deep watersheds
and clothed with belts of dense forest, while to the north-
east lay the mighty uplift of the Mau and unknown dry
stretches of alternating lava and jungle of the Kidong
Valley. Without a path or guide, either way was sure to
be desperately hard and slow going. Four days before
we had sent three of our wapagazi into the northwest,
hunting for some Masai munyata, and since they were
only rationed for three days we had begun to fear the Wan-
derobo had picked them up. Thus it was a great relief
when we found Koydelot could give us two of his elmorani
(warriors) who knew a practicable route to the Lumbwa
tribe, whence guides could be gotten to Lumbwa station
on the Uganda Railway.

When we reached camp late that afternoon, after a
fine day's sport that yielded us several good trophies, we
found Koydelot and his court awaiting us with a fine
fat-tail sheep, the usual native "backsheesh," which
we reciprocated to the full of its value in beads and
"Americani" (unbleached cotton cloth).

A lot of our beads, however, we found unacceptable,
even some of the most brilliant-hued of the lot : they were
not in style! It is an absolute fact that in no set of the

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 65

haute monde the world over is fashion more fickle and
transient than among the African savages. Traders of
no small means have been ruined, trekking into the in-
terior hundreds of miles with wares that proved unsalable
at any price. In the few months of their absence the fancy
of the ebony beauties had shifted — red or white beads
were demanded by those who, previously, would look
at none but blue beads, iron wire preferred to copper or
brass, popular prints of cotton discarded.

Indeed, no manufacturers have a busier, harder study
for attractive new patterns than the English and German
printers of cheap cottons for the African trade. But it is
a satisfaction to find that in plain, unbleached cotton
goods no English or European cotton spinners have been
able to compete with our New England mills, whose goods
have held first esteem throughout Central Africa since
first introduced, through Zanzibar, way back in the '6o's,
and still fetch better prices than the best European
products.

At dawn on January n, Judd pulled out north with
Masai guides, hoping to reach Lumbwa in six or eight
days. With him I sent back twenty-three of our porters,
reducing our safari to a total of thirty, including Outram
and myself. Sorry indeed were we to part with Will
Judd, as rollicking, jolly, and able a mate as man ever
had.

The day after Judd's departure we were delighted
to be assured by one of Koydelot's sons that he could
guide us to elephant, three days' march north of west of
our camp, within the great basin lying between the
Sotik and Kisii country and to the south of the Kisii high-
lands, delighted because we had been under the impression

66 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

there were no elephant within much less than a fort-
night's march of our Mara camp. Nor had we realized
the Kavirondo were so near, a most important fact to
us then, as our supply of posho (native grain food —
beans, corn, or millet) was nearing total exhaustion, and
the Kavirondo grew abundant crops of metama (Egyptian
corn).

With a lot of mixed porters, exhaustion of posho is
always a most serious thing, no matter how abundant
game meat may be. If he can get meat, your Wakamba
asks nothing else. Your Wakikuyu will touch no kind
of meat, even to a point of impending starvation; indeed
when we had already cut the others to half rations of
posho — a full ration being one and one-half pounds per
day per man — and were giving them all the meat they
could eat, our Wakikuyu pathetically pleaded that their
fathers had never eaten meat and that they could not,
and full posho they had to have. So it was every last
one of these aboriginal vegetarians that we rushed back
to the railway with Judd. Your Mohammedan Swahili
will eat no meat not properly halaled by one of their own
faith, the throat cut, and the carcass properly bled before
death. Your Somali will touch no form of food but rice
and halaled meat. Thus, while none of our porters would
dare desert from the Mara camp for fear of being bagged
by Wanderobo, we confronted plenty of trouble when the
posho gave out.

So we lost no time. At dawn the next morning we
were en route in light marching order, leaving Regal in
charge of our base camp, all donkeys, and the spare
mules. Our course was almost due north, through rolling
hills and broad plains sloping up from the main west

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FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 67

fork of the Mara to the foot of the Isuria Escarpment, a
vast black wall, inaccessible at most points, that stretched
out of our ken into the horizon to northeast and southwest.

Five miles out we reached the munyata of Koydelot,
senior, who welcomed us with gifts of great gourds of
milk, which we received but promptly turned over to the
porters at our noon camp, as the Masai practice of cleans-
ing their dairy vessels leaves Masai milk impossible,
save when one sees it milked direct into one of his own
vessels, when it is found sweet and rich as the milk of
the best Jersey cow.

Out of the village we were followed by fifteen or twenty
of Koydelot's young elmorani, keen I should shoot them
some buck, whose skins they prize as cloaks, the back
sinews furnishing their best bow strings. In the next
three miles I bowled over several, to the great delight
of the young warriors.

Before we parted with this fine lot of young fellows,
I got some excellent pictures, the only ones I have ever
seen, of a group of Masai bowmen. The youngster in
front of the group is Akuna, our guide, a son of Koy-
delot, pock-marked, but lithe and graceful as a panther,
who on trail or elephant spoor for twenty days glided
ahead of me silent as a shadow, wise in every form of
jungle lore, but in all else simple as a little child, pleased
with the skin and sinews of a fresh kill as any woman
with a new Worth dress, and going into ecstasies over an
empty cigarette tin. On spoor fierce-eyed, intent, tire-
less, relentless as a leopard, his light cloak wrapped tightly
in a narrow roll about his waist, his knob-kerrie and short
sword stuck in his girdle, his bow held perpendicularly
to protect the bow string from the wet grass, the leather

68 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

quiver at his back carrying his firesticks and heavy
poison-tipped war arrows, Akuna's sinewy figure was a
model of an aboriginal militant worthy of the best sculptor.

Shortly before our noon camp we passed yet another
munyata, the last below the escarpment, and throughout
our nooning its parti-colored flocks and herds, grazing
hither and yon about us, appearing and disappearing
among the trees, were ever producing effects like a gigan-
tic animated kaleidoscope.

During the afternoon I bagged a fine pair of twenty-
seven-inch impala horns and a twenty-two-inch "Tommy."

The ascent of the escarpment late in the afternoon,
while no more than 1,300 feet, was so much like scram-
bling up a bowlder-studded, thorn-clad Gothic roof that
it pumped all the wind out of even the hardy Outram and
took the last ounce of go out of the loaded porters.

The summit of Isuria we found a lovely rolling coun-
try, with wide areas of tender, sweet grass, shoulder-
high, and thick mats of heavy timber, where herds of
beautiful topi often stood within a hundred yards, watch-
ing us in wide-eyed surprise.

Our tents were up none too soon that evening, for
directly we were sheltered a heavy thunderstorm broke.
And scarcely had the last hoarse rumbles of the storm
died on our ears, about midnight, than they were followed
by the deep bass grunts of a lion prowling near — in fact,
so very near that all the porters, who were sleeping by
fires well sheltered in the dense bush, came hurrying into
the centre of the camp and there spent the night, within
the narrowest circle of fires we had to build at any time
on that safari. All about us old Leo circled, so circled
all night long, keen of hunger or wonder, one or the other.

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 69

Often one could hear a twig break beneath his stealthy
tread, but not once did he pass within the ring of our
firelight. Toward dawn he gave us up as a bad — prob-
ably too fiery — job and stalked grumblingly away.

And, by the way, it was in a ravine of this escarpment
that Outram had a particularly curious experience. Out
after buck meat for the porters, beneath a slightly leaning
thorn tree he saw writhing about the tall grass tops what
he took to be the head and neck of a python, and fired at
it. At the shot, a big leopard bounded, snarling, away
into the bush. Advancing beneath the tree to see what
the leopard had been crouched over, he was sur-
prised to find nothing but a narrow area of trampled
grass and much absolutely fresh blood, so sprinkled
about that evidently it was not come of the wound he had
given the leopard. Suddenly, while standing puzzling
over what the leopard's kill could have been that might
be made away with so completely, hide, meat, and bone,
he became conscious of a steady drip! drip! drip! on his
coat sleeve, and, upon lifting his arm, discovered a stream
of blood running down it ! Glancing aloft, his puzzle was
solved. There, in a high fork of the tree at least eighteen
feet from the ground, were cleverly wedged, heads to
tails, their legs even artfully intertwined to steady them,
the carcasses of two freshly killed young topi antelope,
weighing forty to fifty pounds each. Obviously the leo-
pard, after a strenuous morning winning and safely stow-
ing his day's repast, had been resting himself beneath
the tree and lapping the dripping blood as an appetizer.

About seven o'clock that morning, while riding a
short distance ahead of the safari, I sighted four eland,
two of them splendid bulls, magnificent great fellows that

70 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

looked as big as beeves. With no means of stopping the
noisy advancing porters without alarming the eland, I
had to chance a three-hundred-yard shot at the biggest
bull. He staggered, bounded into the air, and hit the
ground going at a sharp trot, like that fast gait in the elk
which few ponies can overtake until it is broken into a
gallop, after his speeding mates. All were out of sight
almost in an instant, with no chance for a second shot
but a snap at the second bull that, unfortunately, hit him
in the hind quarters and did not down him. Hurrying
to the turn of bush where they had disappeared, I took
up their trail, plain to follow as a wagon road for two miles
through the dripping grass, great splashes of blood on
the tall grass tops proving a high shoulder shot in the
big bull and distinguishing his tracks from the others.

Then the eland passed through a series of glades
criss-crossed in every direction that morning by topi and
other game that soon had my Somali shikari and myself
puzzling, for already the blood sign from the congealing
wound had lessened until we could no longer find it at
all. At this juncture up came one of my Masai, Habia,
from the safari. His spooring, then and thereafter for
hours, was masterly, better than I have ever seen done by
Indian or cowboy.

Crouched and bent until he was carrying his nose close
to ground almost as a hunting hound on cooling scent, at
a short distance wholly hidden in the tall grass, he glided
about the glade, amidst the network of trails, pausing
seldom, for no more than five minutes before he signalled
me to him, and plucked and showed me a blade of grass
that showed a blood splotch scarcely bigger than a pin
head. Then off down the spoor he started and along it

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 71

held, up hill and down, through tall grass, winding through
broad belts of jungle on game trails and off them, along
the rocky bottoms of dry ravines, into and through or
up or down water, never at fault for an instant except
where the bull had taken water, at a pace that kept me
blown almost to the point of collapse, for full four hours.
Early it became evident that the bull had elected to play a
lone hand in the game of losing us, and had cut away free of
his mates. Often we heard him a few yards away through
the bush, but only once again did I sight him, about noon,
at the top of a long, steep ascent that apparently had
overtaxed even his energies, where he stood with hanging
head, his shoulder wound plainly showing. But before I
could free myself of the mesh of bush we were leaving, off
again he trotted and I had to content myself with a snap-
shot that, hitting him in the hip, only served to hasten
his pace.

And right there I realized the chase for me was use-
less. There was no more than another two or three
miles' go left in me. Besides, while Habia and Awala
could slip through the bush silent as ghosts, do my best
I was now and then breaking dry twigs or stumbling on
toe-entangling vines, and notwithstanding the two-hun-
dred-and-six-pound handicap with which I had left
Nairobi was then reduced to close to one hundred
and eighty pounds.

Obviously the only chance was to leave my eland to
them, in the hope that Habia might stalk near enough to
plant a finishing poisoned arrow — which, freshly pre-
pared, can be relied on to kill in twenty minutes, if it
penetrates the flesh at all. So on I sent them and back
toward the waiting safari wearily I tramped until I met

7* IN CLOSED TERRITORY

my syce and mule, which Outram had thoughtfully sent
after me, guided by Akuna.

It was long after dark when my two trailers reached
camp that night, — empty-handed. Twice had they
sighted the bull, but approach him they could not. It
was a heavy disappointment, for in these days it is not so
many chances a man has for such a superb eland.

Early the next morning our path led us to the first
munyata west of the escarpment. After a few words
from Akuna, the Masai received us cordially and the
women brought us great gourds of milk.

Beneath a wide-spreading thorn tree just without the
gate of the village, the chief and a dozen or more of the
elders sat about the embers of a fire, working overtime,
harder by far than usual, for all seemed to be busy at
once lending advice in soft-toned Masai chorus to a youth
of eighteen, who, by great effort, was contriving to make
one knife-stroke about every five minutes on a stave of
wood he was shaping for a bow.

All were skin clad, in so far as they were clad at all,
except the chief himself, who sported an antiquated red
and yellow laprobe of a pattern I have observed to be
popular among the Wakamba, from whom it was prob-
ably traded or looted, and an extraordinary bracelet of
claws and teeth, flint and obsidian, whether a charm or
an insignia of rank I could only guess. Short and lean,
bearded, with regular, sharp-cut features, a complexion
so light (for even a Masai) that he was almost sallow,
and great slumbering, speculative, introspective dark
eyes that occasionally lit up with ominous fires, dignified,
reserved, quiet, the chief bore a remarkable resemblance
to Jay Gould!

WAKAMBA WARRIOR

MARA RIVER CAMP AFTER A BIG KILL: PORTERS' FIRES SURROUNDED WITH

ROASTING MEAT

FICKLE EQUATORIAL FASHIONS 73

Halting at this village for a half-hour's rest of the
porters, the youthful bowmaker and his advisory com-
mittee of older bowmen prompted me to propose an
archery prize competition. At first they failed to catch
the idea, but when I stuck a silver rupee (about the
diameter of a half-dollar piece) in the end of a split stick
planted in the ground at twenty yards from a line I drew,
and explained that each might, in turn, have a single
shot until the rupee was fairly hit, the hitter to have it,
all but the chief skurried within the munyata for their bows
and quivers.

And back presently they came on the run, every male
armed, from seven-year-old toddlers to seventy-year-old
doddlers, and we lined them up for turn shooting.

One wrinkled and palsied old scrap of parchment,
palsied in all but his greed, finding himself landed at the
extreme foot of the line, promptly squatted with a great
sheaf of close upon twenty arrowrs before him, and began
a continuous but shockingly wild flight of them in the
general direction of the target. And stop him we could
not, short of actual physical violence. Nor did we long
try, for it was only too apparent that the target was much
safer from him than were we or his lined-up mates; for,
seeming himself to realize that nothing but luck and quick
work could win for him, he began trying to shoot so fast
that at least a third of his arrows flew from his bow string
at every angle from the true line of fire but a flat one, — flew
feebly, to be sure, but still hard enough to put an eye out.

So, with no more notice of him by his competitors
than a chorus of indulgent laughs, the match proceeded
fairly, none of the others seeking unfair advantage.

The average Masai bow is from five to six feet long,

74 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

and it takes three fingers and a strong wrist and shoulder
to draw the heavy, iron-tipped, thirty-inch war and big
game arrows to the head. But for this contest they used
the shorter blunt-headed arrows that serve them for
bagging birds and rabbits.

Quickly it became evident the prizes must fall to some
lad or youth, for all the men shot badly, close, to be sure,
but inches out of line or over or below the target. With
their ancient best amusement and most profitable occupa-
tion of predatory raids on their neighbors largely stopped
for several years, and game-shooting forbidden by law
and made dangerous for them, no incentive remains for
the mature elmorani to keep in practice with the bow.

One youngster no more than eight or ten years old
proved a wonder: his first shot grazed the top of the first
rupee, his second hit it fairly, his third shot barely missed
the second by a hair, and his fourth sent it spinning, hit
plumb centre. He was the son of the six-foot-six elmoran
who stands at the front of the line in the photograph, to
whom, in dancing, shouting glee, he brought and gave
his shining trophies and then clung cuddling proudly to
one giant paternal leg.

And, after the rupees had been duly examined and
admired by all present, none but Old Parchment showing
any envy or heartache over his own failure, good sports-
men and true all but him, the trophies were prudently
handed over by the father to the boy's mother for safe-
keeping, and on to the little victor's own youngsters they
doubtless will one day be passed.

VI
ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES

WE descended to and crossed the Maggori River
at an altitude of 4,750 feet, there a tumbling,
broiling hill torrent thirty feet wide pouring down
towards Victoria Nyanza out of the Lumbwa highlands,
through broad belts of heavy timber.

A few miles south of the Maggori, rising toward the
divide between that stream and the Oyani River, the main
southern tributary of the Kuja, our path, bending slightly
north again, led us, true to Akuna's promise, into abun-
dant elephant sign. In fact, from i p. M. to 5 p. M., when
we reached the numerous munyatas of Toroni's Loita
Masai, elephant spoor was crossing our path at right
angles every few hundred yards, some only a few hours
old. Great limbs growing twenty feet from the ground
and torn down that very morning, at one point blocked
our trail, while here and there in the long grass broad
paths were tramped deep and smooth as if made by the
marching hosts of all Tammany's most portly. Our
food supply was so low we could not then afford to stop
on any uncertainty; so, since our trail was bending north
to a half-circle of a big basin toward which the elephant
tracks headed, I detached Akuna and Habia with orders
to try to locate them and to intercept us if they found
them.

That night we camped in a high hill basin about the
slopes of which were scattered a half-dozen of Toroni's

75 '

76 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

munyatas. We had made about sixty-five miles in our
three days out from our Mara camp, heavy marching
for loaded porters.

Shortly after dark our trackers came in with word the
elephant had moved down into the great long basin to
the north and northeast of Toroni's. Hereabouts there
was practically no small game and we were wholly out
of posho, but having still enough fresh meat for the
porters for one day, we decided to have our first try for
elephant the next day.

Off at 5 A. M., in twenty minutes we were sopping wet
from the alternating belts of dripping grass and jungle that
cover that country, jungle and heavy timber along the
streams, grass upon the hillslopes.

We started on our saddle mules, but soon had to dis-
card them, notwithstanding they were as sure-footed as the
best of their usually safe-going breed. In fact, mine never
dumped me but once, and then was thoughtful enough to
choose as the occasion a particularly hot day and as the
place the middle of a cold stream, so I forgave him.

But that basin, as, indeed, is practically all good
elephant country now remaining, was impossible mounted.
The shortest grass was a sort of wild timothy five to six
feet high, its lower third a thick mat man or beast could
scarcely kick his way through, and, what was far worse,
the ground beneath on all hillslopes was thickly strewn
with hidden bowlders, big and little, going afoot in which
meant constant slipping and stumbling that acutely
wrenched every muscle in you, while to attempt it mounted
meant to court the certainty of a broken leg or arm.

Then here we ran into our first true elephant grass,
ten to fifteen feet high, that shuts one in like a wall and

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 77

that one can scarcely wallow through at all except on
elephant paths.

But such paths we soon struck, all with more or less
fresh sign, and picked and followed the freshest sign, —
sometimes going twenty minutes through grass where we
could not see two yards in any direction, except straight
into the zenith; sometimes along dusky jungle paths,
where even the zenith view was shut out from us; some-
times into tall forest, where wide areas were trampled
bare of undergrowth and hard and smooth as a floor, vast,
dim-lighted, sylvan assembly chambers of the great
pachyderms; often across acres of flat marsh-land or
spring-sodden hillside where advance was only possible
by treading carefully between elephant footprints, a slip
into any of which meant a plunge to one's waist or neck
in cold water, for not even the pig loves mud more than
the elephant.

On and on for six hours we by turns slipped, plod-
ded, wallowed, and crawled, lured and buoyed by the
almost warm sign, and then, all in, pumped of wind and
strength, had to give it up and strike for a short-cut to
the Mara trail, which we reached half-way back to
the Maggori.

And when that night the two Masai whom we had
sent on upon the spoor dropped, dead spent, by our camp
fire, it was with disgust we learned that a scant hour
after we left them they had sighted two big tuskers.

That morning our porters had no breakfast, but an
easy four hours' march brought us down to the villages »f
the Jalou Nilotic Kavirondo that thickly line the hill-
slopes of the Oyani and the Kuja for miles, a superb race
physically who dwell in easy plenty amid their numerous

78 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

flocks and herds and broad russet-brown fields of ripen-
ing Egyptian corn.

There we counted on abundance, and learning the
head Sultani dwelt in a large stone-walled village we
could see lying three miles away across the Oyani, hurried
Saiba, our headman, and some porters across to buy met-
ama (flour ground from Egyptian millet). But after an
hour and a half they returned with startling word from
the Sultani that there was no flour in the valley, that all
their stock had been sold and delivered the day before to
two muzungu (Europeans) recently come up from the
lake with a big safari, one a "medicine man," and then
camped three miles below us.

Our situation was desperate, and there was nothing
for it but an appeal to their generosity, whoever they
might be — the first white men we had heard of since
leaving Nairobi.

So Outram and I jumped on our mules and made our
best pace to the camp, which we found on a high hilltop
at least a mile from the river. So located, indeed, were all
the Kavirondo villages, to our surprise, high and far
back from the Oyani, and all looked newly built.

As we approached, we quickly recognized it as a boma
of Government officials, by the uniformed Askaris on
sentry duty and lolling about their huts.

Come to the two ample tents of the muzungu, we
were received by two gentlemen with quiet, "How do
you do's," just as if we were fellow clubmen whom they
had been having whiskey and soda with daily all their
lives, the very hall-mark of that best bred type of Briton
who stubbornly refuses to be surprised by anything.
Such a startling apparition as visitors in the remote wilds

20

o •<

3 r?

°

H p,

> O

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 79

of Texas or Dakota (when they were happy enough to
possess such wilds as these) inevitably would have wrung
out a startled but wholly genial, "Well, stranger, where
in hell did you come from, and who might you be any-
way?"

And then, even before we had gotten into a pair of
quickly proffered easy chairs, followed that simple but
ever welcome ritual of good-fellowship, "Fancy you men
could do a drink. Boy! lete (bring) whiskey and soda!"

As soon as I had safely lodged half the bubbling pale
amber contents of my glass where it could n't get away,
I introduced Outram and myself by name — and got
another pair of "How do you do's," but no names.

Then, pressed by the need of our hungry porters, I
explained we were on safari from Nairobi, out of posho
and trekked over from the Mara to buy some, but had
found the Kavirondos' surplus exhausted. This promptly
brought a kind offer of enough to do us for the moment,
and expression of the opinion we would be unable to buy
the fifteen or twenty loads we wanted short of the Govern-
ment boma at Kisii, three days' journey to the northeast.

Just where we were we had not known, except that
we were somewhere on the Oyani River, near its head,
we had imagined. So that when, shortly, we learned that
the lake port of Karungu was only eight hours distant,
we were astonished to realize that we were no more than
fifteen miles in an air line from Victoria Nyanza, and well
to the west of Port Florence, the western terminus at the
lake of the Uganda Railway.

Then when presently one gentleman inadvertently,
and I fancy much to his annoyance, revealed half of the
carefully guarded secret of the identity of both himself

8o IN CLOSED TERRITORY

and the other, by referring to his companion as "Dr.
Baker," this hint, and the location of camp and native
villages far from flowing water, disclosed the whole matter
to me. It was a new " Sleeping Sickness Camp," one of
the chain of camps the Administrations of the British
East and Uganda Protectorates are surrounding the west,
north, and east ends of the lake with in a desperate at-
tempt to check the spread within their territory. They
also aim to alleviate as far as possible the sufferings of
the hundreds of thousands of victims of this dread and
most mysterious disease.

Of the cause of the sleeping sickness or of any effective
cure or means of prevention of its spread, little more is
now known than when, a few years ago, it swept down
upon the lake, apparently out of the Congo jungles, the
most relentless and the worst of all the physical scourges
medical science has had to battle with.

Practically all known of it is that it is carried by a
variety of the tsetse fly which is never found beyond a few
hundred yards of the lake or rivers; that the tsetse which
has not bitten a victim of the disease is harmless; that
the tsetse quickly disappears when areas of lake shore or
stream side are denuded of all timber, bush, and long
grass, and that, therefore, water margins may be made
comparatively safe by such denudation over a belt of
adequate width; and that the fly may be wholly escaped
by removal one to two miles from lake or stream margin.

As for the best treatment so far discovered, it is ad-
mittedly no more than alleviating.

With these scraps of useful information gained, the
Governments are doing their best, concentrating the
infected on islands that, like lepers, they are never per-

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 81

mitted to leave, or assembling them in isolated hospital
camps under the most able medical attendance, and re-
moving the uninfected, en masse, to highlands beyond
known fly-infested areas.

Already hundreds of thousands have died of it, nor
is its spread anywhere really checked. It is creeping north
and east from the lake, down into German and Portuguese
territory, invading the boundaries of Rhodesia. Great
islands like the Sessi group, and vast strips of the main-
land that a few years ago carried a dense population of
the intelligent, thrifty, and prosperous Baganda, to-day
own no tenants but their dead, while their bountiful
banana plantations and cotton fields have reverted to
howling jungle.

Indeed, unless means of prevention and cure are
found, at any time the sleeping sickness may become a
world problem of the toughest. Often the disease does
not develop until a year or more after any possibility of
infection. And since the scoundrelly little tsetse conveys
it, some other depraved type of fly or mosquito indige-
nous to America, Asia, or Europe may yet acquire a tiny
jag of infection from some returned African dweller or
traveller, returned apparently well but fallen a victim to
the disease, which will serve to establish it abroad.

Thus, undoubtedly, the disease crossed the divide
between the Congo and lake watersheds, — not in a
poison-laden fly but in a victim of the malady.

Of its origin or history in barbarous, pestilential
Congo nothing definite is known, except that it has long
lurked, and worked there — perhaps, certainly quite
conceivably, a scourge directly caused by and come as a
punishment for generations of the most ruthless and reck-

82 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

less human slaughter, where thousands upon thousands
of mutilated dead were left where they fell to foul the
steaming jungle air and envenom the myriad local types
of tropical insect life. Indeed, that there may be some
grain of fact in this ventured fancy is suggested by the
coincidence that the advent of the sleeping sickness in
Uganda followed close upon the heels of the wave of
wholesale slaughter, by revolted Congo Askaris and can-
nibal Baleka, that swept across several thousands of
square miles of densely populated territory to the west of
Lake Kivu and nearly adjacent to Ankori, Uganda's
southwest Province, where practically all who escaped
the barbarous invaders perished of hunger and of dis-
eases bred of the festering corpses with which villages,
paths, and fields were thickly strewn.

Early symptoms of sleeping sickness are found in the
swelling of glands at the base of the neck, just above the
collar bone, followed by enlargment of other glands.
Usually the patient lives several years, often five or more,
most of the time more or less addled of brain, in the latter
stages frequently insane. As the disease progresses, the
patient becomes greatly emaciated, notwithstanding an
inordinate appetite for meat. The drowsy sleeping stage
is one of the late symptoms.

Fortunately in British territory only two white men
have fallen victims of the disease, so far as I could learn,
although scores of Europeans, officials and missionaries,
have been freely exposed to it. Both (one an attending
physician of the sick) returned to Europe for treatment,
but without avail.

When I remarked that I imagined they were establish-
ing a sleeping sickness camp, we were told they

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 83

recently marched up from Karungu for that purpose
and would the next day begin the construction of a per-
manent dispensary, hospital, and administration build-
ings. Asked if there were many sufferers from the
disease in the valley, Dr. Baker replied he had no doubt
he could get in for treatment five thousand cases in two
days, if he had facilities for handling them. Only one
patient was brought in when we were there, a man of
powerful frame, securely bound with bark rope, for he was
mad as a hatter, with homicidal tendency. Repeatedly
he had tried to kill some of his fellow villagers, and was
forever screaming for a chance at a muzungu. Ankles
and wrists were raw of the restraining ropes that had
shackled him for weeks. He was chained in a hut and
given an opiate.

The view from the veranda of their tents was lovely,
down the broad, steep-sloping valley of the palm-lined
Oyani to its junction with the Kuja, on north across the
Kuja to the tall blue crags of Mt. Homa, west to the lofty
purple crest of the Gwasi range, the highest peak rising
immediately above the lake, and to the perfect pyramid
of Nundewot, behind which lay Karungu.

It was not until after tea and the pair had consented
to stroll over to our tents for a "sundowner," — the happy
hour and ceremony for which all prudent Africanders
thirstily, and often grouchily, wait, for the prudent adjure
spirits until sunset, — that I learned (and then only by
bluntly asking Dr. Baker while we were walking down
a winding Kavirondo path) of the second gentleman what
his modesty or habits of reserve had concealed — that
he was Assistant Deputy Commissioner Northcote, the
chief administrative officer of that district of the Province

84 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

of Kisumu. Though a young man, for years he had
been a close student and solver of native and provincial
problems, one of the little group of cool-headed, just-
dealing, quick-acting, hard-hitting Britons who, often
isolated among savage thousands many days' march
from any outside support, with a staff of not more than
one to three whites, never backed by more than a handful
of native Askaris, have by their diplomacy and daring
won and are holding for the Crown its east and central
African Empire.

And, although one of the younger members of the
administrative corps, Mr. Northcote is by no means one
of the least distinguished. For it was he who, while in
charge of the Kisii Boma, himself received a spear stab
from a rebellious native that started the recent Kisii revolt,
but stubbornly held out till forces arrived adequate to
hammer the Kisii into submission.

Finding our camp pitched on a low bench only three
hundred yards from the Oyani, Dr. Baker advised us to
move at least a mile south of and two hundred feet above
the river, for safe escape of flies and mosquitoes, good
advice on which we promptly acted.

The next morning the chief of several Kavirondo
villages, old Agile, came to our camp decorously robed
in a red blanket and crowned with a tiara of beaded
leather, the diadem of this insignia of royalty being a gray
stoneware ointment pot, its mouth bound tightly to the
centre of his forehead and its body standing straight out
from the head, giving him the appearance of a two-legged
stub-horned unicorn.

Nor were blanket and tiara all of his gaudy regalia,
for on the back of his head he wore a great brown sun

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 85

helmet that no more was permitted to change its angle
than was the tightly bound pot or his stony set features
their expression. So tightly did the helmet cling to its
fixed angle that we suspected it was attached to the tiara
and, thus, an integral part of it.

With Agilo came a dozen or more of his head men,
superb great fellows black as ink, several well above six
feet, muscled like finely trained athletes, with thirty-
three-inch waists and forty-six-inch chests, all naked as
they were born save for portieres of grease-sodden ringlets
that dangled about necks and faces and innumerable
brass and iron wire bangles, covering often the major
part of arms and legs.

There came with him a string of totos, perhaps another
dozen, just a few of the more recent evidences of his pre-
dilection for paternity, boys and girls, most of them so tiny
it was a miracle how their slender, wobbly little shanks
contrived to tote about their great pot bellies.

There were also a half-dozen matrons and maids carry-
ing baskets of metama flour, the posho we so badly needed,
all in the Kavirondo full dress of their station, the maids
wearing nothing but their amiable smiles and a slender
string of beads about the waist, the matrons each dis-
tinguished by a little four-inch tuft of cow-tail hair pen-
dent, aft, from a like string of beads.

Innocent, these ebony beauties — and extraordinary
beauties of figure many of the young maids and matrons
are — innocent physically and mentally of costume and
all that it means as was Mother Eve herself, not even a
decade of contact and acquaintance with the white race
resident along the lake, and its highly elevating and refin-
ing influences, has served either to induce Kavirondo

86 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

women to clothe their nakedness or to surrender an
integrity to strict virtue no clothed race, red, yellow,
black, or white, can boast. To this day few Kavirondo
women will have any man except one of their own blood,
and him only after due observance of the Kavirondo mar-
riage ritual, a formal surrender of her by her parents for
value received in cattle or in sheep.

Posho in sight, Outram quickly got out and attrac-
tively displayed our remaining stock of "trade goods."
The "American!" was already exhausted, parted with in
return for the "backsheesh," in sheep, milk, and honey,
brought by the Sultanis of different Masai munyatas.

But our ten-pound tin of beads still remained nearly
intact, big beads and little, strung as bracelets, anklets,
and necklaces, beads of glass and of porcelain, red, white,
and blue, pink, green, and amber, beads gilt and sil-
vered — a glittering store of coveted treasure the first
glimpse of which drew from old Agilo a few brief, sharp
orders to one and another, spoken in the rolling roar of
mouth-pouting, tongue-wobbling, blubbering labials with
which Kavirondo communicate confidences, that soon
wrought wonders.

Out of this posho-less land, within half an hour naked
women, young and old, came ambling into camp with
baskets of metama, and active barter began. Some
wanted rupees — probably such only as were short of
liquid funds to pay their annual hut tax of Rs. 3 — but
few could resist the temptation of such a rare chance of
acquiring stunning new full-dress costumes as was afforded
by the* heaps of tiny shining gauds piled at Outram's tent
door. And such master of native foibles he proved that
by night we had acquired twenty loads of metama (one

THE VONGONIA OR "SAUSAGE" TREE: WITH THE RIND OF THE FRUIT NATIVE
HONEY BEER is FERMENTED

KAVIRONDO WAR DANCE
"His OSTRICH PLUMES" AND A KAVIRONDO WARRIOR

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 87

thousand, two hundred pounds) at a cost of about a cent
a pound. And in this price figured liberal donations of
"backsheesh," to Agilo in coin of the Protectorate and
to others in trinkets.

Indeed so pleased were the Kavirondo with their
traffic that in the afternoon Agile's son led to our tents a
group of young warriors, all armed and gorgeously decked
in war dress, himself mounted bareback on a bridled
br indie steer and wearing his father's war bonnet, a two-
story mass of superb black ostrich feathers, with a circle
of white ostrich feathers sticking out at right angles from
the top of the second story, while another wore a gorgeous
war bonnet made of grayish yellow monkey skin, tall as
a grenadier's busby and shaped much like one.

Up before us they danced, singing a chorus of wel-
come, occasionally led by His Ostrich Plumes, — as often
as he could succeed in persuading his long-horned
brindle mount to stay anywhere in the vicinity. Then
they lined up and gave us a war dance, some of the more
striking poses of which are shown in my photographs,
fierce charges, individually and in line, stealthy approaches
or retreats behind the cover of their enormous shields,
with brandishings of spears and grimacings of face
calculated to chill the marrow of the boldest enemy.

To this afternoon's festivity Agilo sociably brought as
generous a jag of wembe (native spirits, brewed of honey
and metama) as his system could hold, and continued to
carry it to the end of the day without serious injury to
his Sultanic tiara or dignity. And when at our evening
parting I risked giving him a modest jorum of gin, which I
told him was a sample of the sort of water found in most
of the streams in my country, he wolfed it down, coughed

88 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

and spluttered, and then gurgled to me (through the
interpreter) an earnest inquiry as to how many days'
march it was to my country, — whether the expression
of a polite interest in my wandering or of a keen apprecia-
tion of American "water" he did not explain.

That night, January 18, I sat down to an unwonted
luxury, a perusal of the " latest" news, as contained in
one copy each of the London Weekly Times and the
London Daily Mail, both of December 18, come a day
or two before to Northcote and by him kindly given
to me.

Oddly, camped there upon the Oyani, which is the
main southern branch of the Kuja, and come recently
from the Mara, the two largest tributaries of Victoria
Nyanza, the mother of the Nile, a traveller for weeks along
and between the Nile's remotest sources, and in territory
still plotted as "unknown" upon the most recently pub-
lished maps, a region a scant dozen white men have ever
entered, the very first article to catch my eye in The
Times was an account of the Royal Geographical Society's
meeting in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of
Speke's solution of the world-old Nile source mystery by
the discovery of Victoria Nyanza, the crowning feat of the
many most notable of his African explorations, begun
the year I was born, 1856.

The next day we wasted on promises of Agilo to fur-
nish porters he did not produce to carry our posho to the
Mara, and for which he was promised a premium for
himself of Rs. i each. However, the delay gave us op-
portunity for the pleasure of having Northcote and Baker
at luncheon; and while we had nothing better than chop

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 89

boxes to serve as table and seats, and a menu I am sure
Oscar would have improved, whether our guests enjoyed
it or not, I know Outram and I did.

During luncheon Northcote cracked almost to a
shatter our hope of elephant, by telling us that while
there were probably three to four hundred elephant rang-
ing between the Kisii Highlands and the Maggori, the
Masai on the east and the Kavirondo on the west, the
big tuskers were largely shot out by poaching ivory
hunters from German territory; of course, we might
with rare luck strike a good one, but the herds were kept
so constantly on the march, by movements of the native
population densely crowding around them, and their
country was so nearly inaccessible, that it would be sheer
luck if we sighted them at all, no matter how hard we
worked.

However, despite this discouragement, we decided to
give them a good try, and the following day marched back
to Toroni's, sending ahead of us three men to fetch on
from our Mara camp enough donkeys to carry the posho
we left with Northcote.

That morning, ranging ahead and far to the west of
the safari in hope of seeing roan, I sighted a topi wearing
what looked to me a record pair of horns. The best I
could do was to get a three hundred and fifty yard shot,
but down of it he tumbled, and, after several ineffectual
efforts to rise, lay still. Having learned nothing yet of
experience, I turned to call up my syce and mule, only to
be nudged by my gun bearer and shown a gleaming
russet flank disappearing into the bush.

Quickly Habia picked up the blood-stained trail.

90 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

For three hours we followed it, but never once had he
laid down, and only once, from a hilltop, did I sight him
with my glasses, drooping slowly along in the valley be-
neath us; but by the time we could climb down he was
gone, gone for good, as blood flow had stopped and he
had reached a maze of trails made by other buck.

Swinging to bear off toward Toroni's, we had not
gone a half-mile before I sighted a real prize, a Lichten-
stein hartebeeste bull and a fine big old chap. On this
fellow I took no chances, and rained lead into him until
he collapsed and lay still — and at that it took five 9 m.m.
soft nose Mauser bullets to do the work, notwithstanding
the first was in the shoulder and the second a fair centre
chest shot. His horns were 19 inches on the outer curve,
7 inches in spread, 10} inches at base, while from tip of
nose to tip of horns he measured 30 J inches.

But, like many another hard-won, dear-loved treasure
the Fates refuse to spare one, my ownership of the Lich-
tenstein was so brief I scarcely had time to get well
acquainted with it. That night the head skin was care-
fully removed and skull and under jaw cleaned, the skin
sheltered from the dew and the jaw and skull and horns
placed on top of one of the boys' grass huts, six feet from
the ground, within a circle of bush no more than thirty
feet in diameter, close about which at least a dozen of us
were sleeping, the only gap between huts and tents filled
in by the tethered mules, our two dogs lolling among us.

During the night nothing unusual happened, except
that my boy, Salem, sleeping near the mess fire and next
the hut that held the trophies, awakened toward morning,
heard near at hand a soft leopard purr, and, looking about,

ALONG UNMAPPED NILE SOURCES 91

saw a pair of glowing eyes taking in the camp; but the
two or three firebrands he threw at it sent it scampering
away, and shortly he dozed off again.

But when morning came the Lichtenstein skull and
horns were gone! Gone for good, notwithstanding all
my porters and a lot of Toroni's Masai were out all day
searching grass and bush for them, gone in spite of the
fact that the skull was stripped clean of meat except tiny
clinging fragments that, altogether, would scarcely surfeit
a mouse, apparently filched by the leopard out of sheer
devilment, for about the boys' fires were many sticks
loaded with cooking meat of the day's kill — or perhaps
he had tasted their cooking and disapproved it. That it
was the leopard was certain, for no tracks but his wrere
found near camp.

Thus I still remain the possessor of a fine Lichtenstein
under jaw and head skin, but fear I shall always lack a
skull and pair of horns to fit it.

Indeed in the African bush one cannot be too careful
of anything he values, else he is sure sooner or later to
fall a victim of one or another of the night marauders of
the jungle. While most of the night prowlers are after
meat, alive or dead, to the hyena all is fish that enters his
net: boots, leggings, or gun cases, are to him attractive
types of entrees, while bridles, saddles, or curing hides
are pieces de resistance he appears to adore. Really, after
learning, on wholly trustworthy authority, of an incident
of the joint Anglo- German Boundary Survey four years
ago, I am puzzled to fancy what can be safe against mighty
hyena jaws.

One evening Herr Hauptmann Schlobach, the Imperial

92 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

German Commissioner, had some meat cut up on the lid
of a fifty-pound chop box that stood immediately before
the door of his tent. In the morning the box was gone,
but search soon discovered deeply imprinted hyena tracks
which, followed, led to the missing chop box lying full
eighty yards outside the camp, its lid licked clean, deep
teeth marks at one corner showing how it had been
lifted and carried!

OUR two Masai and several of Toroni's were sent
out at daylight on a prowl for fresh elephant
tracks, but returned after dark, worn to a frazzle
by their fourteen hours' plod through grass and bush,
with news that all the sign was several days old and showed
movement south and east toward the Maggori River.

In the afternoon Toroni paid us a visit, accompanied
by a score of his headmen and followed by a small delega-
tion of his wives and children, seventeen of the wives and
more of the children than I took time to count, the wo-
men and children chanting a chorus of welcome to the
accompaniment of the jingle, as they danced up to us, of
beautifully made iron and brass wire chains, necklaces,
and stomachers. The central figures in the photograph
are Toroni, his youngest and pet wife, and the Heiress
Apparent, a type of Ethiopian beauty not easy to beat.

At first I took their coming as a visit of state, but was
soon made to realize that their real purpose was to seek
medical attendance.

Whoever had preceded us there I do not know, but
it must have been some amiable white man who fed them
sugar or chocolate as medicine. For, although about as
sturdy and sound looking a lot, from old to young, as
could be picked from any people, all were sufferers of
something and in a desperate bad way of it, according to
their story: all must have dawa (medicine) and get it
quick to be safe of living the day out.

93

94 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

With a medicine chest that held nothing but perman-
ganate of potash, bandages, quinine, calomel and salts,
and little indeed of these, I was up a stump. But, since
something must be done, I launched boldly out upon the
to me uncharted sea of diagnosis, all the time racking my
brains for schemes to husband our precious little store of
medicines.

The first prescription I ventured on, a dose of salts,
gave me a hint — the patient made a shocking wry face
over it. So to the next two I gave quinine and made
them bite and chew the pills, and to the third, a wrinkled
old boy with a slight bark off the shin, I applied an
extra strong solution of permanganate that made him
howl — and at the same time served to relieve me of
further demands for dawa.

After another forenoon out, the twenty-second of
January, our Masai reported again all elephant trekked
toward the Maggori, so in the afternoon we marched about
ten miles southeast, camping on a little stream the Masai
called "Looseandgiddy," as near as we could understand
them, two miles from its junction with the Maggori.

Before starting we paid Toroni a farewell visit, in
hope of a chance to buy some swords, bows, coats, snuff
boxes, spears, etc. But not a thing did we get, except a
photograph of the interior of the munyata, Toroni lording
it in the centre of the picture. Neither among the
Kavirondo nor at Toroni's were we able to get even a
price set on a single curio, much less to buy one: tight
to their weapons, war panoply, and personal trinkets both
lots stuck.

When we arrived at the munyata we found prac-
tically all the men and youths out tending their flocks

WATER BUCK SHOT AT LOOSEAXDGIDDY CAMP

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 95

and herds, while the ladies of the village were divided
about equally into three busy groups.

At the time it was quite the height of the local dry
season, so that there was no rain whatever except a
torrential all-night downpour every third night, with heavy
thunder and lightning, and on each two intervening
nights two to three hour showers that would make a
stranger yell for a life preserver, all which was not espe-
cially conservative of the Masai architecture.

Thus the first of the three groups of Masai ladies we
encountered were engaged in gathering handfuls of fresh
cow dung and plastering damaged roofs with it ; the second
group, seated beneath trees near the gate, was engaged
in braiding rush mats ; while the third lolled in the shade,
alternatingly dozing and watching Groups One and Two
— these latter, probably, the Sudani's favorites.

Inquiring for Toroni, we were pointed to a lone tree
on a hill two hundred yards away, where we found him
stretched on a lion skin, frayed and worn of years as was
he himself, sleeping off what must have been an extra
heavy overnight jag of "bang" or tembo, for the hour
of our call was near noon. Indeed it was with some
difficulty we roused sufficient energy in him to get him to
toddle back to the munyata and stand long enough to be
photographed.

About our "Looseandgiddy" camp elephant sign
from one to three days old was thick everywhere; in-
dividual tracks, roads beaten smooth thirty feet wide,
many trees one to two feet thick and thirty to forty feet
high uprooted, wallows, tall giant tree trunks rubbed
bare of bark and stained or plastered with mud ten feet
from the ground, eleuhant " rub-downs" after a mud

96 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

bath. One such tree stood immediately before my tent
door, bare of bark and mud-stained ten feet from its
base, and with a heavy limb extending at right angles
from the trunk eleven feet from the ground whose under-
side was also barked and mud-stained, proving there was
at least one worthy old giant tusker left living thereabouts.

And yet for three days we ranged the country round
about from dawn to dark, south to the Maggori and
north toward the Kisii, without sighting anything but a
few buck.

The morning of the fourth day, disgusted by fruitless
prowls, Outram and I lay in camp, when at ten o'clock
one of our two Masai came panting in with word he had
a big bull marked down two hours to the north, having
left his mate on wratch. And off we were trekking in five
minutes at the best pace we could make through grass,
bowlders, and bush.

Sharp at twelve the watching Masai stopped us.
Below his hillside post lay the heavily timbered valley of a
tributary of the Oyani, and down into the timber he
pointed.

While light, the wind was wrong for an approach
from that side, so we made a wide detour to the south
and wormed our way through the half-mile of timber to
the west side — only to find the wind had shifted. Then
we made another wide circle, recrossed to the east side
of the valley, and, rinding the wind held fair, swung
round to a point where we could plainly hear what we
took to be our bull — for the boys had seen only one —
alternately smashing bush and splashing water.

Here Akuna and Habia stripped themselves of skin
wraps, sandals, neck chains, and ear rings, of every-

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 97

thing but a bow and three poisoned arrows each, and
crept into the wall of vine and foliage. Outram and I,
followed by our two gun bearers, ourselves stripped of
everything that could catch, scratch, or rattle, crept in
after them. By all ill luck there were no elephant or
other game paths where we entered, making progress
doubly difficult.

While midday with a blazing sun outside, within the
forest was dark as a heavily curtained room. Our pro-
gress was like swimming through breakers — waves of
vines and foliage engulfing us at nearly every step. Some-
times we could not see an arm's length about us, usually
no more than ten feet; and when not corkscrewing our-
selves through vines and creepers, we were clambering
up the one side and glissading down the other of moss-
covered and slippery fallen forest giants.

About a hundred yards in we reached the muddy
stream, and there encountered redoubled difficulties.
Flowing in a straight or steep-banked channel ten to
twenty feet deep and thirty to forty feet wide, it did its
best toward boxing the compass every thirty yards,
serpentine as the vines that dangle above it or the
python that twine in ambush upon its overhanging
boughs.

At the first crossing Awala, my gun bearer, slipped and
fell splashing into the creek fifteen feet below, but luckily
at the same instant the tusker had hold of a bough he
wanted in his business and was making racket enough
to drown any noise short of a shot.

All the time we were drawing nearer our quarry,
pushing deeper toward the centre of the bush, working
carefully up wind, there so light one could scarce feel it,

98 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

the two naked Masai gliding ahead of us keen as hounds
and silent and sinuous of movement as snakes.

Not a sound had we heard save from the one point,
apparently all made by one elephant; therefore we felt
assured we were in luck and had before us a really big
old tusker, for such usually flock by their lonesomes or
in pairs.

After three crossings of the brook, we were able to
work along it perhaps eighty yards, to a place where
we had to stop. Immediately in front of us, not ten feet
away it seemed and we later found it was actually twenty
feet, behind a solid wall of foliage was our elephant.

And no sooner were we stopped than, as if as a con-
certed tip to us that they had us where they wanted us, all
about us rose sounds of elephant — a smashing branch
here, a mighty sigh of surfeit there, a plash in the stream,
the suck of a great foot pulled from mud ! We had inno-
cently meandered into the middle of a feeding herd !

They were even behind us, and absolutely the only
direction in which we could see thirty feet was immedi-
ately to our left, where a fallen log bridged the creek
from bank to bank twenty feet above the water, and that
happened to be the only point from which we did not
hear them.

If we had tried we could scarcely have put ourselves
in a more foolish or dangerous position; for no matter
how heavy the ivory he sights, no experienced elephant
hunter shoots in the middle of a herd he has unwittingly
pushed into; whichever way they start they go, and like
as not it will be the hunter's way; while if a wounded bull
does n't hunt you down as relentlessly as a fiend, it is an
even bet some pet lady of his harem will.

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 99

Neither Outram nor I had ever seen wild elephant,
much less hunted them, and what to do was a puzzle to
us — the more so that questions and answers must needs
be limited to silent signs. Of course we might have
slipped away to probable safety across the fallen tree
trunk, but that was not precisely what we had been doing
a fortnight's marching and scouting for.

So there we stood, still as statues, eyes roving aloft,
ahead, to right and aft, not daring even to cock a gun
(I had a Winchester .405 in my hands with a Mauser
9 m.m. in reserve) before catching a glimpse of a head}
expecting every instant to see a giant trunk reaching
down for us.

Of course every move they made sounded as if they
were coming; not once by any happy chance did we
hear any sound that suggested a recessional.

And so expectantly wre stood, I myself, I frankly admit,
gripping my teeth together till they ached to help hold my
nerves steady; and so round us they fed and amused them-
selves full twenty minutes, they in as blissful ignorance of
our presence as we of what was going to happen, or how
hard it would happen when it got well started.

After a number of minutes, anywhere from twenty to
thirty probably, the two Masai tiptoed across the fallen
tree and slipped a few feet up stream, where both crouched
and gestured violently to us to come at once.

They were at precisely a point to see behind the screen
in front of me and have in view the elephant they had
located as the big bull they had seen and reported, pro-
vided he was not also screened from the east.

At the moment there was a tremendous racket all
about us, and I thought I would chance it.

ioo IN CLOSED TERRITORY

The log was level half the way, and then rose in a steep
five-foot bend to its lodgement on the farther bank, green
with loose-clinging wet moss; and, by all contraries in
this maze of tangle, not a single vine or branch within
reach of it.

Out I started, with gun transversed as a balancing
pole, and steadied, I suppose, by our dilemma, over it
I safely got, notwithstanding groans and yieldings of the
rotten trunk that I thought surely would dump me twenty
feet to the stream beneath. Indeed, I had to go so gin-
gerly that the more active Outram shinned down a vine,
waded the creek, and hand-over-handed up another vine
to a close finish, both in time and silence, with my crossing.

Crept up to the Masai, to our disgust we found no more
was there to be seen than from our previous stand, though
we could see fifty yards on our left, useful if the elephant
moved that way, and on that they had summoned us.

But scarcely had we taken in our new position before
a very hell of torment broke loose on our front, — trees
crashing as if they were being levelled by a cyclone,
trumpetings shrill and blood-chilling as the storm's
angriest voices, the dull thud of bumping colossi and the
sharp almost metalic clash of ivory tusks grinding in the
mad stampede, like the rasp of giant swords in deadly
play.

For a half-second, or minute, or hour, I give it up
which, the outer lot raced straight in on the chap in front
of us, and therefore straight at us, while there was nothing
for us to do but stand fast, ready to pump lead into the
faces of the first-comers on the off chance of turning them.

Beside us, steady as rocks, stayed the two little Masai,
each with a slender, puny arrow half-drawn to the head,

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 101

safe enough in time to kill but powerless to stop. Indeed,
I recall a flying wish I might be excused long enough from
the more urgent duties of the moment to snapshot them
- with every muscle of their lithe, graceful bodies tense,
left foot advanced, knees slightly bent, and sinewy fingers
tugging at bow strings, they were for an artist an ideal
pose of flint-age warriors.

Of course the creek lay between us, which might seem
measurable protection, but it was not, for elephant go up
and down declivities, almost in their stride, that would
balk almost anything less agile than an ape.

But, come directly up to "our" elephant, of his fancy
or theirs, all whirled and thundered straight away from
us, angling to our right. And back across logs and creek,
through vines and scrub, we hurdled as best we could
for chance of a sight of them.

But scarcely were we a hundred feet beyond the creek,
before directly back upon their tracks they came at as mad
a pace as their start, and back to our original stand by the
stream side we dashed.

These were the most trying seconds of the lot, for it
seemed certain we had to face a straight onrush and turn
them or take whatever was coming to us.

It proved to be our day to learn a lot of the ele-
phant's whims and of the downright stark miraculous
things he can do when he likes.

Stock-still they stopped ten yards from us (as we after-
wards proved), but hidden from us as before, and this
time bunched to perhaps a half-circle about us. Stopped,
and for probably ten minutes there was utter silence in the
forest, save for the barking of monkeys querulous of all
the row, and then the beggars started feeding and amusing

102 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

themselves as before. This continued for perhaps fifteen
minutes, when absolutely all sound again ceased and the
wood was still of them as if they had all dropped dead —
which in fact, in our ignorance we fancied they had, dead
asleep.

And there we sat for the larger part of an hour,
wondering what length of afternoon siesta is approved in
well-regulated elephant families, in constant expectation
of renewed movement by some of the herd, and in hope
of a show for a shot at a bull worth while. That they
were still within the toss of a biscuit of us we would have
sworn.

But when, presently, a slight stir among the leaves
directly before Outram made us throw up our rifles, out
stepped Akuna, who had raced out of our sight in pursuit
of the first stampede to track its route and had been cut
off from us by their sudden return, with the incredible
intelligence that the elephant were gone — out of the bush
and trekking away into the north.

Was the Masai mad or were we ? Or was it all just a
dream? Or had we been drunk of the excitement of a
real experience ?

Magic! No prestidigitator could touch this vanishing
act, from under our very noses, of tons and tons of ambu-
lant weight in country where we pigmies could scarce stir
without causing noise, where nothing short of a legitimate
spook or a handily manipulated "materializing spirit"
could circulate without twig-snapping and leaf-rustling!

And yet it proved to be true. Gone were they all,
by what miracles of stealth I doubt if the oldest elephant
hunter knows: one has them before him, almost within
gun-barrel touch, and then they are gone! That is all.

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 103

And yet in our case the spoor of their leaving showed
that, besides the obstacles of the forest growth, they had
within fifty feet of us crossed a wide area of mud into
which their great bulk had stamped footprints eighteen
inches deep (one measuring twenty-two inches from toe
to heel), and then passed down into and across the gravelly
stream bed, that crunched to our lightest tread.

How many were there? Quien sabe? Massed in
the onrush of mad flight, it sounded like two thousand —
in fact, as well as we could judge from the tracks merging
outside the bush into a great, broad, improvised road, there
were between twenty and forty.

If seeing alone were believing, there were no elephant,
for not the smallest glimpse of one did any of our party
get. But there all about lay bark-stripped boughs, the
wreck of their luncheon, there on the sturdier tree trunks
within a few yards of our position was the wet mud of
their " rub-down."

On their spoor we followed until we realized it was
useless to go farther — off they were, as usual in such cases,
for a twenty to forty mile constitutional, bearing toward
the Kisii Highlands.

So we headed for camp, reaching there long after
dark just as tired as if we had really done something.

One more day we lay at the "Looseandgiddy" camp,
circling the country again carefully as far as we could
reach until convinced all the sign of elephant thereabouts
had been made by the departed herd. While profitless
of game, the day was interesting and amusing. I was
ranging to the south, alone with Habia, incidentally look-
ing for a Lichtenstein bull which I had wounded late the
previous evening near camp, and which had trekked off

io4 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

that way. A country where tracking an individual buck
was impossible, my only guide to his retreat was the birds,
the vultures or marabouts. These carrion feeders must
certainly be gifted with eyesight of high telescopic power.
Drop a kill without a bird in sight, and before you get the
skin off, usually, the ill-favored tribe are all about you in
a thick flight or glaring hungrily down from perch in
neighboring treetops. Rarely does a wounded buck travel
a mile before he is spied by some winged scout soaring so
high in the blue he is an almost indistinguishable speck,
and then it is only a matter of an instant when, by some
weird signal code none but the birds themselves will ever
know, a merciless crew is cruising near above him from
which there is for him no escape if he once goes down,
for, by some cruelly cunning felon instinct, their first
assault is upon his dimming eyes. Nor, though strong
enough to keep his feet for hours or fight off attack if
down, may he reckon on escape — all day long they hover
above him, all night long perch about any bushy nook
in which he may be vainly seeking rest.

It is bad enough to shoot and kill any harmless beast,
only explainable as an irrepressible survival of aboriginal
instincts, bred into some of us past eradication by genera-
tions of ancestral skin-wearing, two-legged carnivora, but
it is absolutely wicked to wound such and leave them, and
I never leave a wounded beast so long as chance remains
of reaching and finishing him.

The Lichtenstein, however, proved too strong for both
man and bird. Early, within two miles of camp, a slow-
soaring, circling crew of birds marked him down for us
on a high hillslope, covered with grass, rocks, and bush
one could not get through without so much noise that

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 105

approach was impossible. Off he would go each time
at such a pace — shown by the fast-shifting birds — that
after two hours we saw that further pursuit must be useless.

Then we swung across the top of the high hill we had
been following, and I got a superb view of the great valley
of the Maggori River and its wide watershed, far south
into German territory, the distant hills showing a line of
smoke columns that told of dense native settlement.

Descending toward the river, suddenly my Masai
stopped and bent and listened. We were in good ele-
phant country, sign all about, on our immediate right a
deep, heavily timbered gorge, and I, too, paused to listen,
but all I could hear was the peculiar twitter-twitter of
a flitting flock of tiny birds, strange to me.

Presently off down hill darted Habia, faster than I
could follow over such bad going, out of my sight in a
half-dozen jumps. Whatever had started him or whatever
he was after I could not fancy, but on I followed.

Shortly I found him, at the turn of a bush, bent over
gathering wisps of dry and green grass and twining and
pressing them into a tight round wad. This finished to
suit him, he ran to me with it and signed he wanted a
match, quicker a bit but no surer than his own fire sticks.

Puzzled, but powerless to question him, I gave him
matches, when he ran to a big bowlder almost hidden in
the long grass, bent and parted the tangle at one corner
of its base, crouched, lighted his wad of grass, and close
against the bottom of the rock laid it, bending his face
close down above the smoking grass and tightly hooding
head and smoke with his skin coat.

" Hello," thought I, "here's a new cure for influenza,"
for he had been snuffling and coughing from a cold for a

io6 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

day or two. I started to approach, the better to watch
him, when out and all about me roared a colony of mad
bees, wild for revenge upon the looter of their hard-won
honey. And, as usual, the real looter got off far the
lightest, how I don't know for he was in a crowd of them
for several minutes while I was tumbling down hill at my
best pace — and keeping ahead of all but their fastest
sprinters, too. In fact, just for once even Habia could
not catch me — until I had safely outfooted the last of my
other pursuers. Nor did I feel at all adequately compen-
sated when he came panting up to me with four great
cakes of beautiful amber honey, each about twelve
inches by five inches in size, three tucked under the arm
that held his bow and knob-kerrie, the full half of the
fourth down his throat, and the other half following as
fast as he could ram it down without quite choking to
death — as also followed down the same insatiable little
maw within the next half-hour practically all of the three
other great slabs; a nibble or two did for me, for that
particular lot was of indifferent flavor. But, flavor or no
flavor, with that little savage honey was honey and stood
no more show of prolonged existence than a smuggled box
of chocolate caramels in a girls' boarding school.

Lower down the slope I sighted with my glasses a
herd of water buck far away across the Maggori, two fine
heads in the lot. Supposing the river little more there
than the broiling, overgrown brook we had crossed a few
miles higher up, I hurried down toward it, in spite of a
torrent of b'r'ring, clucking, sputtering Masai that was
plainly a stagger at protest. Pushing through the wide
belt of thorn and palm that lined the stream, I soon learned
the reason: before me stretched a broad yellow flood,

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 107

over a hundred feet wide and looking deep enough to
float a cruiser and mean enough to harbor crocodiles.
That was quite too large an order. But directly the mur-
mur of distant rapids caught my ear. A half-mile down
stream we found them, the river cascading down a sharp
descent among a lot of big white bowlders — bowlders
so thickly strewn in the roaring, plunging current I thought
I could negotiate them. To mid-stream I did get, but
there the next jump was hopelessly long from a wet and
slippery take-off, and I had to give it up. Nor did I get
back ashore any too easily, for where, coming, I had
picked rough surfaces and edges to alight on, returning,
reverse sides offered no better than smooth slopes that
kept me moving quickly once I started; for, once tumbled
into it, no man could have made shore out of that turmoil.

However, I did not regret the detour when I got a
lovely photograph of the head of the boiling rapid and the
palms that crown it. And I regretted it less when, ten
minutes later, taking shelter in bush from a heavy shower,
I found a wild cherry tree loaded with delicious fruit —
half ripe, golden and crimson; ripe, their fat sides reflect-
ing all the richer, duskier ruby lights a decanter of port
flashes back at the candles.

Sweet were those cherries of flavor as they were
beautiful of favor; and there we stayed so long eating
them that, what with that delay, and, tipped by another
twitter of honey birds, the scenting, robbing, and con-
sumption of another bee treasure store by Habia (this
time found in a hollow tree), night fell upon us so far
from camp that none but an aboriginal's instincts for
location and direction could have brought us in.

That day our donkeys arrived from the Mara and were

io8 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

pushed on to Mr. Northcote's boma for the posho we
had left with him.

The next two days we travelled east toward the Mara,
camping at noon of the second day on the wide reaches
of low, rolling tableland that form the crest of the Isuria
Escarpment, and near its eastern brink, where it drops
almost sheer twelve hundred feet to the valley of the Mara.

Burned the year before of its tangle of old grass, then
carpeted with a short two-foot growth of juicy blue
grass, its tops already seeded and browning, stirred by
the breezes into ever shifting patterns, reflecting sunlight
on its crests and shadowed in its hollows, dotted here and
there with wild olives and mats of bush, it looked like a
vast field of richly embossed Spanish leather tinged with
every hue of russet and of green.

Quick is Dame Nature's scene-shifting in Equatorial
Africa. A fortnight earlier rain was pouring nightly;
vivid greens were everywhere, ponds in every hollow,
the birds blithely twittering their merriest spring songs,
the sun blazing out of a vault of cobalt blue.

Returned, with the rain stopped no more than four
days — as we could plainly see from our " Looseandgiddy"
camp — we found busy, pulsing Spring had made a one-
bound leap into the restful lap of "Indian Summer";
birds indolent, slow of flight, and little prone to song; the
sharp, high-keyed metallic ring of the African crickets'
chirp mellowed to lower, lazier notes ; the drone of myriad
insects; flights of grasshoppers rising as one walked, in
white clouds that looked like an inverted, uprising snow
storm; a heavy haze over all the land that completely
hid the outlook down upon and across the valley of the
Mara until, standing upon the edge of the escarpment, it

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT 109

seemed as if one had stepped out upon some bold head-
land and was gazing off across a fog-hid sea.

Out at 3 P. M. Outram and I strolled, in different
directions, on the chance of roan or eland and to kill
meat for the camp, of which we had had little for many
days while in the Maggori-Oyani country.

Tiny thirty-pound oribi were thick almost as the
grasshoppers, and about as hard to shoot. Usually you
never sawT them until they rose out of the grass at your
feet and dodged away at express speed, with low-bent
heads all hidden from your sight in the grass, rising occa-
sionly in mighty leaps six or eight feet above the grass tops
for a glimpse of whatever might be going on around them.
Occasionally you had a glimpse of two little ears or a
slender pair of four-inch, straight upstanding horns,
and caught through the grass tops the gleam of great
liquid eyes fixed upon you in wondering inquiry, and then
a graceful, fourteen-carat golden-yellow body went alter-
nately gliding and rocketting past you. They take shoot-
ing, do these little oribi, for while sometimes you can get
a standing shot at from seventy-five to one hundred and
fifty yards, usually all you see is the little head and neck,
and it 's a guess for the position of the body.

While I saw no roan or eland, that was rather a banner
evening for me in shooting. My bag included one fine
water buck with twenty-six-inch horns, three Coke's
hartebeeste bulls, and two oribi, each killed with a single
shot except the big four-hundred-pound water buck,
which needed a second to down him.

And never have I seen such extraordinary evidence of
the amazing vitality of African game, big and little, as
there. The first of the two oribi bounded away as if not

no IN CLOSED TERRITORY

hit, although I knew I must have struck it. Following the
line of its flight, and leaving my gun bearer to try to follow
its actual trail, at the turn of a bush I saw an oribi stand-
ing that I took to be mine, but before I could shoot, off
he bounded, and several more rose from the grass and
followed him. Then off a long way on my left I spied
another lone oribi and began stalking. Presently it
trotted ahead, and I saw that it was followed by what
I took to be its toio (kid), nuzzling eagerly for dinner.
Then down lay the "doe" and into its belly dove a little
yellow head, apparently not longer to be denied a suckle.

Surprised, wondering if antelope really suckle their
young while recumbent, I stole closer and closer, until
directly I was astounded to find that the pair were
the wounded oribi buck and my blood-thirsty little Irish
bull terrier Pugge, who, unknown to me, had rushed
across from Outram at the sound of my shot and found
and tackled the wounded quarry.

This buck there lay full seven hundred yards from
where he had received my full shot! And how much
farther he might have gone without Pugge' s intervention
I can only conjecture.

Outram played in better luck, for he sighted roan and
brought in the only one he contrived to get a shot at, a
fine young buck but with immature horns.

That night our camp looked like a well-stocked but-
cher's shop, with its one thousand, five hundred pounds
of hanging meat; and from dark to dawn our crowd of
shenzi porters sat noisily gorging themselves, like a bunch
of Indians after a big buffalo kill, and cutting into strips
and smoke-curing the meat they could not stow inside

ZEBRA STALLION, LYING AS HE FELL TO THE AUTHOR'S GUN

SURROUNDED BY WILD ELEPHANT in

them. Nor were they the only hungry ones about, for
repeatedly a tribe of laughing hyena tried to rush the
meat, and were only kept off by the firebrands the jealous
porters kept throwing at them.

One more try we had for roan and eland from that
camp, but without success, travelling ten miles southeast
along the escarpment to the skeleton of a triangulation
beacon, built there on a high promontory five years before
by Outram for the Boundary Survey. After we had
abandoned hope of getting better game that day, I
mortally wounded a big wart-hog, but he showed a lot
of fight and got three more shots.

Groggy, but not down, Outram called to the porter
leading her to loose Pugge. Stupidly released with the
leading chain still fast to her collar, the plucky little
terrier bounded to the attack, and hot and heavy she
and the pig had it for ten minutes.

But the porter's blunder nearly cost us Pugge's life,
for midway of the fight the pig fell and lay upon the
chain, and then, shaking her loose from her pet hold aft,
swung and caught her by the throat, slitting it to ribbons
but luckily not puncturing the jugular. It all happened
so quickly that before Outram got in a finishing shot
Pugge had wrested free of the boar's sharp tusks and was
herself tackling again as furiously as ever.

Early in the afternoon we parted, Outram swinging to
the west and I to the east. Just at sundown I shot a good
Chandler reed buck in one of the favorite haunts of its
kind, among the crags along the edge of the escarpment.
Night fell before the buck was skinned, and although the
moon was well on in its first quarter I should never have

in IN CLOSED TERRITORY

made the six miles to camp, winding among endless iso-
lated clumps of timber and belts of heavy forest, but for
the brute instinct of Habia, my little Wanderobo-bred
Masai, who always brought me in on air lines, no matter
how dark the night was.

VIII
"CLOSE THING, THAT, RIGHT-OH!"

THE next morning, January 30, we received a
message from our Engabai (Masai name for Mara)
camp to the effect that a mysterious lone muzungu
was there awaiting us, whom Outram was not long in
placing as a sort of cross between a trader and a raider,
whose camp in German territory had been seized recently
and his arms, goods, and cattle confiscated or destroyed
by German Askaris, one of the fast-disappearing class
of ivory hunters and traders who a few years ago were win-
ning fortunes at their dangerous game.

Indeed, I have met men who have cleared as high as
$75,000 off their ivory taken on a six months' expedition,
some traded from the natives but most of it fallen to
their own guns. Then came the game laws, the game
rangers to enforce them, and heavy penalties for infringe-
ment, making contraband all ivory but the insignificant
lots shot under a sportsman's license. Not a few re-
belled against these laws, the hardy, independent lot,
many gentlemen bred, who for years had endured every
hardship and taken their lives in their hands every morn-
ing they went out into forest or long grass after tuskers,
every hour they spent in the fever-breeding jungles,
elephants' haunt, lured by the love of adventure and the
chance of gains adequate to afford them every last luxury
of civilization for the half-year they spent out of the bush.

But while elephants and other game had to be pro-

n4 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

tected to save them from extinction, it was a misfortune
for the country that it should have become necessary to
legislate this class out of the field. Expressed official
opinions to the contrary notwithstanding, these latter-
day ivory hunters and traders, come in on the heels of the
departing Arabs, were pacifiers of the natives, working
usually as individuals, all alone, or at best in pairs,
without armed escorts, with none but native attendants
and porters, their prosperity and indeed their very exist-
ence dependent upon just, fair dealing with all natives
with whom they came in contact.

What with diplomacy and sheer bluff, these men often
settled tribal turbulence, and even succeeded in making
peace between tribes that, previously, had never ceased
warring with and raiding each other. Sometimes, to be
sure, they won peace at cost of blood, but peace they
always strove for as most conducive to their own success.

Indeed, several of these men often wielded more actual
influence and power over thousands of natives than that
inspired by all the authority and armed force of the estab-
lished Government — as when John Boies went among
the hostile Kikuyu alone and brought in food supplies
that saved from impending famine hundreds of Swahilis
and East Indians employed in building the Uganda Rail-
way, followed this stroke by pacifying and amalgamating
thirty-five hostile factions of the Kikuyu, and so firmly
held the rein on them that five thousand Kikuyu warriors
were equally ready to make war or till their shambas at
his command, ruled them with such undisputed sway
that he was actually made king of the Kikuyu; or as
when John Alfred Jordan went alone into the Setik and
brought into Kericho chiefs that had refused to come on

JOHN ALFRED JORDAN

"CLOSE THING THAT, RIGHT-OH!" 115

Government summons, and whom the Government felt
they had no force adequate to fetch, chiefs who had
never before entered a British post or camp.

And it was one of these men, no other than John
Alfred Jordan himself, we found at our Engabai camp
when we trekked down there January 31.

Above six feet in height, high-browed, with keen,
brightly intellectual face lighted by big, brown, dreamy
eyes that glint dangerous lights when lit by a spirit of
devilment or fury, beardless save for a wisp of dark
moustache and two little chin tufts that served to accent-
uate a set of lean, square jaws, with the long, slender,
delicate hands of an artist belied by a great reach of arm
and Fitzsimmons shoulders, usually slow and indolent of
motion but a cat in activity and a whirlwind in force
when roused, — Jordan silent about the camp fire, medita-
tive, in repose bore a remarkable resemblance to Robert
Louis Stevenson.

A native-born Englishman, of experience in our own
Far West, a trooper in the Cape Mounted Police through
the Transvaal War, when I met him Jordan had been
irovy hunting and trading all the way from the Boran
and Turkana country along the southern border of Ab-
yssinia away south far into German territory, and never,
I will stake my head, a wrong-doer at anything save in
venturing his life on long, lonely exiles far from all other
white men in territory which the Government had seen
fit to leave in its raw state of black occupation and to
declare "closed" alike to traders, travellers, and sports-
men, except under special license — like mine and not
easy to get, — never a wrong-doer except as he may have
engaged in just a bit of ivory poaching or in gathering

n6 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

wild rubber in "closed" districts, for which he has fallen
under official ban.

The chance meeting was fortunate alike to Jordan
and to us. To us he meant the best expert advice on
where to find elephant and how best to attack them; to him
we meant a source of much-needed supplies, for which he
never hinted a want but which we soon saw he lacked
and were glad to be able to make him take.

Himself a trespasser within the "closed" territory I
was then in by courtesy of Lieutenant- Governor Jackson,
we found Jordan accompanied by three warriors, superb
big fellows, and a boy, all Lumbwa; with no better
shelter than a grass hut of the sort natives soon throw
together for a night's camp; with absolutely no food
supply but native posho and a slender flock of sheep and
goats he had saved from the German raid of his camp;
unarmed save with two cartridges and an old, worn-out
.303 rifle, dangerous to none but him who fired it; with
no wardrobe but the brown cord shooting coat and frayed
khaki shorts and puttees he stood in; with his right leg
from ankle to knee raw of eczema (then and for months
previously) for lack of proper dressing and of which he
suffered unintermitting tortures without a murmur (most
luckily I had with me some oxynol which soon gave him
relief and had him nearly cured of eczema when we
parted), — nevertheless this man was richer far in hap-
piness and in perfect content with his environment and
lot, desperate hard as it might seem to others, than all
the princes of finance put together, happiest, doubtless,
for that the fine fibre of his mentality obviously held not
even the most fragile film of greed or envy.

So soon as he learned I was keen for elephant, lion,

-CLOSE THING, THAT, RIGHT-OH!" 117

and a bigger rhino than the N'gari Kiti kill, he volun-
teered his own services and that of his Lumbwa and
Wanderobo subjects in locating them for me. Nor did
he want nor would he accept any recompense; instead,
had I let him, within the first week he would have stripped
himself of his one available asset, his pathetically small
flock of fat-tailed sheep and goats — killing them for our
table and trading them to natives for spears, shields,
swords, and rare rhino horn knob-kerries, curios he
knew I sought. Chided for his prodigality and improvi-
dence, quick came the chap's philosophy.

"Well, you see anything else would not be playing
my game. As you find me here, I am living my life, the
life that suits me. Here, somewhere, in a quiet nook
of the African forest, I shall probably finish.

"Money? It means nothing to me. I've made
money, lots of it, in the past, and had no more good of it
I found real value in than I get here.

"I've been among the first in a dozen of the great
African mining camps, but never once pegged a claim.
Why? Not my game. I'm only a hunter and native
trader. Enough! A bit short of trade goods now, as
you see; not a scrap of 'Americani' or a single 'Buda'
bead left, thanks to the Germans, but I '11 get on, right-
oh! no fear.

"Towns? More than a day or t\vo of any of them is
hateful to me; 'doddering hermit,' I dare say some fools
might call me, but I love my kind well as any other —
your kind, fellows with the nerve to cut loose and go it
alone down here where even the thriftiest official has
never yet ventured to lead his Askaris after hut tax.

" Come along with me and I '11 show you such shooting

n8 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

as you never dreamed of — elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo.
Trek with me four or five days northwest into the Ron-
gana River country, and I '11 summon my Wanderobo and
Lumbwa friends to mark them down for us. I '11 show
them to you, right enough — then it 's up to you to get
them."

Travelling for weeks along and through forests we
knew to be haunts of the Wanderobo; always compelled
to be watchful for their dangerous pitfall game-traps;
occasionally stumbling across their temporary hut villages,
the only approach to a town these shifty, wandering
hunters ever build, but never seeing one of them; knowing
that travellers who have needed forest guides and have
succeeded in surprising, capturing, and binding any of
them, saw the awesome spectacle of creatures in man's
image fighting as furiously for liberty as madmen, frothing
mouths gnawing at their bonds like wild beasts; primitive
creatures whose only earthly fixed assets are their bows
and iron-tipped arrows, their rudely fashioned iron short
swords and narrow-bladed hatchets, and their two fire
sticks; their only food besides wild honey the wild game
whose own supreme cunning and stealth they are com-
pelled to surpass to enable them to make a kill with their
short-range weapons; roving dwellers in chill high alti-
tudes where their women and children go cold and
a-hunger when they fail to fetch in skins and meat, -
I expressed surprise and gratification that he could com-
mand the services of these matchless trackers.

"Wanderobo?" he replied. " Command them? Ra-
ther! Why, man, I've lived alone and hunted with
them for months at a time — gone hungry with them
when sudden shifts of the game occurred and their most

"CLOSE THING, THAT, RIGHT-OH!" 119

dreaded spectre, famine, brooded over every hut; set
their broken bones, dressed their wounds. Come to me ?
Just watch them — in a run. Only it may bother me a
lot to hold them when they find two strange muzungu
with me, for the Wanderobo are still wild and suspicious
as a buffalo.

"Of course, what with the pushing out of white
settlements, shooting safaris, and consequent thinning
out of the game, their forest life is growing harder and
harder every year, notwithstanding in one season only
six or seven years ago the Wanderobo of the upper
Maggori traded the ivory of no less than four hundred
elephant in Karungu and in German territory to Greek
traders.

"Indeed, that little band, Labusoni's lot, are, so far
as I know, the only group of the real Wanderobo elephant
hunters still left. Many have already amalgamated with
the Masai and are living in munyatas, among them even
a son of Labusoni, the old medicine chief.

"About eight years ago the most profitable industry
of Mataia, chief of the warlike Lumbwa, was capturing
Wanderobo and holding them for ransom in ivory and
raiding the Southern Masai for cattle and women, until
finally he had burned all the munyatas along and to the
west of the Engabai and the Masai were all speared or
scattered.

"Old Koydelot, chief witchdoctor of the Masai, was
one of the few who escaped to asylum among the Wande-
robo. There his ' medicine' was soon found to be so
strong he was able to win over a lot of Wanderobo, whom
later he amalgamated with a few Masai fugitives and
built the little group of munyatas between the Engabai

i2o IN CLOSED TERRITORY

and the escarpment, their flocks and herds chiefly the
fruit of raids of German natives.

"Only the old hard-shells, dyed-in-the- wools like
Labusoni, have clung to the old forest life.

"Labusoni? Eighty now, if he is a day, but every
sunrise sees him off into the bush with bow and arrows,
like the meanest of his followers, ears keen for the twitter
of a honey-bird or the whirr of a bee swarm, shrewd old
eyes scanning bush and grass for buck. Twice when
nearly starved he has gone with his family to his son, at
Koydelot's, but the monotony of munyata shepherd life
was too slow for him, and as soon as he was fattened up
a bit, back into the bush he trekked.

"My word, but one of Labusoni's old-fashioned
elephant round-ups was a sight !

"Of nights before such hunts he assembled all his
men about a small fire apart from the huts, after all the
women and children had gone to sleep.

"Then Labusoni began to chant the elephant song,
the Wanderobo war song, recounting the glories of the
chase — the craft and bravery of the boldest, the big
kills they had made, the need of their women and children,
the riches in beads and trinkets the ivory spoils would
bring, the stout bow strings their great back sinews
would furnish, the matchless shields and enduring sandals
their thick hides, the capacious pouches their great
bladders, the vast stores of fat with which Wanderobo
love to smear the outer as well as the inner man.

"On and on Labusoni would sing, voice rising shriller
and shriller, until his wild henchmen were wrought up to
a madness of which all eyes at the same time gleamed

"CLOSE THING, THAT, RIGHT-OH!" 121

savage fury and streamed tears, limbs trembled like
wind-shaken reeds, nervous ringers snatched sword blades
from their sheaths, and the grim shadows brooding ubout
the camp fire were set all brightly alight with the shimmer
of brandishing blades.

"Then, dropping his voice to quiet tones, Labusoni
personally addressed each in turn :

" 'Coboli! your father was no coward; in my youth
he loved to dodge under the bellies of the Big Ones and
stab them from beneath. If you are afraid, stay in your
hut with your women !

" 'Njunge! your father got none but sons; if you are
turned woman, go stalking little buck!

" 'Minyatuke! if the thought of the thunder of the
Big Ones rushing when they get your wind makes you
tremble, go follow the honey-birds!

" 'Sibibi! if the shrill screams of rage of the arrow-
hit weaken your finger tug at the bow string, stay fleshing
and dressing skins with the women !

" 'Weana! if the crash of falling forest to the charge
of a maddened herd quickens your heart beat, give your
women and children to a real man and go stab yourself
for a cur !

" 'Surbube! for you it should be enough to remember
you are son of Labusoni, who has missed no chance of a
kill of the Big Ones since his youth, and who will be
following them until his old carcass is tossed to the
fisi (hyena), the common end of all our people ! '

"The effects of song and personal appeal were so deeply
stirring of every savage instinct, that usually by the time
Labusoni was finished several of his men were so stark

122 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

frenzied mad, they were actually amuck, frothing at the
mouth, slashing right and left with their weapons, and
often many had to be seized and bound.

"Morning come, cooled from the night's excitement,
steady nerved of the past week's complete abstinence
from honey beer and women always practised as prepara-
tion for an elephant hunt, the band stole out of the forest
in single file, silent as ghosts, led by Labusoni, to a camp
three or four miles from the position of a located herd.
At dawn of the following day, two scouts made a thorough
reconnoissance and reported. If all conditions were
favorable, Labusoni handed to each bits of 'medicine,'
herbs and roots potential to stouten their hearts, built a
rude arch of green boughs and then led his men beneath
it to the chase, every ear strained for the first note of
Ol Toilo, the luck bird : if heard behind them, a guaranty
of safety for all; if to the right, or ahead, or unheard, a
sign of a good kill, but with casualties ; if on the left, such
a certainty of a poor kill and heavy losses of men that the
chase was for the day abandoned.

"Unless Ol Toilo forbade, on the column moved to
near approach of the herd, when it was halted and
Labusoni disposed his forces for the attack — the old
men holding the position they then occupied, the Hone
(uncircumcised youths) being sent to the right of the
herd, the elmorani (young warriors) to the left and the
farther side.

"In long grass the Wanderobo never attack elephant
— escape from attack by the wounded is too nearly
impossible. When found so placed, the herd was fright-
ened into a dash for the nearest forest by the yells and
skin-coat shaking of the outer flankers, while within the

-CLOSE THING, THAT, RIGHT-OH!" 123

wood their mates awaited the onrush, seventy-two-inch
bows bent, thirty-six-inch arrows drawn to their poisoned
tips.

"So, with keen-biting, empoisoned arrow flights and
frantic yells and skin shaking, for a time the herd was
turned hither and yon, from one line of flankers to another,
sometimes was so held for as much as an hour within an
area no more than a half-mile square, with individual
duels here and there between the wounded and one or
another of their enemies whom they had sighted and whom
they pursued with such fury and cunning of attack that
naught but a Wanderobo's wind and dexterity at dodging
and tree climbing left the pigmy assailant any chance at
all of escape.

"Ultimately, of course, the herd broke through the
attacking lines, and then the search for the dead began,
and runners were sent to fetch up the women and children;
and thereabout, upon and literally inside their kills, the
tribe camped until every last fragment of meat was
eaten, every bone cracked, and its sweet, fat contents
sucked.

"As high as thirty elephant have fallen in such a hunt
within an hour to one attacking party numbering no more
than forty men."

February i was for me a day of remarkably mixed
luck in the matter of shooting, for, after beginning with
six clean misses of a splendid water buck I much wanted,
at ranges from one hundred and twenty-five to one hun-
dred and seventy-five yards, I finished by killing a gray
Wildebeeste bull at six hundred yards and three kongoni
at three hundred to four hundred yards, each dropping to
a single shot. Two of the kongoni were left as lion bait,

i24 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

but with small hopes, for there game was too plenty to
leave it likely they would touch a cold kill.

All that night lion were heard about camp, two in the
direction the kills lay ; but when I went out to them at dawn
I found one kongoni eaten by leopard, and a mixed break-
fast party of hyena, jackals, vultures, and marabout
storks on and about the other, with lion tracks fresh in
the blood but no sign he had touched the carcass.

Wanting a better Wildebeeste than that killed the day
before, after breakfast Jordan and I rode away across
the level plain to a low range of hills south of us, and
there in those hills we saw such a sight as I never shall
see again.

Come to the slightly rolling hillcrest and into a bit of
open meadow perhaps two hundred yards square, to the
east of us extended far as one could see an area of open
scrub one could see into perhaps one hundred and fifty
yards, apparently empty of game save for two Wildebeeste
bulls that stood near its edge, one a fine one that later,
when I got to him, proved to have a pair of twenty-four-
inch horns, with a seventeen-inch spread.

At the first echo of my shot, hell broke loose behind
him, and out of the seemingly empty scrub poured a wild
stampede of game in thousands — Wildebeeste, topi, kon-
goni, zebra, Granti, Thompsoni, impala, wart-hogs,
giraffe, water buck, oribi — all racing in mad terror at
top speed and in an unbroken column twenty to one
hundred beasts in width and solid as a charging squadron,
a column that was ten to fifteen minutes passing us, first
and last, that left our ears deafened with its thunder and
that we estimated at anywhere from ten thousand to
fifteen thousand head.

"CLOSE THING, THAT, RIGHT-OH!" 125

Plunging northwest across our little clearing, their
sleek skins flashing back to the early morning sun every
bright hue Nature had clad them in, muscles heaving and
rippling beneath their shining hides, it was the sight of a
lifetime, and looked as if an all-comers' Marathon was on
and the entire animal kingdom started in it.

But, suddenly, while we stood in dumb wonder at the
stupendous spectacle, marvelling whether the racing pro-
cession would ever end, some scare or freak of the leaders
turned them back south out of the bush into which they
had disappeared, back into our clearing and straight
down upon Jordan and me as if they were fiends hunting
us to the death instead of mere fear-maddened beasts,
probably unconscious of our presence.

With neither time nor room to shift out of their path,
there was nothing to do but stand and shoot into the lead-
ers. And while only a matter of seconds, it seemed a
lifetime before we had knocked over three Wildebeeste
and five zebras and had turned the thundering tide slightly
west of us.

Then we caught our breath and stood another seven
or eight minutes in silent awe — of their numbers, their
beauty, their grace and speed, their terror-fixed eyes, their
heaving flanks and shrilling nostrils, as they pounded
past us, their nearer line never more than ten to twenty
yards from us, golden impala leaping high into the air,
only to disappear back into the angry animal wave be-
neath them like porpoise dropping back into a storm-
tossed sea, zebra galloping low and swift, kongoni bound-
ing now and then as if something had bitten them, grayish
black masses of Wildebeeste shouldering everything out
of the way, giraffe awkwardly side-wheeling along in giant

126 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

strides and towering above the heaving mass like ambu-
lant watch towers, pigs humping along as best they could
and ripping viciously with shining tusks when too close
crowded.

It was not until the tail of the tide had swept quite
out of sight into the south that either spoke, and then the
imperturbable Jordan remarked:

"Jolly close thing, that, right-oh! Looked like you
and me for pulp ! Wonder if there 's another flood on and
these beggars have heard Noah the Second's 'all aboard'
whistle?"

Then he strolled away to finish two of the wounded
and I over to the stiffening Wildebeeste bull, whose life
had bought us this incomparable spectacle, heart-broken
that I could not have had Radclyffe Dugmere beside me
with his camera.

IX

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER

TO avoid the terrific heat, after the rains stopped in
the lower valleys, which began blazing down upon
the Engabai plains shortly after dawn, we broke
camp at 3 A. M., February 3, reaching the summit of Isuria
at 8 A. M., and finding our donkeys safely arrived there
with the posho we had bought in Kavirondo. Then we
marched on to permanent camp at one of Jordan's old
bomas, where he had spent a year along with his Wande-
robo and Lumbwa, his cows, sheep, and fowls, trading a
bit, shooting a bit, idling and musing a lot, chief of the
native chiefs, happy as a king until down upon him de-
scended a collector and party of Askaris on a raiding search
for ivory they fancied he had but never found, when in
disgust he slipped away to another forest nook, and
lodged himself anew.

Dawn found us out after eland or roan, but by noon we
were back empty-handed — apparently the game had
shifted, for there was little sign about to the west of us.

In camp we found Mataia, chief of the Manga
Lumbwa, the stoutest vassal chief of Jordan's overlord-
ship, with Arab Tumo, his foremost warrior, and two
young elmorani, all come at Jordan's summons from their
country, a full day's journey north.

Jordan, Mataia seemed to worship — no other could
bear his gun or do him service, — while with his own kind
I soon learned no ruler was ever more despotic or cruel.

127

128 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Obedience to Mataia's command was instant or some
ghastly punishment was administered.

In Mataia's domestic relations, discipline was carried
to a highly effective if not a refined art.

If one of his wives brought him a great sufuria (cook-
ing pot) heaped with food that did not suit him, he made
her sit down and gorge the lot, followed by water in
quarts until she was sufficiently near bursting to give him
some confidence she might remember the next day how
he liked his victuals cooked. If another stitched his new
monkey-skin cloak badly, the least hint of her careless-
ness she could expect would be a warm application on
the naked stomach in the form of Mataia's heated sword
blade; while if one were suspected of too deep interest
in any predatory swain of the tribe, a slash from Mataia's
razor-edged sword blade, landed wherever his large
experience and fertile fancy taught him it was likely to
hurt most, usually served to protect the imperilled family
honor, at least temporarily.

At 2 P.M. we went out again after game, led by Mataia,
Arab Tumo, Arab Barta, and Mosoni as scouts and
trackers. At 5 p. M., having seen nothing but topi and
oribi, we were headed back toward camp, when Mosoni
sighted a lone roan antelope.

Instantly all of us dropped out of sight in the grass,
and Mosoni and I began circling for the wind. What
with the grass and thickly scattered mats of bush, stalking
was easy, so that we were soon well up within seventy-five
yards of the roan. With its head down and back to us,
I could not tell whether it was cow or bull, and therefore
I crouched awaiting a better view, well under cover from
it. But just then out of the tail of my eye I caught sight

ENTERING RONGANA BUSH ON RHINO SPOOR

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 129

of two splendid roan bulls off on our right to which, not
having previously seen, we were uncovered and which
were trotting up to their mate, who at the instant caught
the alarm and with them bounded behind bush, all out
of sight before I even got my gun to my shoulder.

Then, while I was engaged in invoking backhanded
blessings on this my second failure at a good chance of a
roan trophy, out from behind a bush bounded a great
roan beauty bigger than a water buck, and stopped
broadside for a second's glimpse of us on a little anthill
one hundred and seventy-five yards away, nose up and
head turned to us, graceful horns sweeping back almost
to its long sorrel mane, its red roan body glistening in
the evening sun like burnished copper. Scarcely was he
stopped, before I had a bead on his shoulder this time,
and at the shot he went off at the buck- jump that usually
spells a safe hit. A dozen bounds and he was out of
sight, but, taking his trail, we found him down and stone
dead one hundred and fifty yards from where he was hit.
While the horns were disappointing, only twenty inches
on the outer curve and six inches from tip to tip, it was a
beautiful head, and I had my roan.

Our camp near the old Jordan boma was one of the
loveliest on the entire trip. Wanderobo-colored a bit in
thought and habit, Jordan camped us in dense forest,
near a cold mountain brook, forest so thick one might
have passed within a few yards without seeing us, so
thick of foliage that it shut out the heavy night dews and
the burning midday sun, where it was warm of nights
and delightfully cool by day, the bush about us alive with
monkeys and forest guinea fowl, darker blue of plumage
and better eating by far than the sort found on the plains

130 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

After the experience of that camp, I never again pitched
our tents outside a forest when one was at hand to shelter us.

Nights about the camp fires with Jordan were never
dull. Some incident of the day or turn of the talk always
served to start him on some stirring tale of weird bush
happenings. That night he was particularly interesting,
notwithstanding a heavy electrical storm was on and we
were tightly shut in my tent, with no light but the dull
flicker of our pipes.

"Wonder how long it will be before the last of all the
strange animal and reptilian types native to Africa have
been taken and classified?" he mused.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Are there many
types left which have been seen but remain untaken?"

"God only knows how many," he replied. "Why,
it is only four years ago I killed my bongo and got the
first perfect bongo skin ever taken. Before that Deputy
Commissioner Isaac had gotten a piece of a bongo hide
from the Wanderobo and had sent it to the British Mu-
seum, but mine was the first whole skin ever seen by a
white man, and not so very many have been shot since.

" My word, but they are beauties! — bright red as an
impala, white of jaw, with nine white stripes over sides,
back, and quarters, short of leg but heavier of body than
a roan, with horns curved and shaped like a bush buck's
but tipped white as ivory. Mine was a corker, nine feet,
six inches from nose to tail tip, with twenty-nine and one-
half-inch horns. And it 's hard to get, the beggars are ;
never see them outside the heaviest forest or afoot except
at nights or at dawn or in the dusk. Indeed, I only got
mine after putting out a lot of Wanderobo for days and
days to beat up the forest.

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 131

"What did I do with him? Nothing, just nothing.
Helpful Government did it all for me. A new species
unincluded in the game license, when I got to the Eldama
Ravine Boma, Collector Foaker seized skin and head,
under instructions from Provincial Commissioner Hobley,
and they were sold at public auction at Mombasa for £50,
a little later reselling at £250.

"Odd ones! Why, there 's the okapi, sort of a cross
between a giraffe and a — I don't know what — perhaps a
'what is it.' Hyde Baker killed two in the Congo coun-
try less than three years ago, and one or two Germans
have taken them; that 's all.

"Then there's that infernal horror of a reptilian
* bounder ' that comes up the Maggori River out of the
lake the Lumbwa have christened Dingonek. And it's
real prize money that beauty would fetch, five or ten
thousand quid at least, and you bet I've got my Wan-
derobo and Lumbwa always on the lookout for one when
the Maggori is in flood.

"Ever see one? Did I? Rather! Mataia, the boy
there, and Mosoni were with me. It was only about a
year ago. Mataia vows he has seen two since ; can't tell
whether he really saw them or dreamed he did — like as
not the latter, for I know Dingonek were trying to crawl
into my blankets for weeks after we saw that * bounder.'

" How was it ? Well, we were on the march approach-
ing the Maggori, and I had stayed back with the porters
and sheep and had sent the Lumbwa ahead to look for a
drift we could cross — river was up and booming and
chances poor. Presently I heard the bush smashing and
up raced my Lumbwa, wide-eyed and gray as their black
skins could get, with the yarn that they had seen a fright-

IN CLOSED TERRITORY

ful strange beast on the river bank, which at sight of them
had plunged into the water — as they described it, some
sort of cross between a sea serpent, a leopard, and a
whale. Thinking they had gone crazy or were pulling my
leg, I told them I 'd believe them if they could show me,
but not before. After a long shauri [palaver] among
themselves, back they finally ventured, returning in half
an hour to say that IT lay full length exposed on the
water in midstream.

"Down to the Maggori I hurried, and there their
'bounder' lay, right-oh!

"Holy saints, but he was a sight — fourteen or fifteen
feet long, head big as that of a lioness but shaped and
marked like a leopard, two long white fangs sticking down
straight out of his upper jaw, back broad as a hippo,
scaled like an armadillo, but colored and marked like a
leopard, and a broad fin tail, with slow, lazy swishes of
which he was easily holding himself level in the swift
current, headed up stream.

" Gad ! but he was a hideous old haunter of a night-
mare, was that beast-fish, that made you want an
aeroplane to feel safe of him; for while he lay up stream
of me, I had been brought down to the river bank precisely
where he had taken water, and there all about me in the
soft mud and loam were the imprints of feet wide of diam-
eter as a hippo's but clawed like a reptile's, feet you knew
could carry him ashore and claws you could be bally
well sure no man could ever get loose from once they had
nipped him.

"Blast that blighter's fangs, but they looked long
enough to go clean through a man.

"He had not seen or heard me, and how long I stood

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 133

and watched him I don't know. Anyway, when I began
to fear he would shift or turn and see me, I gave him a
.303 hard-nose behind his leopard ear — and then hell
split for fair!

"Straight up out of the water he sprang, straight as
if standing on his blooming tail — must have jumped
off it, I fancy.

"Me? Well, I never quit sprinting until I was atop
of the bank and deep in the bush — fancier burst of
speed than any wounded bull elephant ever got out of me,
my word for that !

"That was one time when my presence of mind did n't
succeed in getting away with me from the starting post,
and when, finally, it overtook me, and I bunched nerve
enough to stop and listen, the bush ahead of me was still
smashing with flying Lumbwa, but all was silent astern.

"His legs? What were they like? Blest if I know!
The same second that he stood up on his tail, I got too
busy with my own legs to study his.

"Gory wonder, was that fellow; a .303, where placed,
should have killed anything, for he was less than ten yards
from me when I shot, but though we watched waters and
shores over a range of several miles for two days, no sight
did we get of him or his tracks.

"Ask Mataia, Mosoni, or the lad there what they saw. "

I did so, through my own interpreter, Salem, and got
from each a voluble description of beast and incident
differing in no essential details from Jordan's description.

Moreover, were it necessary, which I do not myself
regard it, the strongest corroboration is obtainable of the
existence in Victoria Nyanza of a reptile or serpent of
huge size, untaken and unclassed.

134 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

While in Uganda with ex-Collector James Martin in
November last, he told me it was a well-known fact that at
intervals in the past, usually long intervals, a great water
serpent or reptile was seen on or near the north shore of the
lake, which was worshipped by the natives, who believed
its coming a harbinger of heavy crops and large increase
of their flocks and herds.

Again, in December, while dining with the Senior
Deputy Commissioner, C. W. Hobley, C. M. G., at his
residence in Nairobi, the very night before starting on
this safari, in speaking of the origin of the sleeping sickness
Mr. Hobley told me that the Baganda, Wasoga, and Kav-
irondo of the north shore of the lake had from time im-
memorial sacrificed burnt offerings of cattle and sheep
to a lake reptile of great size and terrible appearance they
called Luquata, which occasionally appeared along or
near the shore; that since the last coming of Luquata
was just shortly before the first outbreak of the sleeping
sickness, the natives firmly believe that the muzungu
have killed Luquata with the purpose and as the means
of making them victims of the dread plague. Of the
existence in the lake of such an unclassed reptile, Mr.
Hobley considered there was no question.

The next morning found Jordan and three of my
porters down with bad attacks of fever. Butterenjonie,
chief of the pure Masai on the Amala River, had arrived
early on a summons from Jordan, and he and Mataia
were sent to the northeast into the forest to try to locate
the Wanderobo, while Outram and I went out on a search
for eland, and three parties were started off twenty-five
miles south to buy fowls and eggs from Korkosch, chief of
the Mongorrori — a longish jaunt to market, to be sure,

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 135

but still the nearest the country afforded where such
luxuries were obtainable. But the day proved a bad
one all round. Outram and I came in with clean guns
and Butterenjonie and Mataia returned without any
Wanderobo.

By the sixth all the invalids were able to travel again,
and we made a short four-hour march northwest, camping
on the edge of a great forest from which the Wanderobo
were seldom long absent, and again sent out searchers
for them. Here we were well within the great basin rep-
resenting the watershed of the upper Maggori.

On the seventh we crossed the Maggori, climbed a high
divide, and stopped on the Rongana, a tributary of the
Maggori, at a point Jordan had chosen for our permanent
elephant camp.

Toward noon Mataia returned bringing four Wan-
derobo, stalwart, wild-eyed fellows, sturdier than the
Masai but less massive than the Lumbwa, all armed with
heavy six-foot bows, knob-kernes, and swords shorter of
blade and broader of point than the Masai, all carrying
large leather pouches filled with honey, then their princi-
pal food, and clad in skin cloaks of Masai mode. About
our fire they stood for two or three hours, shifty-eyed,
alert for wonders and against surprise, answering only
in monosyllables.

There was no unbending or evidence of moderating
mistrust, notwithstanding Jordan's assurance my pres-
ence meant no harm, until I had given an empty cigarette
tin to one, an empty whiskey bottle to another, a sardine
tin to the third, a pickle jar to the fourth, and to each a
fistful of native tobacco and several pinches of black
pepper — to them munificence unparalleled that first

i36 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

cracked and then, finally, broke the thick ice of their
reserve.

Indeed, we were getting on fairly until I stupidly let
them listen to the ticking of my watch. This nearly
smashed our improving entente, for we failed entirely
to convince them the watch did not hold a muungu (god)
no Wanderobo had business with, nor were they again put
at ease until they saw it safely shut out of sight in my steel
clothes box and a saddle stacked atop of the box.

I was particularly keen to have one of their camps
moved over near ours, in order to get photographs of
Wanderobo on an elephant kill, if we were lucky enough
to make one — Labusoni's group if possible, but he, they
told us, was then a long day's journey away. So during the
evening Jordan held a big shauri with the four.

To bringing their women and children they were slow
to consent, but at last agreed, three to go to fetch them, one
to stay. Then again came a rub ; the man picked to stay
with us objected that he had a lot of honey marked that his
family needed; we would give them posho in its stead;
basi (enough), and he had to concur. Then he was re-
minded that he had at home a new toto he must go fetch,
as his wife would have all she could carry in the shape of
family gods and goods; we would send a porter to carry
the baby ; basi , and he gave it up.

That night, to my regret, I had to decree corporal
punishment. In fact, no man can run an African safari
and maintain order and obedience among his men without
an occasional flogging with the kiboko, a heavy, flexible
whip three to four feet long, cut from a single strip of
rhino or hippo hide.

Kindness the African native mistakes for fear of him.

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 137

Gratitude he is innocent of — perhaps because generations
of Arab dominion, tyranny, and cruelty, which must have
served largely to mould his character, never afforded him
anything to be grateful for. If bred of a warrior race, he
is apt to stick beside you in the face of a lion, elephant,
rhino, or buffalo charge, but only because to run would
stamp him among his fellows as a coward, unworthy to
bear arms. But pull one, drowning, from a river at risk
of your own life, or nurse him of wounds or through a
threatened mortal sickness though you may, such are
always among the first to shirk or desert you in time of
need. Flog one soundly for his derelictions and you
have an industrious, cheerfully obedient servant.

With us that far bluff and threats had largely served,
for I was reluctant to resort to whipping where it could
be avoided, but at last I found my threats had worn
threadbare.

The day's march was a very short one, and as early
as 8 A. M. we had left our donkeys at the Maggori, no
more than three miles back from our new permanent
camp, and had put our headman with them to hasten for-
ward the head donkey man, Mafuta, and his charges, for
the day threatened rain and that serious injury to the
posho and to several uncured head skins the donkeys
carried.

Two natives serving as headmen I had already deposed
for failure to keep our marching column safely closed up,
and the then incumbent was Marini, a six-foot-two Men-
yamwezi giant.

Hours passed, but no donkeys came. Three times dur-
ing the day I sent messengers to hasten them, the first two
returning with word they were unloaded and resting at

138 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

the Maggori. Late in the afternoon the third message
reached Marini and Mafuta, that if they did not bring their
men and animals on at once I would come back and kufa
(kill) the pair. This served to the extent of fetching them
into camp nearly two hours after dark with every load
drenched, for meantime a heavy thunder storm had broken
over us.

There were no questions, for apology or excuse was
impossible; the donkeys were fat and underloaded, men
and beasts fresh of several days' rest, the morning's
march to the Maggori only two hours, and yet both Marini
and Mafuta came in sulky, glowering, rebellious, their
men grinning over "doing" a muzungu out of a day's
loafing as they liked.

About the alternately blazing and spluttering fire,
for the foliage above our forest camp was still dripping of
the rain, sat a grim group of Wanderobo and Lumbwa,
the fire glinting brightly from their ivory-white teeth as
from the long blades of their straight-planted spears,
slicing huge mouthfuls of meat from the roasting sticks
before them with their sharp sword blades, and wolfing
down the meat like beasts, — apathetic spectators of and
a fitting frame for the savage punishment necessary to
prevent a general revolt.

"Mafuta, strip and chine (down)," my interpreter
called.

For an instant Mafuta glowered rebellion, and then
sullenly stripped himself of the tatterdemalion wreck of a
brown cord coat that began and ended his costume, and
dropped to the ground beside the fire, prone upon his
face.

"Marini, give him ten!" was the next order.

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 139

Fancying himself well out of it, Marini handed Mafuta
ten beauties, administered with absolute impartiality,
five on either half of the buttocks, under which the cul-
prit winced and writhed but uttered no plaint.

Marini stepped back and Mafuta bounded to his feet,
drew himself up, and saluted me with one hand while rub-
bing with the other whichever place still hurt most, a
smile on his face, and a cheerful " Thanks, bwana (mas-
ter) " he really meant, an ugly rebel converted to a lot
better opinion of his employer. Off he started, but only
to be stopped.

"Ewgoja (wait), Mafuta! Chine, Marini! Mafuta, give
Marini ten of the best!"

A shot would have startled the giant less, but down
he lay and at him Mafuta flew, with a vigor that could
have left no doubt in Marini's mind that Mafuta had
become a wholehearted and sincere convert to the beauti-
ful theory so few are willing to practise, that it is more
blessed to give than to receive!

Now come within fifty or sixty miles of Kericho, the
nearest Government police post and mail and telegraph
station, Outram started on the eighth on another try to
get my mail, with nine porters to fetch new supplies, and
followed by little yellow Pugge. Later in the day we
missed Rollo, the big setter, and concluded he had fol-
lowed Outram's safari.

Outram off, Jordan hurried away the three Wanderobo
to bring up their village and sent three Lumbwa, Arab
Tumo, Arab Barta, and Arab Sendow, out on a scout to
locate elephant. Then he, Mataia, Mosoni, and I started
out on a search for rhino, which there are found with horns
up to thirty-four inches in length and would therefore

140 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

make my N'gari Kiti twenty-three and one-half inches
kill look like a toto.

For two hours we skirted the edge of forest, looking
for the track of a big fellow returning from the night's
feeding to his customary morning nap in the bush; but,
finding no spoor except of some of moderate size, we spent
another two hours within the forest, on the chance of
sighting or hearing one worth while.

And it is downright breath-holding work, nothing less,
I believe, for even the coldest blooded man, poking along
forest paths strewn with fresh rhino and buffalo sign,
always in dusk like late twilight, sometimes along low,
winding tunnels through tangles of vines, sometimes
along high-arched aisles, always surrounded on all sides
by an eight-foot, broad-leaved bush suggesting the rhodo-
dendron and carrying great clusters of pale golden fruit
that look like bunches of lemon-yellow grapes, whose
dense green mass seldom opens you a view of more than
five or ten yards' distance and makes most awkward
going when one has to side-step a charge. There was a
fascination in it I could not resist, and yet whenever I
stepped out of the threat-holding shadows of the wood,
back, half-blinded, into the light and warmth of the sun,
I always found myself feeling much as I fancy a man must
feel who might have the luck to find himself climbing out
of his own grave. Perhaps older hands get used to it,
but I know I never did. And even Arab Tumo, who for
four hours stalked ahead of me silent as a graven image,
himself the vanquisher, with no aid but that of his own
good spear, of sixty rhino, I noted approached every path-
turn crouched and muscle taut for an instant shift.

Now and again the paths were widened into broad
bed chambers shaped by the big fellows, always in the

A HIDEOUS OLD HAUNTER 141

lowest, densest roofed bush where the floor was softly
strewn with bits of broken twigs, again dropped steeply
down to deep, clear, cold pools, richly tapestried round
about with the pale green of their moss-covered rock walls,
the baths rhino and buffalo love to cool themselves in
after a strenuous night afoot.

The first hour our only real sensation was a crashing
stampede of buffalo that caught our wind before we
sighted them — and evidently did n't like it, for off to the
left through the timber they raced.

The second hour we struck the fresh spoor of two very
big male lion and followed it from one path to another
until finally they left the paths and bore away into thickets
where we lost all trace of them.

Then we quit for the day and jogged back to camp and
a late luncheon, where we found the fourth Wanderobo
had slipped away unseen, whether for his honey or his
toto we could only guess.

With no word come of our elephant scouts, we spent
the next forenoon on the fresh spoor of two rhino, one a
splendid big bull by his footprints, the other a cow. And
it was an everlasting lot of sweet things the pair must have
had to tell each other. For five hours we kept after them,
rarely along paths, breaking through patches of bush
or corners of virgin wood only to wind away at random
through long grass, for all the world like two lovers blind
to all but each other and seeking seclusion from their
kind. Three times we heard them near ahead of us in
the rhododendrons, but before we could finish a safe
stalk they had moved on — and on and on they so out-
footed us until Arab Tumo decided they were moving
range to the Cabanoa Hills, and that it was useless to
follow them longer.

X

IN THE TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE

SHORTLY after we got into camp at 3 P. M., Feb-
ruary 10, at the end of an eight hours' tramp, five
hours on rhino spoor and three hours returning
from where we had abandoned it, our three elephant scouts
came in with the good news they had located a herd of
thirty to forty head on the Sambi River, west of the
Cabanoa Hills and about twenty miles from our camp,
probably ten miles south of the Government Boma of
Kisii. They had seen only two big bulls, both good tusk-
ers, but had heard the tree-smashing of a considerable
herd they estimated as stated.

So far, good; but the rest of their news was disap-
pointing. The elephant were in the worst possible country,
scarcely any forest except a few very narrow belts in the
valleys, and everywhere else, on bottom lands, hillslopes,
and summits, elephant grass and dry, brittle weeds twelve
to eighteen feet high that enshroud one like a mist and
make close stalking well-nigh impossible, and even more
difficult to wallow through, and more exhausting, than
snowdrifts.

Then, for me, more bad news; none of the Wanderobo
had come in — to my great disappointment and Jordan's
bitter disgust. Even the prospect of a possible elephant
kill and feast had not served to tempt the tribe from its
forest retreat, whether from fear I was some sort of Gov-
ernment official come to clip their liberty, or from the

142

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 143

deep-seated suspicion these wild-wood rovers hold of all
white men, we knew not.

That evening I found myself rechristened by Mataia.

Since his coming to camp I had observed him watching
my every movement, following me about, intently study-
ing my most trivial doings; why, I was at a loss to under-
stand. But, plainly, in one way or another I was a most
perplexing puzzle to him.

At first his manner rather hinted disapproval, but
after a three days' run of particularly good shooting luck,
whereby I had killed several buck, all the camp needed,
each with a single first shot and two at rather long ranges,
he seemed to melt a bit. Then had come the two wearing
days on rhino trails, fruitless, but persistently followed
wherever they led.

That evening I noted him having a long shauri with
Jordan, the substance of which was later^communicated
to me.

"Mapengo" (Jordan's native name, meaning "false
teeth"), Mataia began, "do all the very old white-haired
men like Kimerije work as hard to get meat in their own
country as he does here?"

"Who the devil is Kimerije? What do you mean?"
Jordan asked.

"Why, the Bwana Mkubwa [great master], of course.
His camp is full of food, and yet he hunts all the time for
meat like a starving Wanderobo for honey. Was he a
great elmoran [warrior] among his people when he was
young?"

"I 'm sure I don't know," Jordan answered.

."Well, / know," Mataia resumed; "he must have
been. Why, most all old men won't do anything but sit

144 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

about and eat and drink wembe, play with their women
and children, and wratch their sheep and cows. It is only
the gray-heads who have in their time been big elmorani,
terrors to their neighbors and sackers of big loot, who
can't long content themselves about their huts and
herds, but always must be slipping off into the bush with
their spears, wandering prowlers to the end like old
Labusoni.

"Yes, that 's it — not a doubt. Why, did n't you see
him laughing to himself when the buffalo were smashing
past us, and then again, after we heard the blow of that
old rutting rhino bull and were slipping up on him ? Yes,
yes; that 's the right name I 've given him, Kimhije."

"Kimerije?" Jordan questioned. "Whatever does
that mean in Lumbwa?"

" Kimerije?" Mataia answered. "Why it means the
elmoran who always laughs — that 's Bwana Mkubwa."

Mataia may have been right; perhaps I did laugh
in the forest at the stampede of buffalo and at the rhino
snorts, but if I did I now apologize to both buffalo and
rhino, for so far as my memory serves to recall my most
vivid impressions on those two occasions, irrepressible
merriment was not one of them.

Sunrise of February n found us already trekking
toward the elephant herd reported the night before by our
Lumbwa scouts. With us Jordan and I took a tent fly,
our guns and blankets, a six days' supply of food, my
boy Salem as cook, Mataia and six of his elmorani as
scouts, and eight porters, more or less of whom we hoped
to bring back loaded with ivory.

Our course was northwest, crossing the deep valley
of the Rongana River at the salt springs, an hour later

GEORGE IT. OUTRAM, MATAIA, PUGGE, AND WANDEROBO HUNTERS

A::A:S 'IV. MO (LUMBWA) CLIMBING TREE TO LOOK FOR ELEPHANT

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 145

fording the N'garoyo, thence through a corner of the
Cabanoa Forest, full of rhino and buffalo that kept us
dodging to avoid encounters which would compel us to
shoot and might alarm elephant — for our entire day's
march was through country which always holds more or
less elephant and which is swarming with them during
the big rains.

Altogether we were probably two hours in a forest
none but natives could have wormed us through without
using pangas (bush knives), leaving which Mataia led
us up the slopes of the Cabanoa Hills, toward their crest,
always in grass above our heads, in vines or bush, clam-
bering through the reeds or slipping into the muck of
swamps, sometimes for half an hour across dry, level
stretches so trampled by elephant during the rains that
we had to pick every footstep to avoid a broken leg,
likely to come of slipping into some grass-hidden hole
eighteen to thirty-six inches deep, stamped by huge
pachyderm feet. And hot ? Well, rather! It was then the
height of the dryest and hottest season of that region, less
than a month before the big rains were due to begin, and
from dawn to dark the sun poured down its hottest
furnace rays out of a sky that pitilessly denied one the
temporary shelter of a cloud, — burning rays never tempered
even measurably save occasionally by the smoke of great
grass fires then burning all about us, the work of reckless
Wanderobo and other native honey hunters. So that,
while starting from an altitude of 5,500 feet at our Ron-
gana camp and climbing more or less steadily toward
the 7,ooo-foot crest of the Cabanoas, and while it was
delightfully cool, almost chill, anywhere in the forest or
even beneath tree shade in the open, one could not walk

146 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

ten minutes in the sun before every stitch of clothing was
as sopping wet as if he had come out of a plunge in water;
and after an hour or two in the open, toiling across the
heart-breaking, heavy going that ever beset us, the crown
of one's head felt as if the sun were persistently boring a
hole in it that must be nearly through the skull, for it
hurt cruelly, and nothing relieved it but frequent liftings
of the hemlet.

For me, sound in wind and limb, it was bad enough,
but for Jordan every step must have been torture.
Indeed, throughout this hunt the man was a superb
object lesson in patient, unwincing fortitude and iron
will power. In his condition, I myself should have been
hunting a hospital or an undertaker in quick preference
to an elephant or any other game.

Scarce two months before up from a long siege of
black-water fever (his fifth attack, and most men do not
survive the third), down twice within a fortnight of a
heavy go of the plain garden variety of malarial fever
few there escape, thin and weak in all but will, his ban-
daged right leg improving but still more or less raw of
eczema from instep to knee, on he plodded or raced from
day to day with never a murmur, save an occasional
whole-souled curse of a stumble or a thorn.

Asked how he was getting on, always quickly came
back a cheerful "Right-oh, old chap! Never better!"

Fortitude! A fortitude that would have made me
utterly ashamed to complain in his presence of any bodily
suffering short of a broken neck, and I fancy one would n't
have time to say much about that.

Inflexible, indomitable, mandatory will, acting on

H7

fever-weakened joints, shrunken muscles, aching nerve
centres, that was all that drove the man along.

But then, if there are elephant in whatever realm
Jordan's death-released spirit finds ultimate lodgment,
out somewhere in the forest or the tall grass the big
tuskers love will be the most likely place to look for it.

About three hours out, Arab Tumo and Arab Barta
were ordered to scout ahead, and bounding through the
grass like scared impala, were lost to our sight after a
half-dozen jumps. Any movement of the herd from
their position of the day before must be noted, and it was
not at all improbable the elephant might have crossed the
crest of Cabanoas and be in our immediate front. Then
complete silence was required of the little close-moving
column, and on we moved as quietly as we could, climb-
ing, ever climbing, slowly, for though the slope was low
it was still enough to keep one's bellows busy.

At length, after eight hours' marching, during which we
had covered no more than a scant ten miles, ourselves
worn to a frazzle, Mataia camped us in a thicket beside a
tiny brook well up toward the top of the Cabanoas, beside
a brook so newly born in the bush just above us that it
had not yet found voice, its water clear as crystal and
cold as ice.

Down to and across the brook we had followed a
deep- worn buffalo path, full of sign made that morning,
and our camp was pitched literally within a big buffalo
dormitory, where by long use they had worn out wide,
smooth-floored chambers dimly lighted at midday by a
few of the more curious sun rays that contrived to peep
through the thick-roofing jungle.

i48 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

To tell the truth, had I been less tired, it is more than
likely I should have tried to seek lodgings more conducive
to sound, uninterrupted sleep — where less likely, as a
trespasser, to have a dispossession notice poked at me in
the form of a pair of forty-inch buffalo horns. But, really,
there was " nowhere to go but out" — out into the pet
lodgings of one sort or another of the Big Fellows, so we
were about as well off there as anywhere.

Not until nightfall did our scouts return — with word
the main herd had not moved from its previous day's
range along the Sambi, but that four big fellows, probably
the big bull scouts of the herd, were half-way up the
farther hillslope, headed toward a pass whose trails led
across our brook a few yards above us — apparently the
lead of a trek of the lot back to the Rongana salt springs
they never long leave.

It was a beautiful pickle we were in, a regular cul-de-
sac, camped as we were virtually athwart the main
elephant highway between the Sambi and their dearly
loved salt springs, any move in darkness of our camp and
its slender equipment utterly impossible without the
probability of neck-breaking or eye-blinding, and no
moon till near morning!

But there we were and there we had to stay.

Chill, almost bitter, though the night was, none but
the tiniest twig fires were permitted, just enough to fry
our meat and to boil our coffee and the men's posho-
heaped sufurias.

Absolute silence among the noisy porters was easily
obtained by placing among them a Lumbwa elmoran,
with orders to smash with his rungu (knob-kerrie) the

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 149

first noisy mouth, — orders he would have been delighted
to execute on the first offender.

Then, dead fagged of the tough day, and having
arranged a night watch of the camp, with orders to rouse
us quickly at the first sound of elephant, buffalo, or rhino,
J ordan and I turned in, — and never opened an eye till
called by Salem at dawn, the buffalo having, obviously,
lodged elsewhere, and the tuskers stopped somewhere
en route.

Before sun-up, Arab Tumo and Arab Barta were off
ahead of us. Shortly thereafter, coffee and a snack
gobbled down, Jordan and I followed. The wind barring
us from the pass, we were forced to climb straight for the
summit, two miles west of the pass, a smooth enough
climb, for large areas thereabouts had recently been
burned, but so steep it made tough, slow going.

While we were still a hundred feet below the summit,
our two scouts appeared upon it, stopping and resting
upon their spears, silhouetted against the clear blue sky,
still as ebony statues. Evidently their task was finished
— they had the elephant marked down.

Come to them, they silently pointed far down below
and off to the south of us, where for a time I could see
nothing but the landscape. Presently, however, my eyes
caught glints of sunlight off ivory, but that was all; the
huge bodies were indistinguishable in the high grass and
weeds about them.

And yet, looking dowrn from our lofty perch on Caba-
noas' crest, to right, left, and front of us rolled wave on
wave of what looked like gently undulating short-grassed
meadow land, the grass seeded and browning, slashed

1 50 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

here and there with the rich dark green of the narrow
strips of reeds and bush fringing marsh and watercourse,
showing few trees and no bush outside the timber. And
there at our feet lay a country so terrible that I could
wish my bitterest enemy no worse fate than to be com-
pelled to tramp five miles a day across it throughout
eternity.

From us the elephant were there about two miles
distant, on the southern slope of the pass we had feared
they might bring the herd through the night before, per-
haps four miles from our camp. To get the wind of them
properly for safe stalking, we must swing a good mile
to the west of them.

Down we started, down the steep, fire-blackened slope,
as fast as we could go.

For a mile, while crossing the "burn," we had open
going, but then we plunged into elephant grass and weeds
twice our height, into which everywhere Dame Nature,
in one of her less kindly moods, had artfully interwoven
a slender bush, half of whose stalks stood honestly upright
and bore great clusters of lilac-hued flowers, while the
other misbegotten half were bent and looped in the
grass at every angle best calculated to catch a boot-toe
and toss one a header or to enmesh a foot and wrench
or break a leg. And once in it, one instantly lost the
free control of all his functions but one, which happily
was stimulated to abnormal capacity — viz., the ability
to tell the infernal stuff what he thought of it, and to
tell it all.

Just before we left the burnt area, the elephant shifted
their position slightly and I had my first good view of them,
three huge brown backs, one towering above his mates to

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 151

magnificent height, evidently one of the rare prizes in
these late day hard to find east of the Congo.

The steep slope of the mountain ended in the narrow
valley of the Sambi, there timberless, in places marshy
and full of tall reeds and cat-tails, elsewhere dry save for
great pools trampled all about by the Big Ones, pools
where they love to pump up hogsheads of water in their
trunks and shower themselves.

Crossing the valley, we climbed its steep southern
slope until, off an anthill, we again got a glimpse of the
three, finding that they were near their first position and
that we then fairly had the wind of them, though it was
dangerously light and shifty. Then straight toward
them we walked, due east, another half-hour until we
reached the descent into a ravine on the eastern slope of
which they stood, perhaps sixty yards from its bottom
and one hundred and fifty yards from us. From our
elevated position the backs of the two larger ones were
plainly to be seen, with now and then a glimpse of the
smaller one. The big one was indeed a giant. Once his
biggest mate moved behind him and disappeared, while
No. 3 easily hid behind No. 2. At intervals we had in
turn first three, then two, and then only one elephant
before us!

There we stood on the hillside, in plain sight of them
but beyond their short eye-range, for probably fifteen
minutes, watching the great ears lazily swing back and
forth, like idle sails flapping in light air, and listened to
their rolling stomach rumbles that told of comfortable
surfeit, advising under our breath whether to attack or
wait till they made into the shade they were sure soon to
be seeking, — finally deciding to advance. It was a

1 52 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

chance we could not afford to lose, for before us were
three splendid bulls, the smallest one good enough to
satisfy most men.

After the first few steps of the descent we again lost
sight of them.

At the bottom of the ravine we passed a lone tree at
least sixty feet in height, and then began a slow and the
most silent possible stalk up the hill straight to them.
But before we had gone twenty yards we realized that
successful direct approach was utterly impossible — get
through the frightful tangle of grass and shrubs we could
not without swishings and cracklings of the dry weeds
their keen ears would be sure to hear before we could
hope to sight them and get a shot, and the instant they
heard us there would be a rush down to investigate the
intruders or away to lose them.

So back down the hill we crept to the tree and there
stopped, puzzled what to do, until twigs dropping on our
heads attracted our attention aloft, and there, perched on
a high limb forty feet from the ground, sat old Mataia,
gesturing violently that he had the elephant in full view
and beckoning us up.

"Up! up!" whispered Jordan. "Up quick, it's your
only chance of a shot."

It was twelve feet to the lowest limb and the main
trunk was nearly three feet in diameter, but off from the
main trunk, waist-high above the ground, grew a twin
trunk slightly inclining away from its mate. But what
then?

"Can't do it, old chap," I answered.

"You can; you can — off with your boots!" came
back at me.

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 153

And such is the power of suggestion that in no time
I had leggings and boots off, slung my .405 rifle over my
back, and managed to swarm up to a painful three-toe-
hold in the close V-shaped crotch. And there I am sure
I should have been stalled had not Mataia come to the
lower limb and reached me down his great black hand.
That, however, served me well, and getting a firm grip of
it I managed to wriggle my toes loose, when, with a joint
tug, I was swung up to a good grip of the limb, and with
Mataia still tugging, contrived to get on it.

There I expected to see the elephant, but they were
still invisible. So up another story I swarmed, that
stretch easily ten feet, but with the same result.

Meantime Mataia had slipped up to his first perch,
still another twenty feet, the last twelve feet up a smooth,
slender, perpendicular trunk I probably should never have
negotiated without the aid of Mataia, but with his power-
ful grip in mine, after a couple of swings entirely free from
the tree (Jordan later assured me, although I did not
realize it at the time) he hitched me up to where I was able
to get a grip with my left hand and help myself up to the
place he had been occupying.

There at last, forty feet above the ground and bal-
ancing myself with my feet on two wide-spread limbs
none too strong for my weight, I found myself at last
slightly higher than the elephant, sufficiently to have a
clear view of the upper fourth of their great brown sides
and a glimpse of their gleaming ivory.

Meantime, Jordan, my gun bearer, Awala, and all
the natives had swarmed up into the tree, Jordan stop-
ping on the lower limb.

My second gun, a 9 m.m. Mauser, was passed up to

154 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Mataia, within arm's length beneath me. Jordan had
my double .450, which I should have preferred to use but
that its sight was so fine I could not see it well when com-
pelled to shoot into the sun or within the shadows of
overhanging foliage.

Just then the elephant moved directly toward us, very
slowly, the big one in the lead, stopping thirty yards away
and offering a perfect brain shot. Keen to get the pair
I hissed down to Jordan, "Up, quick, and help make sure
of both."

"Blight it, I can't! Never could stand it up a tree!
Fool to come here! Wish I was down!" he hissed back.

"Well, well," I persisted, "can't you see them now
— can't you shoot from where you are?"

" Just d — d well can't, old chap," Jordan whispered.
"Sorry! But this cannon of a .450 would kick me clean
over into the Sambi. My word, but it 's hard enough
sticking here now!"

And then, just as I was advancing my gun for a bead
on No. I's head, off they started again, and in two or three
steps were beyond the range of view through the narrow
opening in the tree foliage before me, completely hidden
from sight ; and before I could make shift to another open-
ing and get them again in range, No. i was about eighty
to one hundred yards off, angling away from us, but mov-
ing at a slow walk.

Upon receiving my hard nose .405 behind his left
shoulder, a useful shot ranging forward, No. i trumpeted
pain and rage, stopped an instant, swayed, and then
broke into — whatever the elephant's pace is, faster than
a walk, offering me a fair broadside.

Frequently before my .405 had jammed in the mag-

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 155

azine, the second or third cartridge not coming up
level with the chamber — a dangerous freak I failed to
fathom or correct; and I should have discarded it long
before but for its superior accuracy over any other gun
and its hard hitting. For a fortnight it had been work-
ing like an angel and dropping in its tracks nearly
everything I pulled on, and therefore I had elected to trust
it that morning.

But by every ill token, tight and fast it jammed at the
first shot, compelling me to pass it down to Mataia and get
the lighter Mauser, and losing me invaluable time. How-
ever, I was lucky enough to get another shot into No. i
and one into No. 2 before they got out of range, up wind.

Meantime Jordan had dropped off his limb and was
tumbling through the grass, trying for an elevation where
he could get a shot. Then, just as I was scrambling
down, one of the Lumbwa pointed out two of the elephant
on our left, evidently circling west for the wind of what-
ever had pinked them, three hundred yards from my tree
but only about one hundred and fifty from Jordan. There
we each got two more shots, turning them back east
again, out of our sight.

Rapidly as I could I swung and slid to the ground —
to find that Mosoni, the Lumbwa elmoran who took my
boots when I pulled them off, had followed Jordan and
stupidly carried my footgear along. But just in the nick
of time to save me from going quite insane with rage,
Mataia called down and beckoned me to come up aloft
again. Sure they must be returning, and having dis-
covered, to my infinite surprise, that I had my climbing
clothes on that day, up again I went faster than before,
just in time to get in three good shots on a tremendous

156 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

big fellow who was circling past about sixty yards south
of us, swinging along at a fast pace, trunk up, sniffing for
our wind. The last shot badly hurt and stopped him
for a few minutes behind some bush, and then he was off
over a hill again, turned west.

And scarcely was this chap disappeared before bow-
ling along came another and smaller one, closely following
the trail of his mate. By this time, Jordan having gotten
back south of the tree and atop of the anthill from which
we had had our first good view of them, we each landed
two shots in him, when he, too, passed on west out of
our sight.

By the time I had gotten to the ground and resumed
the boots Jordan had sent back to me, I found myself
alone with my gun bearer, Mataia, and Arab Barta, all
of whom insisted that No. i, the giant I first hit, had not
returned and must be down or badly sick to the east of us,
holding that the two which had just passed us were the
two smaller of the trio. However, preferring myself to
follow the trail of those I knew to be hard hit, I sent
Awala and Barta on a circle to the east for sign of the miss-
ing elephant, and with Mataia hurried over to the trail.

There was their spoor plain enough, both heavily
blood-marked, bearing west for a mile and then swinging
south, still side by side for another half-mile, when one
turned west and the other continued on.

Which to follow was a puzzle, for so far, through the
long grass and over hard ground, I had found no foot mark
to tell which was the large one, nor did I know what had
become of Jordan. My choice was unfortunate, for
after continuing on south another hour the trail crossed
a marsh where I soon saw the footprints could not be

RESTING AFTER THE ELEPHANT KILL

-

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 157

those of the big fellow. So leaving Mataia to follow this
trail, I struck off southwest to try to cut the other, wal-
lowing through the grass, never with view of anything
but sky and hillcrests.

At length, when fagged to a finish by exhaustion and
thirst, drenched with perspiration, not another mile of go
left in me, just ahead I heard two quick shots from the
big .450.

Revived a bit and hurrying on, a couple of hundred
yards brought me to Jordan and a dead monster, the man
reclining limp aloft upon the beast's high-bulging side
and looking nearly as bereft of breath as was the quarry,
so dead beat that I thought he was going to roll off in a
faint.

Presently, however, he regained his wind and I got his
story. At the parting of the trails he had chosen this one
and pounded along it as fast as he could, passing two
places where the elephant had stopped and bled heavily;
at length, come just there near to but unseen in his ap-
proach, the beast caught his wind and charged him
straight, but luckily landing the best possible turning
shot — midway of its sensitive trunk — he was given the
chance of a shoulder shot that pierced the heart, of which
the elephant crashed to the ground and never again rose.

The monster was so enormous I never questioned he
was No. i of the three, until Jordan panted angrily,

" Just look at him, the infernal blankety-blank blighter.
Only one tusk, curse him!"

And upon pulling away the grass in which the lower
half of his head lay and finding the startling statement
true, I cried,

"Well, I am out of luck, then, for he 's no elephant

158 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

of mine — the three had full sets of ivory. Wherever
did he come from?"

"But he is yours, all the same," Jordan answered ; "he
has four of your small 9 m.m. and your .405 in him, two
in the lungs, one near the spine, one through his tummy,
and another that must have tickled his liver. Look for
yourself; they are all here. Beggar would have been
down in another hour at the most, for good — was groggy
when he came for me.

"His ivory beats me, too, for I'd have sworn all three
had full sets; thought at first he might have broken it off
to spite us, but you'll see the stump shows an old break,
six inches from the lip. Hope it hurt the old bounder a
lot! Just fancy! The infernal wasteful idiot! D — n
his eyes, anyway! Old enough to know better! Twelve
or fifteen hundred nice juicy rupees stuck in his face,
and he has to go and lose half of them!"

But, disappointing as he was from the commercial
point of view of an old professional ivory hunter, he was
nevertheless such a gorgeous trophy as I had never dared
hope for.

His good tusk was 6 feet, 4 inches in length and 17
inches in circumference at the lip, weighing 62 pounds,
and clean kutch (prime) ivory at that, while the stump
weighed 21 pounds, a total of 83 pounds, light enough
to be sure, but in height at the withers (measuring perpen-
dicularly and not along body curves) he stood 1 1 feet, 4
inches, while his length from tip of trunk to tip of tail
was 27 feet, 8 inches, his girth about the middle 19 feet,
the circumference of his front foot 60 inches, and length
of ear from base to tip 41 inches.

And precisely in these measurements lies a record the

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 159

oldest trekker across African veldt and highlands would
be bound to feel proud of; for on my return to Juja and
an opportunity to consult Rowland Ward's "Records
of Big Game," I found that my old Monarch of the Ca-
banoas is no less than the third largest elephant ever shot ;
only two have equalled him, and they beat him — one
shot in Abyssinia measuring n feet, 8J inches in height,
one shot near Wadelai measuring 1 1 feet, 6 inches, while
only two are recorded of larger foot measurement than
his of 60 inches. Thus, while modest in ivory, he takes
third place in the record of the giants of his kind.

Whether or not he was actually the real giant, No. i,
for certain, we never learned, but surely he must have
been. Awala and Barta returned late that evening and
reported they had found nothing but the two blood spoors
we had followed, while Mataia came in long after dark
and reported that he had followed the spoor of the smaller
elephant until from congealing, blood flow ceased, and
shortly thereafter had lost it in a maze of other tracks.

Lying about our fire that evening waiting for the
safari, for which we had sent Mosoni, to come up, when
I expressed my mortification at having to go on record
as having shot my first (and perhaps my last) elephant
from the security of a treetop, Jordan growled,

"Well, you can just stow all your worry about that,
old chap. Security? Hell!"

"Why?" I asked, in real surprise.

"Why? Why, blight me, but I'd rather face the
straight charge of the maddest old tusker than try to
swarm up that tree where you were! That 's one 'why.'
Another you 'd have found quick enough if this bounder
had got our wind — he'd have caught the tree trunk aloft

160 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

there where it 's slender and shaken you to a fall that
would have finished you without further trouble on his
part.

"And me, look at me for a beauty of an intellectual
wonder — knowing blighting well I can't climb, and get-
ting up there and having to stop just an easy reach for
him to get a good grip of me to pelt you with! And like
as not he 'd have tried it if he 'd gotten to us — they 're
cunning enough for it, my word for that."

Our camp that night was a tough one, the worst of
the entire safari, beside a swamp that provided the only
water, a few yards above a big pool that was a regular
watering of the main herd; but we lacked energy to seek
a better.

All our natives were ranging the next day until mid-
afternoon, some on a search for the wounded, others
trying to locate the main herd, but none were successful.
Both Jordan and myself were still too tired and sore to do
more than struggle to the crest of a high hill, about two
miles from camp and to the west of the Sambi, for a
look about with the glasses — which proved as fruitless
as did the work of our men. On all sides of us almost
as far as the eye could reach rolled tall, sunlit billows and
dim, shadowy hollows of elephant grass that may have
held hundreds of elephant but to us showed none.

Far to the west across the russet sea of browning
grass tops, a broad belt of dark green represented the
dense forest area where Outram and I had made our debut
in pachyderm society a month earlier; and more likely
than not the giant trophy that now lay powerless beside
our camp was the same magnificent bull y/e were stalking
when, all unwitting, we worked our way quite into the

WATCHING THE GATHERING VULTURES AND MARABOUTS

THE AUTHOR AND JOHN ALFRED JORDAN IN RONGANA CAMP AFTER THE

ELEPHANT KILL

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 161

middle of his leafy harem and into two hours of rather
unusual anxiety.

On a few miles to the west rose the lofty heights of
Toroni's rocky aerie, and nestling near the foot of its
northern flank lay the new sleeping sickness boma and
hospital we had found Deputy Commissioner Northcote
building on the Oyani, while away in the south undulated
the blue ridges that separated our "Looseandgiddy"
camp from the lower valley of the Maggori River.

We returned to our Sambi camp about three o'clock
to find still unfinished the task of removing the elephant's
four feet and cleaning them of all bone and flesh, and the
cutting out of a four-foot square of hide from his ribs.
In fact, the extreme difficulty of incising the tough hide
anywhere with ordinary skinning knives was such as to
leave it hard to realize how Carl Aikley, of the Field
Columbian Museum, and R. I. Cunningham, working
by themselves with no better implements, had succeeded
at all in completely skinning an elephant in one con-
tinuous performance; harder still to credit — what is
nevertheless the fact — that they finished the work in
eighteen hours.

Immediately upon return from their day's scouting,
our Lumbwa began a savage, wolfing feast upon the
titbits of the carcass that lasted throughout the night.
The huge, marrowless, but porous and fat-exuding leg
bones were soon hacked out by the heavy short swords
and sucked dry of their sweet oily contents, the rich
stores of fat stowed fore and aft of the high bony central
dome of the skull sacked and consumed, great hunks of
meat slashed out and in a few minutes gobbled down,
raw hunks of a size, whole, that one would swear must

162 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

choke even the widest and most elastic python throat or
surfeit the emptiest lion.

Ivory-white teeth, set in jaws powerful as a hyena's,
tore and disintegrated the tough, raw flesh as easily as
civilized incisors and grinders consume the most tender
fillet.

And when, shortly before sunset, an abdominal inci-
sion was made to reach the great masses of fat about the
kidneys, an opportunity was given me for a photograph
never before taken and a sight probably never before seen,
unless by a professional elephant hunter. The moment
the abdominal wall was punctured, high up on the ele-
phant's side up out of the opening rose an intertwining,
writhing mass of colossal intestines, each at least eighteen
inches in diameter, all tightly distended with the gases
of dissolution until, beneath the bright rays of the declin-
ing sun, they reflected every brilliant and soft neutral
tint of an opal, rose up and up, six feet or more above the
carcass, ever slowly gliding and writhing, as if one had
before his eyes a gigantic Medusa head crowned with a
mass of close-knotted, tortured python — a sight so
weirdly ghastly it by turns impelled one to fly from it
and held one entranced by its sinuous, serpentine move-
ments and more than serpent radiance of brilliant varie-
gated color.

Nor, night come — instantly the hurrying equatorial
sun had dropped, like a lump of lead, below the horizon —
was more than the mere tough edge of their voracious
animal appetite dulled; for directly the Lumbwa had
staggered into camp, each with shoulders laden with the
last pound of the coarse-grained red meat he could carry,
live coals were niched from beneath Salem's bubbling

IN TALL GRASS TUSKERS LOVE 163

pots, fires started, long sticks cut, and countless yards of
flesh set smoking, drying, roasting. And there about
their little fires throughout the livelong night crouched these
gorging Bantu gluttons, — creatures risen above the stone-
age men that lurk like rude, hideous, hateful caricatures of
humanity in the dim dawn of history, only the one short
step gained by stumbling on the knowledge that bits of
iron-stone reddened in fire may be beaten into blades
trustier to kill than any wrought of obsidian or flint.
There about their fires they lolled, ever stuffing meat away
inside them, God alone knows where, and yarning of
past kills of the Big Ones and like luxurious feasts that
had served to mark the reddest red-letter days of their
hungering, perpetually hungering lives; for the African
savage knows no wrant save hunger for food he may not
always easily satisfy.

The next morning found us still half crippled, Jordan
with his poor game leg rawer than ever, I with arms and
shoulders still so sore of my tree climbing that it was agony
to try to level a rifle. But move \ve had to, for fires started
by reckless Wanderobo and Kisii honey hunters were
sending up great smoke columns all about us that, unless
we hurried, might force us into wide detours from a direct
return to our Rongana camp. Luckily the elephant
tusks had by that tine loosened to an extent that enabled
our men to get them out, after three hours' sharp work.

About 8 A. M. I started Jordan and the safari for the
Rongana, and then went off myself with two natives on
another four hours' circle of the Sambi basin in hope of
finding some trace of our wounded, which it seemed
possible might be driven back upon us, if they were still
able to travel, by the fires.

164 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

But this scout proved as fruitless as its predecessors,
and so, shortly after noon, I climbed the Cabanoas and
began the descent toward the Rongana.

It was a terrible day, the heat of the sun heightened
by that of the fires we often had to skirt closely, the air
suffocating with smoke and falling cinders that kept eyes
streaming and throats parched and half strangled.

About mid-afternoon, in a forest I chanced on a sec-
tion of our safari which had been cut off from the others
by a fire that had swept down upon them and cut the
column in two, forcing the rear lot into a wide circle to the
south to escape the advancing flames. In fact, had a high
wind risen that day we should never have won through
without more or less serious casualties.

It was long after dark when I stumbled into the
Rongana camp, black of the smoke as any Bantu, returned
to the supreme luxury of a chance to take boots and clothes
off and have a bath; for during the four nights of our
absence the Big Ones, — elephant, rhino, and buffalo, —
were so thick about us, and there was so much likelihood of
a stampede through or a charge of our camp by some of
them, that we had not ventured even to remove our boots.

For Jordan these four days across the Cabanoas were
near being his finish. I found him, arrived a scant hour
ahead of me, flighty of a burning fever and gasping for
breath from what seemed to be an acute attack of pneu-
monia, that took four days of close nursing and about all
the quinine, brandy, and mustard our scanty stores
afforded to knock out of him.

XI

A MIGHTY SPEAR THRUST

WHILE awaiting Jordan's recovery from the illness
brought on by our elephant hunt on the Sambi
River, Nabrisi, brother of the Wanderobo chief,
Labusoni, and Bele, another of his men, came into my
Rongana camp and brought me a lot of fine honey and
Jordan a batch of lame excuses why the Wanderobo camp
had not joined us as promised. Summed up, it was plain
these shy forest folk were distrustful of the stranger.

Nabrisi was such a smiling, gentle, kindly faced soul
that, despite his black skin, semi-nakedness, primitive
arms, and reputation as a reckless elephant hunter, it was
hard to think of him except as a most amiable and cour-
teous old gentleman. Bele, on the contrary, was an ideal
type of the Wanderobo elmoran, middle-aged, severely
dour of visage, gashed across the forehead with the scar of
a sword cut deep enough to lay one's finger in — a wound
no white man could have survived; and never once dur-
ing the week they were with us did I see the flicker of a
smile on his face, never once to my knowledge when he
was near did I escape a continual, suspicious scrutiny
of my every movement from great eyes wide, unblinking,
and glaring as those of a buffalo at bay. Round the camp
fire at the door of my tent they lolled all day, he and
Nabrisi, and beside it they slept at night, on beds primitive
as the nuptial couch of Adam and Eve. Each scraped
a shallow saucer-shaped area in the soft loam, cleared it

165

1 66 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

of sticks and stones, gathered slender branches of a
broad-leaved tree and stuck the butts horizontally into
the earth rims about the saucer in concentric rings, until
the centre held a thick mat of leaves upon which each
stretched himself naked, with feet to the fire and monkey
skin cloak rolled up for a pillow, with no cover from
the chill morning breezes that for two hours before dawn
always in those altitudes made me glad to pull up over
me an extra pair of blankets.

At Jordan's orders Nabrisi and Bele made a three
days' circle through Cabanoa Forest and the N'gararu
Hills for fresh elephant sign, but on their return they
reported the country afire everywhere and the elephant
moved west and north into the loftier Kisii Highlands.

February 20, as soon as Jordan was able to ride, I
marched the safari twelve miles west to a camp on Soiat
Hill, near Mataia's house; and there Outram joined us
shortly after our arrival, after a hard eleven days' march
to Kericho and back, with a great mass of mail, the ac-
cumulation of the last eleven weeks, and with New York
papers of as recent date as January 9. The round trip
this mail had cost was a trifle under two hundred and
fifty miles, a longish jaunt to the post, but still our nearest.

Nor was it altogether a welcome mail that came, for,
while much remained undone which I had hoped to do
before leaving Africa, it brought advices that left me no
alternative but to cut short my safari and book for an
early sailing from Mombasa for New York. Otherwise
it had been my hope to swing north from Kericho to
Eldama Ravine, down Molo River to Lake Baringo for
greater Kudu, thence east down the Guaso Narok River
past Rumuruti Boma, thence round the north and east

A MIGHTY SPEAR THRUST 167

flanks of Mt. Kenya, and back through Ft. Hall to
Nairobi, a circle on which I should have been pretty sure
to get the two more elephant to which I was entitled
under my license.

And the abandonment of the trip around Kenya be-
came to me all the more regrettable when, the following
evening, porters returned from a trip back to our old
Rongana camp to fetch up several loads we had been com-
pelled to leave behind (safely walled up, I had believed,
in Mataia's tall and stoutly built cattle boma) with advice
that hyena had scented out and stolen two of my elephant
feet. Since three of the porters were men we had been
compelled to chine under the kiboko a few days before,
I did not believe them, but fancied they had thrown away
the feet out of revenge. So the same night I forced them
to march back under guard of Arab Miner and Mosoni,
two of the Lumbwa spearmen, with orders to give them
no rest until the feet or proofs of their destruction were
found. Late the next afternoon the two Lumbwa came
back, spear-prodding ahead of them the sullen porters,
bringing me a double handful of fragments of the great
horny elephant toe nails, plainly showing marks of hyena
teeth. The feet had been completely cleaned of all bone
and meat, "cured" by rilling them with ashes to absorb
and neutralize the fats, until nothing remained but the
hard dry leg hide, flinty soles, and horny nails; and yet,
incredible as it may seem, every scrap had been eaten
by these insatiable scavengers except the fragments
brought me. Most fortunately, however, they had taken
one front and one hind foot and thus had spared me one
of his superb front sixty-inchers.

Noon of the twenty-second found us fourteen miles

i68 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

north of Soiat, after a hard six hours' march toward
Kericho over timberless long-grass country so steeply,
deeply rolling that every two or three miles included a
seven hundred to eight hundred sharp ascent and descent.
There we were met by Arab Tumo, who had left us a few
days earlier, with word there were great herds of elephant
within a mile of his house and only four miles from our
camp, but in long-grass country where it would be almost
impossible to get at them. And no more had we gotten
the news than down upon our stream-side camp from the
southwest marched a big safari which we soon learned
was that of Lady Colville and her son. Approached,
young Colville and his safari leader inquired if we had
seen elephant, to which we diplomatically replied that
we had men out hunting them. Then they told us they
had been out for three months, first in the Laikipia
country to the north and later hereabouts, but had seen
no elephant, and then were marching for Limirick Plains
in the eastern Sotik country for work on a general bag.
However, since they camped a scant mile beyond us, we
fancied they were as foxy as we were — had news of the
herds Tumo had reported and were figuring to strike
them before we could, which of course set us plotting to
get in ahead of them. Toward mid-afternoon our chance
came, when a heavy grass fire swept between our camp
and theirs, its thick smoke clouds drifting south before a
strong north wind.

Quickly loading a few men with food and blankets
and leaving all our tents standing, we slipped away in
the shrouding smoke and got well across the first tall
summit before the smoke lifted. Later we learned our
precautions had been entirely unnecessary, for we were told

A MIGHTY SPEAR THRUST 169

by the Sotik boma chief that the same morning the
other safari had sighted the main herd, and had then
retired because, they claimed, they saw none but small
tuskers.

That night we camped on a steep hillslope near Tumo's
and within a few hundred yards of where the elephant
had been feeding earlier in the day. There we were
about midway between the Sotik and Kisii bomas and
in the extreme northeast corner of the range of the big
Kisii herd.

It was an elephant- grass country everywhere, but
even worse to work in than the Sambi, for the hills were
much more precipitous, there were absolutely no trees
to climb for a look about, and every valley was a broad,
boggy? reedy swamp trampled by elephant into pit holes
until nearly impassable to us.

At dawn we were off. In the first swamp we struck
we jumped two rhinos, but they scurried away through
the reeds. Two hours later, from an obligingly placed
anthill upon a tall summit, upon a lower shoulder of the
same hill about a half-mile below us we caught a glimpse
of fourteen elephant, while across a deep valley and swamp
and on a hillside probably two miles away, appearing
and disappearing brown patches and glints of ivory
showed us a great herd of anywhere from one hundred to
two hundred head.

Had the day been clear the sight would have been
superb, well worth the entire trip from Nairobi, but the
air was so hazy with smoke the elephant looked like dim
spectral shapes rising from the slope of a mighty billow
of a faintly moonlit sea.

Already the sun was getting very hot, for neither

iyo IN CLOSED TERRITORY

clouds nor smoke seemed materially to lessen the intensity
of the equatorial sun rays — and both herds were on the
move for cool quarters for their midday nap, headed, one
lot north and the other south toward a broad swamp
that lay eight hundred feet below them in a valley trend-
ing west toward the Kuja.

They actually seemed a gift, did those elephant — or
rather a chance at one or two fine bulls of the herd seemed
a certainty ; for while we could not follow directly on the
spoor of the nearer herd without giving them our wind,
a leisurely wide circle to the west and descent to the
swamp, and a careful stalk up it through its tall rushes
or along the slopes that dropped steeply to its margin,
seemed sure to bring us to close range of the united herds,
floundering about among the lily pads and reeds, shower-
ing themselves with their trunks or boring into the dark
green masses of the high, dank marsh growths for shelter
from the sun.

So off the anthill we stepped and down the precipi-
tous hillslope started, heading northwest, the tall, wiry
Lumbwa, Arab Tumo the rhino slayer, in the lead, I
next, and the rest trailing along behind. Of course, the
moment we descended from the anthill the ghastly gray
leaves and stalks of the tall elephant grass closed about
each tight as a winding sheet, and shut out view of every-
thing except the patches of sky that now and then appeared
through the rustling russet roof above our heads. Each
step was like passing from one tight-shut chamber to
another, tight-shut as a sodded grave, for the gray stalks
were ever springing up behind one with a sinister, ma-
licious suddenness and vigor and with rasping swishes
that sounded in my ears like a hoarse, gloating, trucu-

A MIGHTY SPEAR THRUST 171

lent whisper, — "You are ours, ours, OURS! Forever are
you ours!"

Indeed, the fevered imagination of the ^worst dying
sinner could never people the dusky shades of Hades with
more terrible shapes than the horrors and perils one knows
must always be crowding close about him while plunged
into that worst of all terrestrial infernos, a region of ele-
phant grass. They are there all about you, scores of the
predatory, with any of whom a chance meeting means
your death or theirs. At your very feet a poisonous
cobra or mamba may be coiling to give you a coup-de-
morte; within reach of your rifle muzzle a great python
may be suppling his mighty folds for the toss of a crush-
ing hitch about your neck; rhino, buffalo, lion, or ele-
phant love and always haunt such convenient ambush,
and may at any instant catch your wind and be literally
upon you before you have time to throw your rifle to
shoulder.

Indeed, no form of duel to the death, fought out in
utter darkness, could hold more terrors to try the stoutest
heart than a man adrift in a sea of elephant grass finds
himself a prey to.

Nor were we that day to be without our bit of expe-
rience of the hostile activities of its dangerous denizens.

While modest and refusing to talk at all of his own
exploits, the chief Mataia and other Lumbwa repeatedly
assured me that no less than sixty rhino had fallen to
Arab Tumo's spear thrusts, each killed by him alone in
single combat. While the story appeared incredible,
large color of truth was lent it by an incident of the
morning.
. While about half way down from the summit to the

172 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

swamp, with Arab Tumo marching ahead of me, and,
although no more than six feet in advance, quite out of
my sight, suddenly I heard just beyond him the swish
and crashing of some mighty body, and jumped forward
to Arab Tumo just in time to see a giant rhino, which had
been crossing our line of march directly in his front, start
to swing for a charge up our line, great head shaking
with rage, little pig eyes glaring fury.

It was all over in a second, for when I reached Tumo
they were in arm's length of each other, he crouched with
spear shortened, and, in the very second of the rhino's
swing to charge, with one bound and mighty thrust he
drove his great three foot six inch spear blade to entry
behind the left shoulder, ranging diagonally through the
rhino's vitals towards his right hip, and burying it to the
very haft!

Followed instantly a shrill scream of pain, a gush of
foam-flecked blood that told of a deadly lung wound, and
then the monster wheeled and lurched out of our sight
down hill at right angles to our course, Tumo's spear
still transfixing him.

So suddenly sprung and so fascinating was the scene,
so like a single-handed duel of the old Roman arena
between two raw savage monsters of the African jungle,
biped against quadruped, that it never occurred to me to
shoot, although I might have chanced a snapshot over
Tumo's shoulder.

And there Arab Tumo stood quietly smiling, his pulse
apparently unquickened by a single beat, signing for
permission to follow and recover his spear!

About an hour later, just as we were about to enter
the swamp, he rejoined us with the fragments of his spear,

A MIGHTY SPEAR THRUST 173

the blade broken free of its long-pointed iron butt, which
was bent nearly double by some wrench in the ground
the rhino had contrived to give it to free his vitals of the
gnawing blade! And, once free of the spear, on he had
gone — Tumo had not seen him again.

Of the elephant we had heard nothing, and, of course,
had seen nothing since leaving the mountain top. But
if they had held their course, as we felt sure they had, we
should there have been about a half-mile below them.
So we began a cautious stalk up swamp, silent as we
could make it, for they might be moving toward us.

Most of the way we had to wade along the edge of
the swamp, sometimes jumping, sometimes slipping into
pot holes up to the middle, for everywhere the Big Ones
had been trampling. Nor did the water matter, for in
elephant grass one never gets a breath of breeze and when
we had reached the swamp we were as wet as if we had
rolled in it. Both to north and south we found the
swamp lined with heavy thorn bush that did not show
above the heavy grass tops, but with stems thick as one's
wrist, utterly impenetrable except along an elephant
path or where occasionally they had trampled it into a
tangled springy mattress over which we could occasionally
pick our way, bobbing up and down as if on a spring
board, five or six feet above the ground.

On we toiled and yet on, expecting every step to sight
the gleam of ivory or a flapping ear, to hear a "tummy"
rumble or a trumpet, on, for three weary hours, until we
had thoroughly scouted the swamp to its head — only
to find that by some ill chance both herds had swerved
elsewhere, probably northeast; either that or they had
doubled in behind us as we descended the mountain.

i74 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

It was absolutely heartbreaking, but there was nothing
to do but drag ourselves to the crest of the nearly per-
pendicular hill that rose seven or eight hundred feet to the
northeast above the top of the swamp, in hope of cutting
their spoor or sighting them from the summit.

It was like swarming up a giant Gothic roof, first bat-
tling for a bit of opening in the grass and bushes and then
grasping grass and weeds and pulling ourselves up into
it, — labor so exhausting and taxing on our lungs we were
over two hours making the ascent. And, once come there,
we soon found our work had been for naught ; neither on
the summit nor on the slopes could we find an anthill;
nothing could we see but the sky and the hell of weeds
that shut us in. Nor was there another ounce of energy
left in us, for it was then at least an hour past midday and
we had been marching and stalking since dawn, eight
hours or more, through the most laborious going, I be-
lieve, the entire world affords.

Then to make our situation worse, our water bottles
were empty; in our keenness to get to the elephant we had
forgotten to fill them before leaving the swamp. So, after
sending three Lumbwa off to try to find the elephant and
two more to fetch up our camp to the margin of a swamp
we knew must lie at the bottom of the valley to the east of
us, we cut with our knives little chambers among the grass
roots and into them crawled, and there lay sheltered from
the direct rays of the sun for three hours, until our Lumbwa
returned with word the elephant were gathered in a swamp
three miles northeast of us, from which they might be
moving back toward evening past or across a big open
"burn" that lay a mile below us.

About 5 P. M. we got down to this "burn," and shortly

A MIGHTY SPEAR THRUST 175

thereafter our safari reached us and we there pitched
camp, among some anthills, from which we could get a
bit of a view about. But nothing did we see, until, just
at dusk, our watch reported two big bulls about a thou-
sand yards away, heading straight for our camp. Too late
to gain anything by trying to go out after them in the
gathering darkness, our fires were extinguished, Outram
stopped in camp, Jordan took stand two hundred yards
to the east, and I the same distance west of camp on the
chance the bulls might come smashing along writhin range.

And there on his post in the moonless, murky night
and down among the soft, gray-black ash of the newly
burned herbage, each crouched with ready gun till near
midnight, when, having heard nothing, I stumbled into
camp, called in Jordan, and we had the fires rekindled and
rolled up in our blankets.

Such is the luck of the game. Although they should
not have gotten our wind, perhaps they did. Anyway, off
they had turned, a scant three hundred yards from camp,
off into the southwest, had those two bulls, and after them
had softly trailed the mighty herd, WTC soon the next morn-
ing learned, two hundred or more strong. And along the
broad track they had trampled we followed until, near
noon, come to a great "burn" across which we could see
for five or six miles, I realized they were settled down to
a longer trek than I had time left to follow them on, for
the next day at the latest I must press forward on the
march through Kericho Boma to Lumbwa Station on the
Uganda Railway.

Thus and there, in the Kisii Highlands, virtually ended
my safari and shooting "In Closed Territory."

A hard six days' march got us across the Sessi and

iy6 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Isogu Rivers, two mountain torrents that within a fort-
night the "big rains" would make impassable, by any
means, for weeks, and into Lumbwa Station. It was
a toilsome week over steep, rolling, lofty mountain con-
tours, relieved only by a most delightful night at Kericho
Boma, where, in my host at a most capital dinner, Deputy
Commissioner L. A. F. Jones, I met a man who knew so
many of my home club mates it almost seemed as if I
were dining before an open window overlooking Madison
Square of a softly sibilant May night when the birds are
love-making in the scant shelter of the young leaves. In
stalwart Angus Madden, commanding the Boma Askaris,
I found a ripping Irishman with a heart his big body
must have vast trouble holding and a brogue almost as
rich as the wit it adorns; and in Bryan Brooke I came to
know a giant, brawny young Scot, in whom generations
of the gentlest breeding have contrived to engraft the
simpatia and imagination of a poet upon a warring, ad-
venturous spirit that no influences can serve to long hold
away from the wilds.

Then came Lumbwa — the railway — after a total
safari trek, what with marching and shooting, that cov-
ered something over twelve hundred miles; the entrain-
ing of my trophies and myself for Nairobi, and the leav-
ing dear old Outram (quite the best camp mate of all the
many I have known, and that 's saying a bit, for the
trials and vicissitudes of camp life soon show dissonant any
human chords not atuned true) to march the safari
back to Juja.

XII
POTTING A PYTHON*

FOR the American press in general, Theodore Roose-
velt's shooting trip in East Africa has served
chiefly as a convenient subject of more or less
broad jest. Few at home outside the circle of his own
family and closer friends have taken it seriously, except
the more zealous members of the Society for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Animals, who, to the number of
some thousands, have joined in petitioning him to look
but not to touch — to abstain from slaughter of their
cherished (and usually rightly enough cherished) wards.
Not one in a million has the faintest conception of what
his undertaking really means or of the actual perils in-
separable from it.

Compared to a wounded Cape buffalo, lion, leopard,
rhino, or elephant, a stricken moose or even a maddened
grizzly is child's play. Of infinitely stronger vitality,
harder to kill, and possessed of an infernal cunning and a
speed of attack and persistence in pursuit, are these African
Big Ones, that make them far and away the most dan-
gerous game in the world, with the single exception of
the Asiatic tiger.

From the hour Mr. Roosevelt starts on safari and goes
under canvas on the Kapiti Plains until, in his descent
of the Nile, he has passed the temptation of a final run up

* Written aboard 5. S. Melbourne of the Cie Mesageries Maritimes, cleared
from. Mombasa, B. E. A., March 29, 1909, for Marseilles.

177

178 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

the Sobat River, he literally carries his life in his hands,
a pawn easy of annexation to any of the many predatory
types of beasts and reptiles that swarm in jungle and in
plain.

Nor is it his wounded he alone has to be alert for.
The struggle for existence in the often densely over-
crowded animal kingdom of Central Africa has taught
many types the strategical value of instant attack the
moment an enemy is sighted — and all are their enemies
they fancy they can make their prey.

Rarely does a lone buffalo bull lose a chance at a man,
and he makes a straight, furious charge if he thinks he is
sighted, or, if unseen, a wide detour to close ambush along
one's path and a dash at short range it is extremely dif-
ficult to stop or escape.

Most often the rhino charges the moment he scents a
man, usually, I believe, from primary motives of curi-
osity, in fact charges about any and every thing except
elephant, from which he flies in mortal fear; but it is none
the less necessary to do some straight shooting or to execute
a series of amazingly quick sidesteps.

At any moment a man traversing long grass or bush
may come upon a lioness and cubs, at no more than arm's
length, and lucky indeed he if she is not instantly upon
him.

Any night his tent may be invaded by a hungry man-
eater who has stolen past drowsing Askari camp sentries,
and his spine be crushed under its favorite neck grip
before even the approach of peril is suspected — it has
happened often enough in the past and often will so happen
again.

Out of any bunch of longish grass the wide-hooded

POTTING A PYTHON 179

head of a black (blue-black) cobra may rise threatening
him — and that's no good place to stay; or a sluggish
puff adder may lazily await until he is in easy reach of its
favorite backward stroke; or a python may toss a half-
hitch of its giant coils his way that few get free of once
it has enfolded them.

And then there are the fevers so many fall victim to,
from plain malarial to "tick fever" (spirillum) and " black
water," that one is often years getting wholly rid of — where
they don't begin by ridding the earth of him, — and the
awful spectre of the sleeping sickness that is now claiming
white victims with growing frequency.

Overdrawn? Exaggerations, these? No; not by a
hair's breadth; just types of common incident of the sort
that, sooner or later, are reasonably certain to be handed,
in a more or less mixed job lot, to invaders of the open
veldt and bush of Central Africa.

It is a country and a life in which a man untrained in
taking care of himself against any and all comers, un-
inured to confronting deadly peril with steady nerves,
is sure to have more frights than fun.

Indeed, any man who is not a quick, cool-headed, and
accurate rifle shot is a fool to go after African big game.
To be sure not a few such dilettanti sportsmen have so
gone, and have returned not only unscathed but with
handsome bags of trophies; but alike for their own per-
sonal safety and for the major part of their fine collections
of big game specimens they remain indebted to the
straight shooting of one or another of the splendid little
group of professional safari leaders, highly trained expert
hunters, like Cunninghame, Will Judd, or Tarlton. The
two former men for years made their rifles win them

i8o IN CLOSED TERRITORY

handsome tribute in ivory and in skins, who, accus-
tomed daily to stake their lives upon the accuracy of
their aim, one might fancy possessed of iron nerves
capable of meeting any situation without a materially
quickened heart-heat. But the fact is they know the
game so well they are ever keenly alive to its hazards.
Within ten yards of a wounded rhino bull in thick bush,
I have myself seen Will Judd's cheeks go livid white as
the palor of death, but that it was a fighting palor his
blazing, red-brown eyes and gripping jaws left no doubt
of, — palor come of every nerve and muscle held under
such high tension for instant action that the veins were
made to pour their ruby blood back into deep arterial
streams.

And Theodore Roosevelt himself knows so well what
he is going out against — must so know it as an intimate
of Sir Harry Johnston, F. C. Selous, and others justly
famous for the last quarter-century for their work and
sport in Central Africa — that the American public can
be quite sure he goes from a sheer love and lust of bat-
tling that even the perpetual bitter contests against almost
overwhelming odds that in history will serve to most
strongly mark and distinguish his administration of the
nation's affairs, has left unsatisfied.

Seven of the last ten months it has been my privilege
to pass in Central Africa I have spent on safari in British
and German East Africa and in Uganda, shooting. In
that time I have covered most of the country Mr. Roose-
velt will shoot over, excepting Mount Kenya and the
sections of his homebound journey between the Victoria
Nyanza port of Entebbe and the Nile port of Gondokoro,

POTTING A PYTHON 181

and much of the "closed territory" along the German
border which he is not likely to visit.

As guest of Wm. Northrup McMillan, who will be the
principal host of Mr. Roosevelt during his stay in Africa,
it has been my very great privilege to have at my com-
mand the services of his highly trained staff of Somali
shikaris, cooks, syces, and mess boys, men who have been
with Mr. McMillan six to eight years, on all his expedi-
tions through Abyssinia, along the Blue Nile and the
Sobat and in Somaliland, and all of whom have been
placed at the disposal of Mr. Roosevelt.

While doubtless in time an equally able staff might be
assembled, no other such capable, organized group of native
hunters and camp servants exists in Africa to-day. And
warrior bred are they all, even down to the mess "boys,"
men trained in their youth on the sandy, arid plains of
Ogadan, to run elephant on ponies and hamstring them
with their swords, and to receive charging lion on their
spears; fanatic Mohammedans, blood brothers to the
Mahdist swordsmen who fell in windrows under the
machine-gun fire of the British square at Omdurman, and
kinsmen of the men who for eight years have held the
frontier of British authority and influence in Somaliland
against the Mad Mullah's still more fanatical raiding
hordes, — the Mullah who now is giving Britain the most
serious native war problem she has had to confront since
the Mahdi's downfall.

Regal Wassama, the chef — a chef Sherry would be
glad to own — is a veteran bearing the scars of three
Soudan campaigns.

Djama Aout, the head shikari (gun bearer) is the man

1 82 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

who thrust a pistol down the throat of a wounded lion, to
save the life of Charles Bulpett, who lay beneath the lion,
and there held the pistol till he had fired its six loads, while,
meantime, the lion was crunching his arm.

Hassan Yusuf, the second shikari, was a sergeant of
Italian horse at the battle of Adowa, and is as steady a
man as one could ask to have behind him in any trouble.

Awala Nuer, the third shikari, gets a bit excited in
the presence of big game and sometimes does the wrong
thing, but never learned to run from anything.

Hadji Ali, the headman, and Abullahi, Adam Rob-
ley, Osman, Derria, and Adam Elmy, and the matchless
Swahili, Salem bin Juma, are men who can make safari
life as comfortable and even luxurious for Mr. Roosevelt
as ever he found the White House — if he finally elects to
take them.

But, while I understand he has accepted the offer of
their services, I know that his chosen safari leader, R. J.
Cunninghame, objects strongly to the use of Somalis,
for so he told me at dinner the night before I left Nairobi.
In their stead, even as gun bearers, he prefers to use
Swahilis, who, when they do wrong, may be given the
only corrective that has the slightest useful effect with an
African native, viz., anywhere from ten to twenty-five
strokes across the buttocks with the kiboko, a flexible
but stiff, straight whip four or five feet long and a half-
inch thick in the middle, cut out of hippo or rhino hide,
that, when it does not draw blood, raises welts double its
own diameter.

The kiboko, or even a blow or kick, no Somali will
stand; any man who so handles them is pretty certain

POTTING A PYTHON 183

to find a knife sticking in his ribs, a little sooner or latter,
unless he has established extraordinary authority and
influence over them as a master they both respect and
fear, and even then he is none too safe.

It 's a whole lot of diplomacy one needs to success-
fully and safely handle Somalis, and I believe Cunning-
hame is quite right that they are a disturbing element in
any safari under any man less absolutely their master
than Mr. McMillan. Personally I thoroughly liked them,
and, thanks to the fact that Mr. McMillan had tempo-
rarily transferred to me the mantle of his authority of every
sort over them, with right of punishment or dismissal, had
comparatively little trouble with them. Once I just had
to smash one of the shikaris in the nose for handing me
one rifle and passing me the cartridges of another of
different calibre in rather a tight corner — but he only
drew himself up and gravely said: "You are my bwana
(master) and my father; good!" Just how "good" I
did not feel any too safe of, however, until my train was
pulling out of Nairobi.

Approve it though he of course will not, Mr. Roosevelt
will have to close his eyes or accustom himself to occasional
severe floggings of the wapagazi (porters), for without
it no safari could he held together a fortnight ; discipline
would soon disappear and that quickly be followed by
open revolt or desertion. To the lazy porter a flogging
merely serves as a temporary spur to better work, but,
oddly, the insolent and rebellious are by it almost in-
variably transformed into the most respectful, zealous,
and efficient men of your command. Nor as a rule do any
of the East African tribesmen who serve as porters bear

1 84 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

a grudge for a flogging — they just take it as a matter of
course, accustomed as they have been to receive far worse
in the way of discipline at the hands of their own chiefs.

Indeed, it must be remembered that the black is of a
far coarser fibre than the white man, and, therefore,
endures and recovers from punishment and wounds no
white man could survive.

Ordered to chine (lie prone upon his face), down he
goes without a murmur, so lies, unheld and uncomplain-
ing, until the flogging is finished, and then often springs to
his feet, draws himself up and salutes his bwana, with a
smile.

In the matter of safari leader, Mr. Roosevelt has
been well advised. Other African hunters there are, per-
haps, in many ways as capable as Mr. R. J. Cunninghame ;
a few, but none are quite his equal. A man of broad
education and a close student of natural history, through-
out his seventeen years in the open veldt and bush veldt,
the rifle his exclusive trade and capital, the elephant has
always meant more to him than ivory and buck more than
meat and skins. All the time he has been studying, until
to-day he possesses a more comprehensive and accurate
knowledge of African game, big and little, the local habi-
tat and habits of each species, than any man living, with
the single possible exception of F. C. Selous.

Now about forty years of age, full-bearded and deep-
wrinkled of face as an Arab, wrinkles all soon get who
long dwell in the shimmering glare of the equatorial
sun, Mr. Cunninghame's short stature and otherwise
slender frame are burdened with a pair of shoulders so
massive in depth and breadth as to incline any one to feel
sorry for his legs who does not know how tirelessly they

POTTING A PYTHON 185

carry him from dawn to dark through the heaviest going
in elephant grass or bush.

Absolutely in his prime, both in experience and
strength, if the organization and routing of the safari
are left exclusively to Cunninghame, it is safe to say Mr.
Roosevelt will return with such a bag as few, if any, have
ever equalled; if there is much interference, he, easily
enough, may not return with such a bag, for even with
species that are in certain sections absolutely abundant,
it is often hard to find them and harder still to locate,
stalk, and kill individual fine specimens.

On March 18 Cunninghame and I lunched and dined
together in Nairobi. He then told me he was still unable
to make any definite plans as to the routing of the safari.
He had a tall stack of letters from the White House, each
new one conflicting in one feature or another with the
advices contained in its predecessor — obviously the re-
sult of the mass of suggestions and advice sought from or
volunteered by men who had shot in Africa and were
presumed to know the game, and all of whom, naturally
enough, held more or less differing views.

About all then clear to him was that Mr. Roosevelt
would arrive in Mombasa April 22 on the Admiral of
the German East African Line, accompanied by his
son, Kermit, by F. C. Selous, who was to join him at
Naples, and by three representatives of the Smithsonian
Institution.

This meant a party of seven white men, including
himself, and was giving Cunninghame no little concern,
as most of the best shooting is in remote sections where no
food is obtainable, even for one's porters, other than meat,
and Swahili porters — the best obtainable and the sort

1 86 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

engaged by Cunninghame — are Mohammedans who will
eat no meat not properly halaled, the throat cut by one of
their own faith before the beast is dead. Thus a party of
more than two or three men makes a big, unwieldy cara-
van, naturally difficult to handle, and often desperately
hard to provide for.

The last mail, however, brought him advice that the
ex- President and his son would not come directly through
to Nairobi, but would leave the Uganda Railway at
Kapiti Plains, two hundred and eighty-eight miles from
Mombasa and thirty-nine miles short of Nairobi, the
nearest station to Sir Alfred Pease's Kilima Theki Farm,
where he intended stopping for a fortnight for lion, after
which he purposed trekking north twenty-five miles across
the Athi Plains, to Mr. McMillan's Juja Farm for a stay
of two or three weeks. In the meantime, Cunninghame
was instructed, he would be expected to take the three
Smithsonian scientists on a short safari, wherever they
could best get busy accumulating specimens of the smaller
mammals and birds. The Juja visit finished, then the
party was to be reunited and the big safari start — in
such direction as might be later agreed on.

"And it 's a jolly heavy load that letter takes off my
mind," Cunninghame commented.

"Why?" I asked.

"Why?" he answered; "just because from the first I
have by no means enjoyed the gravity of the responsibility
I must assume in taking a man of Mr. Roosevelt's high
position out after lion. Indeed, I have enjoyed it less
since he wrote me that he is a bad shot — ' useless with a
shotgun and rusty with a rifle ' — though this statement,
I fancy, from all I have heard of his fine work in your own

A FEW FLIES ON THEM (LOITA MASAI)

POTTING A PYTHON 187

Far West, will turn out to be overcolored by modesty.
But you well know a charging lion does n't give a man
much time — nothing but a mortal brain shot can be
sure of stopping him — and I myself can miss a shot at
times, like anybody else. So if he gets his lion over about
Theki — and surely at that season the Hills will be able to
show him lion there — leaving me free to give lion the
go-by and proceed with the general bag, it 's pleased as
Punch I'll be."

"But don't you consider elephant quite as dangerous
as lion?" I asked.

"Far more dangerous," he replied, "under certain
conditions; less in others. But you don't suppose I'd
be infernal fool enough to take Mr. Roosevelt into the
long elephant grass and dense forest of the Kisii country
where you got your big eleven-footer, do you? There
it 's so thick a man 's just got to go it alone, win or lose.
None of that sort of country for me where I've got a life
like his on my hands. Never! I'll take him where he
can shoot his elephant like a gentleman, in open forest
where one can see what 's about him and where, if any-
thing goes wrong, one can lend a bit of help. That 's
the sort of place he'll get his elephant in.

"Where? Oh, probably on the slopes of Mount
Kenya, when, during the rains, the elephant have worked
down out of the dense bamboo forest of the higher alti-
tudes into open wood, and where they stay till the heat of
the dry season drives them back up into the bamboos."

Returned to Juja early in March from three months
on safari west along the German border and back
through the Kavirondo, Kisii, Sotik, and Lumbwa coun-
tries, I had finished a bag that included all the specially

1 88 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

desirable species on the Big Game License except lion
and bongo. With my passage home booked for March
28, no chance remained for a final try for either of
these lacking treasures, except lion. But for them there
was yet a possibility.

Lion shift range a lot, following the game. During
the thirty days between June and October that I had
occupied exclusively (but unsuccessfully) in hunting lion
along the Athi, the Ruwero, and the N'durugo, the three
boundary rivers of the Juja estate, lion were as a rule
heard about the camps every night, though not as thick
as usual. But in December they had again drifted back
in large numbers, and throughout the winter were seen
almost daily by one or another of the Juja employees.
On New Year's Day, William Marlow, the superintendent
of Mr. McMillan's Long Juju Farm on the N'durugo, four
miles from Juja, killed a superb big black-mane, almost
a record in those parts, within a mile of his house; and a
month later John Destro, the Juja storekeeper, killed a
fine lioness a half-mile below the same house, — first
sighted and shot her in thick thorn at scant ten feet
distance, luckily placing a mortal shot that dropped her
in her tracks.

Then in February Mr. George, a guest of our Donya
Sabuk neighbors Penton and Bunbury, a young man of
but comparatively little field experience, with only three
days of his stay remaining, camped down near the Caves
of a Hundred Lion on the Athi, three miles from Juja.
The second evening, sitting under cover atop of the cliffs
whose base and crest are honeycombed with openings
to caves the lions haunt when hunting thereabouts, he had
the unforgivable luck to sight six lion stalking back to

POTTING A PYTHON 189

their bed chambers, and to kill four of the six, precisely
where I had spent a whole fortnight and several sleepless
nights trying, vainly, to sight one. Such is the luck of the
game.

Even ladies there could then sight lion, for a little
later in February Miss Kipp, a guest of Miss Lucas of
Donya Sabuk (whose brother was killed by a lion on the
Athi three years before), while riding from Juja to the
Lucas farm with only one native spearman as attendant,
was followed half a mile by a big lioness.

So, encouraged by these stories of recent experiences,
the moment I got back I started out and scattered Masai
scouts in all directions — but never a bit of fresh sign
could they find; apparently the lion had trekked away.

Then on the tenth, Captain A. B. Duirs, the manager
of Juja, and I went out on a four days' circle of Komo
Rock and Ostrich Hill to the east of the Athi, but while
the trip yielded me a superb eland bull, and also a great
water python seventeen feet, four inches long, killed in
short reeds about a small water-hole four miles from the
river, no lion did we find.

The photographs of the eland, of the python, and of
the big Boer gharri used on short safari about Juja give
some idea of the vast and comparatively level stretches of
the Athi Plains, where Mr. Roosevelt will find many sorts
of game as thick as he ever saw cattle on the most over-
crowded range — hartebeeste, zebra, Granti and Thomp-
soni (gazelle), impala, water buck, reed buck, giraffe,
ostrich, bush buck, duyker, dik-dik, wart-hog, hyena;
while the deep pools of its rivers are full of hippo and
crocodiles and the thorn thickets and cliffs lining the
streams are always full of monkeys, from little blue chaps

1 90 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

no bigger than kittens up to great man apes nearly four
feet tall. There, too, among the thorns and rocks are
favorite lurking places for lion and leopard, as offering
convenient ambush for a short dash on buck stringing
down to water; and seven miles west on Kamiti Farm,
whose shooting will be placed at Mr. Roosevelt's disposal
by its owner, Mr. Hugh H. Heatley, the papyrus swamps
along the Kamiti are so full of buffalo that every few
days Heatley's Boer farmer, Hammond, has to sprint
for his life from his ploughing to his house, and the
neighbors are predicting it is not likely to be long before
the buffalo get him.

Notwithstanding the abundance of the game on the
Athi Plains, I fancy Mr. Roosevelt will find it rather the
most difficult shooting he will have out here, for seldom
does one get a shot at buck there — at any he specially
wants — under three hundred to five hundred yards.
Often for miles the plain offers no more cover than a
billiard table. As one advances the vast herds part,
moving ahead to right and left, frequently in such dense
mass it looks as if the entire plain itself had gone adrift.
Sometimes rolling ground or bits of bush offer possible
stalking on a fine specimen you have picked, but rarely
or never when there are not scores or hundreds of other
buck near from which you can't hide yourself and which
are always off and passing the alarm to your specimen
buck before you are within easy range.

For instance, the getting of my eland bull was a
typical incident. He was one of twelve, dozing com-
fortably, some lying and some standing, midway of a low,
smooth hillslope. No other buck were at the time within
a half-mile of the eland. To get the wind, I had to circle

KOXGOXI (HARTEBEESTE) BULL, THE AUTHOR, HASSAX YUSEF, AND THE
POXIES WALLEYE AXD Loxc. TOM

GRAXTI GAZELLE

ELEVEN FOOT EIGHT INCH LION KILLED BY W. MARLOW ON THE KOMO

WATER PYTHON, SEVENTEEN FEET FOUR INCHES LONG, KILLED NEAR JUJA

FARM

POTTING A PYTHON 191

far south of them, and got by without rousing them.
But on my return toward them, while still a fourth of a
mile from them, Grant and Tommy bounding about
ahead of me passed them the tip of coming trouble, so
that when I got to the hillcrest it was to see my eland a
half-mile below me, moving north with a mass of other
game.

Altogether I was four hours playing about those eland,
trying for a possible shot at the big bull of the herd —
followed them five miles to the eastern foot of Donya
Sabuk, where, late in the afternoon, I had to content
myself with a shot at seven hundred yards that, most
luckily, gave him a bad wound in the hind quarter that
enabled Duirs to run him on Long Tom and cut and turn
him from the herd within easy range of me.

The accompanying photographs, by the way, show
Djama Aout and Hassan Yusef, the two Somali shikaris
who will serve Mr. Roosevelt while he is shooting about
Juja — and later on his safari, if he overrides Mr.
Cunninghame's prejudice against them — Djama holding
the python's head, Hassan his tail. They also show
Long Tom and Walleye, the two best Juja shooting
ponies, one or both of which will carry Mr. Roosevelt.
Walleye, the smaller of the two, a Somali pony, stands
still as a statue for a shot from the saddle, and is probably
the best lion pony in British East Africa. Long Tom, an
East Indian country bred, is less tractable but faster.

His eland Mr. Roosevelt will only get by accepting a
special license from the Governor, which, of course, will
be given him if he wishes it, for under the new Game Law
which went into effect April i, eland are declared royal
game and shooting them is forbidden, under penalty of

i92 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

a heavy fine or imprisonment, or both. Thus my bull
will remain one of the very last ever to be killed in British
East Africa. Well it is the eland should be saved, in a
country in which both horses and mules are easy and
frequent prey to several types of fatal horse sicknesses,
for they are easily domesticated, and it is hoped their vast
bulk of weight and muscle may yet prove of economic
value for heavy draft purposes.

Moreover, as Mr. Roosevelt is more likely to shoot and
kill than to heed their petitions that he should not shoot,
it may interest the members of the Society for the Preven-
tion of Cruelty to Animals to know that the Administration
of British East Africa has been compelled to recognize in
the new Game Law the loud cries of settlers for protection
against the depredations of wild game. Indeed, the
game in B. E. A. must be thinned, if not exterminated,
before farmers may enjoy the avails of their land holdings.
Thus the new law permits proprietors to allow any one
holding a game license to shoot all the game he likes on
their estates, and practically removes all restrictions
against the killing of game on one's own land.

The sheer "vermin" so declared by the law, predatory
beasts against which no life is safe, biped or quadruped —
lion, leopard, hyena, crocodile, etc. (while the "pro-
tected" buffalo and rhino are just as dangerous to human
life) — the most rabid member of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would not long live
neighbor to before unlimbering his guns.

For example, a few days before I left Juja news came
from the manager of one of Mr. McMillan's farms that
his next neighbor, a young German named Loder, had
been killed by leopard. Swift and Rutherfoord, farmers

POTTING A PYTHON 193

a day's journey north of Juja, have in the last three years
killed sixteen lion — had to do it to save their domestic
stock from extermination.

The two following items are clipped from The East
African Standard of March 27:

THREE LIONS FOUR MILES FROM MOMBASA: A
CHANCE FOR MOMBASA SPORTSMEN

The natives of M'tongwe have seriously appealed to European
sportsmen in Mombasa for protection. During Monday night three
lions took away a cow from a native's boma and on Tuesday night
terrified the inhabitants by roaring round their huts seeking food.

On Tuesday afternoon the spoors of the lions were seen clearly
marked in the neighborhood of the hole where Makalinga buried
the body of the late Mr. London. The natives fear that the spirits
of the recently hanged murderers have entered the bodies of the
lions and are visiting the village to exact penalties.

A MAN-EATER KILLED

For some time past Messrs. Newland and Tarlton have been
receiving reports of the existence of man-eating lions near Lake
Magadi. It was reported that several natives lost their lives through
them.

Last week Mr. Tarlton sent Mr. Stanton, an employee of the
firm, out to ascertain facts and if possible dispose of the danger.
On Thursday Mr. Stanton came across a huge lioness and wounded
her severely. Following her up, he again hit her, this time through
the eye. The shot was not fatal, however, and the enraged animal
immediately charged, knocking Mr. Stanton over and stunning
him. His gun bearer could not shoot, for fear of hitting Mr. Stanton.
As soon as Mr. Stanton rose the brute struck him again. She then
made off, and on being followed up by the party she was found
crouching behind a bowlder. The gun bearer hit her with a .450
in the jaw, completely smashing it, and then struck her in the side,
making a huge gash. Thinking she was quite dead, Mr. Stanton,
who was still very dazed, moved up, when he was again attacked;

i94 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

but before he was down the gun bearer finished the matter by firing
pointblank.

We have seen the skin and skull which testify to the fight.
Strange to say, Mr. Stanton was struck each time by the pads of
the beast's feet; but sustained only bruises. A Masai who was
following Mr. Stanton and was previously warned off, was badly
mauled and torn by the lioness when she was hiding in the bush
after receiving the first shot.

Nor is the farmer's worst actual trouble with the
man-eaters or other predatory types, for fencing is of no
earthly avail against the general mass of the game. Juja's
twenty thousand acres was once stoutly fenced, and with
five strands of barb wire; to-day it is hard to find a two-
hundred-yard section of the fence standing intact. Over
fences the big buck go like birds, through them zebra
chased by lion smash like a whirlwind, and nothing but a
wire screen would serve to keep out the little "Tommys,"
Granti, dik-dik, etc.

Thus it will be seen that proselyting for the S. P. C. A.
in British East Africa would be hopelessly uphill work,
even for the most zealous.

XIII
THE LUCK OF THE GAME

RETURNED to Juja House Saturday evening, the
thirteenth, I found a message waiting me from
Clifford and Harold Hill, who until recently have
managed Sir Alfred Pease's Theki ostrich farm, and
whose own ostrich farm, Katelembo, adjoins Theki on
the east and south. Their message advised me that lion
had been so thick about their place for a week that they
were confident they could show me a chance at one or
more if I came over immediately.

Circumstances had compelled me to decline two pre-
vious invitations from them, and now this last chance was
one not to be lost, for as a rule no section of British East
Africa is as thickly infested with lion as the Theki Farm
of Sir Alfred Pease and the Katelembo and Wami Farms
of the Hill cousins, and few, if any, non-professional
hunters have had more experience with lion than the Hills.
In the last three years they have themselves killed fifteen
lion there and their visiting guests have shot another ten,
or a total of twenty-five.

Lucky indeed is Mr. Roosevelt that his initiation into
the gentle sport of lion shooting will be at the hands of the
Hills; with no other men could he be surer of success or
safer against serious injury, for they know the game and
have the nerve to play it right.

Both are colonials who have never seen England,
South African bred, descendants of families which were

i96 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

among the first British settlers of Grahamstown early
in the last century. True to the traditions of their
Basuto- and Zulu-fighting ancestors, they were among
the first colonials to enlist for the Boer War — Clifford in
the Imperial Light Horse and Harold in Neville's Horse -
and among the last mustered out.

The war over, seized by the restless spirit of their
pioneer forebears, both trekked away north into the
wilds of British East Africa, planning there to establish
themselves in ostrich farming — wherever the wild birds
were thickest — to which in their youth they were bred,
and which in the southern colonies is winning such large
fortunes for the initiated.

Slender, sinewy men of' iron endurance, quiet and
gentle of speech, steady, cool-headed shots at anything
that needs lead, but tireless workers on their farm, the
Hills have never hunted lion for sport but only as a
necessary incident of the day's work.

So, the hour of 4 A. M. Sunday, the fourteenth, found
me mounted on Walleye, and followed by Hassan Yusef
(riding a mule and carrying my two rifles), trotting away
through the darkness and bitter chill of early morning in
the African highlands, on a short cut, first through the
Athi Plains and then over the summit of the Machakos
Range, to the Hill farm, thirty miles distant from Juja,
where I arrived about noon.

Too busy accumulating ostriches and thinning out
lion to have any time left for architecture, I there found
the Hills installed in two grass huts of the sort natives
throw up in a day or two, one the dormitory and the
other the dining-room — both windowless because the
chinks in the grass walls let in light and air enough; both

THE LUCK OF THE GAME 197

doorless, because any prowling would-be intruder that
might be excluded by a proper door could easily enough
force entrance through the flimsy walls.

And there for three days I was made as welcome and
as comfortable as ever before in many far more preten-
tious diggings.

Hanging beneath a thorn tree behind the house, cur-
ing, were the four fresh-killed lion skins fallen to Harold's
rifle which had prompted them to send for me.

The Thursday of the week previous the Hills had been
spending the night with District Commissioner R. W.
Humphery, the Chief Administrative Officer of their
District of Ukamba, at Machakos Fort, four miles from
their farm, helping Humphery celebrate his birthday.
At an early morning hour, not long after they had retired,
the Hills were awakened by the sergeant of the guard and
told that one of their natives had just arrived with word
that six lion had broken into their ostrich boma and were
killing the birds. Racing for the farm as fast as they
could, accompanied by Commissioner Humphery — who
had been eight years in the country without ever seeing a
lion until, the Christmas Day previous, he had, while
out with the Hills, bagged a lioness, and now keen for
another — upon arrival they found the lion gone, fright-
ened away by the din made by the natives, and three of
their finest birds dead and half eaten in the boma.

Sure the lion would return, the dead birds were left
where they lay, the living transferred to a distant boma,
and a platform built in a tree that stood in one corner
of the enclosure.

The boma was fifty yards square; its wall, built of
huge thorn bush piled tightly together, easily ten feet

198 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

thick at the base and eight feet high. Against all pre-
cedent any of us had ever heard of, the six lion had
actually torn their way through this most formidable.
heavily spiked barrier, pulled and tugged until they
had opened a way to the interior.

Friday night the men took two-hour turns on guard
upon the platform, but the night passed without in-
cident.

But about 3 A. M. of Sunday morning, on Harold's
watch he was roused by movements beneath him, to see,
by the half light of a waning moon, the six lion returned,
rending the dead birds and quarrelling like cats for the
best bits.

Instantly he began firing, and soon the cracks of his
rifle were drowned by the deep roars of the lion, mad with
rage over this attack by an enemy they could not see.
Directly one scented or sighted him and made a dash
for the tree,~whose platform a good bound might easily
have reached, but Harold luckily dropped him with a
shot through the spine.

Presently there was silence below. One lion lay, ob-
viously dead, in the moonlight beneath him, but whether
the others had gone or were lurking in the shadows he
felt so little sure of he kept to his perch till daylight — to
find all gone but the one.

However, before noon four of the missing five were
located, all severely wounded, in a near-by ravine, and,
after a lot of careful work and much hazard, three of the
four were bagged.

Early Monday morning we were out, the two Hills,
myself and gun bearer, and the Hills' Kikuyu beaters and
trackers.

CLIFFORD AND HAROLD HILL, AND THE TREE PLATFORM OVERLOOKING THEIR

BOMA

THE APPROACH TO DONGA BUSH ON FRESH LION SPOOR
ON THE KAPITI PLAINS WITH THE HILLS' LION TRACKERS

y

THE LUCK OF THE GAME 199

The Kapiti Plains are almost entirely bare of cover,
short grassed, bushless, but every donga (ravine) is densely
filled with thorn, reed, and weeds, ~with here and there a
water pool of the sort lion love to take to shortly after
dawn in the dry, hot season just then at its height, and,
to be seen, out of this cover they have to be routed.

Down all their favorite dongas, over the rocky, cave-slit
crests of Theki and Wami, through the dense scrub along
the lower slopes of the Machakos between Theki and
Kitanga, for three days Clifford Hill led his native beat-
ers, while Harold and I, on foot, marched from fifty to
three hundred yards ahead of and slightly flanking the
line of beaters, one to right and one to left as a rule,
but never a lion did we raise. Once we struck fresh sign
entering a bit of bush and thought we had him, the
incident shown in the pictures where our group is rather
closely bunched and advancing to where we thought he
lay. But on out of the bush he had passed, over hard-
baked ground where he left no further sign.

With more luck than I had ever dared hope for with
all other big game, lion are evidently not meant for me —
like Director of Surveys, Colonel G. E. Smith, who sur-
veyed the first caravan road from Mombasa to Uganda,
who was chief of the Anglo- German Boundary Survey, and
has spent the larger part of the last fifteen years in the
wildest of British East Africa's wild places, who on these
same Kapiti Plains himself killed seventeen rhino in
one day — had to do it to protect his safari from their
continual charges — but who to this day has never seen
a lion.

Tuesday, just before beating the summit of Theki, we
had lunch with Mr. Allsop, manager of Sir Alfred Pease's

200 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Theki ostrich farm, in his little two-room tin house, which
is shrouded in granadilla vines, whose delicious passion
fruit was then purpling and should be prime in another
month. There I got photographs of the two Arab
stallions newly bought by Sir Alfred for Mr. Roosevelt's
use, and arrived only the day before, direct from the
Soudan, via Mombasa.

Wednesday afternoon, en route back to Juja, Clifford
Hill and I visited Kitanga, the new house Sir Alfred is
building for the reception of Mr. Roosevelt, then nearing
completion. It is a tin-roofed one-story bungalow, the
outer walls built of square gray granite blocks, the
partitions of sun-dried bricks, of five rooms — a central
living and dining room flanked by four small bedrooms,
and sporting two baths. Beautifully situated on a high
shoulder of the south end of the Machakos Range, about
6,500 feet above sea level, its broad veranda commands a
magnificent view — east over tall round-topped hills
thinly clad with wild olives, south across the dim, hazy
stretches of the Kapiti Plains and over the rugged crests
of Chumvi, Theki, and Wami, the only mountain uplifts
that break the plain's monotony, down upon the white
splotch in the broad yellow field which represents Kapiti
Station, twelve miles away, and on through the purple
distance to where, one hundred and twenty miles away,
Mt. Kilima N'jaro's 19,000 feet tower so high aloft
toward the zenith that it is hard to realize its snow and
glacier-clad crest is actually a mountain peak and not a
cloud. The view we had Mr. Roosevelt may not get,
for Mt. Kilima N'jaro is seldom clearly visible from there-
abouts excepting just at the very end of the dry season.

The group of men appearing in the picture of Kitanga,

THE LUCK OF THE GAME 201

contractors engaged in building the house, are Boer
emigrants from South Africa, now farmers living in a
close little colony along the slopes of Lucania, a small
rugged range lying between the Machakos and the Athi
River, and oddly includes three men bearing names
famous in Boer history, viz., a Prinsloo, a Botha, and a
Joubert, the latter brother to General Joubert, with whom
Mr. Roosevelt can exchange campaigning experiences in
their mutually native Low Dutch tongue.

Mr. Roosevelt is due to reach Kitanga about April
24.* At the Pease house he will probably spend little
time, as only small buck are to be had in its immediate
vicinity. His lion camp will doubtless be pitched either
at Lanjaro, a small spring midway between Kitanga and
Theki, or on the Hills' Wami Farm, five miles south of
Theki. Thereabouts by May the Hills will be able to
show him the surest and safest lion hunting known.

With thirty inches of rain due in April and no more
than four inches in May the season will then be prime,
Kapiti Plains a waving meadow of short grass, every
dry donga a brook, every "pan" a brimming pool of
sweet water, the weather so cool that lion then rove or
idle on the plains by day, instead of seeking cover as in
the dry season, where they may easily be marked down

* Arrived at Port Said at 2 A. M. April 10, we came to anchor a few hundred
feet from the Admiral, which had come in from Naples at 6 p. M. of the ninth.
Neither Mr. Roosevelt nor any of his party had been ashore, we were told.

At 5 :3o A. M. of the tenth we headed out northwest across the line of the
muddy Nile delta, leaving the Admiral still coaling but due to up anchor and
enter the canal at 6 A. M.

The morning of March 30 the Melbourne, floated without injury from the
soft coral on which ske had grounded on a falling tide, made Kilindini Harbor,
and at 3 P. M. my good friend District Commissioner Isaac, with Mr. McMillan,
escorted me aboard her in the official barge of Provincial Commissioner S. L.
Hinde, the same in which Mr. Hinde and Mr. Isaac will receive and land Mr.
Roosevelt and his party — of which I got a snapshot after our farewells were
said.

202 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

by a man with a telescope on the summit of either Theki,
Wami, or Chumvi.

The moment a lion is sighted, the sportsmen will start
after him, all mounted. So soon as he sights them, one
of the Hills will spur after him, run him to bay, and there
circle and worry him at a safe distance while Mr. Roose-
velt gallops up, followed by his gun bearer, to within one
hundred to two hundred yards, according to his nerve
and confidence in his shooting, and dismounts for his shot.
In seven cases out of ten the lion charges the pony man
instead of the sportsman, indeed is almost sure to if the
rider is on a white or gray horse, resembling a zebra.
And when he does charge the sportsman, there is always
a chance the pony man may head and divert him; but
where this strategy fails, then it is a case of shoot quick
and straight or take (at least) a rending from carrion-
tainted claws certain to cause fatal blood poisoning if
permanganate of potash is not promptly applied to the
wounds in such strength that the treatment is even more
painful than the wounds.

Just as I was stepping into the gharri in front of Juja
House the afternoon of the eighteenth, to go to Mombasa
to meet Mr. McMillan, who was due there from India
the twenty-first, the following letter was handed to me :

LONG Juju, March 18, 1909.

[British East Africa.]
To E. B. BRONSON, Esq., Juja Farm.

DEAR MR. BRONSON. — I saw a very fine lion yesterday morning,
also fresh tracks of two small ones, and one was growling around
here nearly all night.

I went all around the ditch this morning early ; but did not see one.
Trusting you are well, believe me,

Yours faithfully, W. MARLOW.

t/3 W

WILLIAM NORTHRUP MCMILLAN'S NAIROBI BUNGALOW
MOHAMMEDAN MOSQUE, NAIROBI

THE LUCK OF THE GAME 203

Thus if Mr. Roosevelt fails of a chance at Theki, it is
more than likely the Juja estate can furnish all the lion
he wants.

The night we reached Nairobi, Mr. Cunninghame dined
with us at Mr. McMillan's town bungalow, where he
learned that Mr. Selous comes out as the guest of Mr.
McMillan, with whom he is expecting to go on safari for
several weeks immediately after Mr. Roosevelt's visit
to Juja is finished. Thus, unless they arrange otherwise
while shipmates on the Admiral, while Mr. Selous may
shoot with Mr. Roosevelt at Theki or Juja he will not
accompany any of Mr. Roosevelt's long safaris.

The Juja visit, however, may be deferred to a later
date, as Mr. Cunninghame is keen to have Mr. Roosevelt
come out with him on a short safari directly he leaves
Sir Alfred Pease and before the "big rains" are stopped —
after certain game which is most easily had during the
wet season.

If such a short safari is arranged, it is probable Mr.
Cunninghame will take Mr. Roosevelt to Mt. Kenya, a
week's march north of Juja, for elephant.

As for the long safari in British East Africa, if the
choice is left to Mr. Cunninghame, it is probable it will go
by rail from Nairobi sixty-four miles west to Naivasha,
there detrain, circle the south end of Lake Naivasha,
ascend and cross the precipitous lofty wall of the Mau
Escarpment and thence drop into the Sotik country — for
there on the Limerick Plains and along the upper reaches
of the Amala River is Cunninghame's favorite place for
quickly and easily bagging fine specimens of the more
abundant species. On this route, in four to five days'
march from Naivasha Mr. Roosevelt will be in good shoot-

204 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

ing. There, moreover, he will be in reach of some of the
rarer species; within two to three days' march roan may
be had on the crest of Isuria Escarpment, and nearer still,
if he has patience and luck, the Chipalungo Forest may
yield him a bongo, while two days west of Sotik Boma,
on the Rongana, rhino abound sporting horns up to thirty-
four inches in length.

The Sotik safari finished, I shall expect to see Mr.
Cunninghame march the safari north from Gilgil, probably
to and past Rumuruti Boma on the Guaso Narok River,
thence swinging west to Lake Baringo for greater Kudu
and lesser Kudu, or perhaps instead descending the
northern Guaso Nyiro River and following it east along
the southern boundary of the great Jubaland Game Re-
serve, and returning to Nairobi via Nyeri and Ft. Hall.

The time allotted to shooting in British East Africa
nearing its finish, I shall not be surprised to see Mr.
Roosevelt's safari lead northwest from Londiani Station,
through the capital shooting on the Uasin Guishu Plateau,
to a look in on the Cave Dwellers of Mt. Elgon, whence
its descent to Jinja, the Nyanza head of the Nile, will be
easy by one of the excellent roads which Governor Bell's
energetic administration has given to Uganda.

The giant white rhino I see in the home press Mr.
Roosevelt is keen for, are now about as scarce as hens'
teeth, but along the western sources of the Nile, on his way
to Lake Albert Edward, through the farther limits of the
Uganda Province of Toro, well over toward the Congo, he
may have the luck to find one.

If for his journey across Uganda and on north down
the Nile to Cairo he follows the usual route, and the
only easy one, he will cross the north end of Victoria

THE LUCK OF THE GAME 205

Nyanza from Kisumu to Entebbe in one of the excellent
little steamers of the Uganda Railway, only fifteen hours
actual steaming, but passengers are never landed until
the morning following the date of sailing. From Entebbe
there is an excellent road for one hundred and sixty miles
to Hoima, usually covered, in rickshaw or on bicycle, in
ten days. The thirty-three miles from Hoima to the Lake
Albert Edward port of Butiaba is over such rough going
that it must be done on foot, a good two days' march.
At Butiaba he will take the tiny Government launch
Kenia, on which, for passengers unable to crowd into the
engineer's cabin, a tent is pitched on deck. Steaming
from dawn to dark and tying up over night, the Kenia
covers the three hundred odd miles down lake and Nile to
Nimule in five days. From Nimule to Gondokoro, the
head of upper Nile navigation, the river falls so rapidly
that the entire one hundred and thirty intervening miles
must be done afoot, a nine days' march. From Gondo-
koro one reaches Khartoum by steamer in nine days, and
then three days more by rail lands one in Cairo.

Thus the entire distance from Entebbe to Cairo may
be covered in thirty-eight days, but it is not likely Mr.
Roosevelt will press straight through without a stop.
Immediately north of Gondokoro there is capital shooting,
including one or two species he will not find in British
East Africa, while up the Sobat, a large western tributary
entering the Nile roughly midway between Gondokoro
and Khartoum, there is probably the best open country
elephant shooting remaining in all Africa, and there, I
understand, Mr. Cunninghame is likely to take him for a
finish of his African sport on royal game.

On Friday the twenty-sixth we left Nairobi in Mr.

206 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

McMillan's special car for Mombasa, to which he was re-
turning to meet Mrs. McMillan, who was due to arrive
there from India the thirty-first.

On Sunday the Melbourne, northbound, and the
Oxus, southbound, both of the Cie Mesageries Maritimes,
arrived off Kilindini, the west and principal harbor of
Mombasa; but since the former had the bad luck to run
aground in the narrow channel entrance and the latter lay
by to help her, it was not until Monday that both were
able to drop anchor in the harbor.

The Oxus brought Sir Alfred Pease, Lady Pease,
and their daughter.

While we were at breakfast at the Grand Hotel, Sir
Alfred came in and we were introduced. A tall, spare,
active man of about fifty, the Hills tell me he is as keen
for veldt sport as any youngster. He and his family were
hurrying up country by the next train to hasten the com-
pletion and furnishing of Kitanga.

Asked if he felt sure of getting Mr. Roosevelt his lion,
Sir Alfred replied:

"Well, one never can tell, you know; just depends
on a man's luck. Last year during my eight weeks' stay
at Theki I personally saw, all told, twenty-seven lion,
and yet for the three weeks of the same period my friend
Sir Edmund Loder spent with me there, after he had been
out three months on safari without getting or even seeing
a lion, we failed entirely to show him one."

Yes, indeed, it is all just a matter of "luck," is lion
shooting — as few could so emphatically prove as my
friend the Cavaliere A. Parenti, a shipmate. Many have
read but probably few have credited the story of a lion
taking a man from a carriage of the Uganda Railway.

THE LUCK OF THE GAME 207

And yet it is true in every detail. Cavaliere Parenti was
one of the three men in the compartment in which the man
was killed and from which he was carried by the invader.
Asked to refresh my memory of the details of the incident,
he replied :

"Ah! my God, but I can smell the stench of that
lion yet, for I lay beneath him in the darkness on the floor
of the compartment during the few seconds he took to
crunch the life out of poor Ryall!

"You know, Mr. Ryall, who was then the Superin-
tendent of the Railway Police, our friend Mr. Huebner,
and myself, had heard of a man-eater who had killed and
eaten several persons between the stations of Kiu and Sul-
tan Hamud, and left Mombasa to hunt him.

"In the night our railway carriage was cut and dropped
from the train in the vicinity of his depredations, and the
three of us went to sleep, preparatory to an early start
in the morning.

"How did the man-eater get in? God knows; I
don't; through the open window doubtless.

"The first I knew I was on the floor of the car, beneath
some soft, heavy, foul-smelling body; then I heard the
crunch of huge jaws and just one low, horrid cry from
where Ryall lay in the berth opposite mine. Then the
beast was off in a leap through the window and I — I
found poor Ryall gone.

"Did we find him? Yes, in the morning, a few hun-
dred yards away — But please don't ask me more — I
can't talk of it yet, for the foul smell of that man-eater
is ever in my nostrils, poor old Ryall's smothered death
shriek ever ringing in my ears."

.Yes, and also, as in this preceding incident, just

208 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

"luck" with whom the sport lies — the biped or the
quadruped — as instance, records in the official files of the
Uganda Railway proving that eighty-four laborers, chiefly
East Indians, were killed and eaten in the vicinity of
Tsavo by one family of man-eaters, consisting of a black-
mane, a lioness, and three pups, before they were finally
exterminated by Colonel Patterson.

And while the files and records of the railway are red
with such tragedies, they are also at times lightened with
incidents full of humor.

For years and to this day the Station of Simba (Swa-
hili for " lion ") has been so infested with lion that they
are a constant terror to the resident Hindu baboo (station
master). All told, about twenty have been shot from its
doors and windows and from the top of the adjacent
water tank. Once they got so bad the company was com-
pelled to send there a detail of ten Askaris (native police),
but that they failed to afford adequate protection was
proved by the fact that the manager received a day or two
later the following despatch from his Simba baboo:

"At time of roaring policemen are not so brave; please
arrange quick."

XIV
IS CENTRAL AFRICA A WHITE MAN'S COUNTRY?

OF all the long line of national or international ex-
positions inspired by and more or less direct se-
quences of that with which the Crystal Palace was
opened in London in 1851, few if any have been so pictur-
esque and none so weirdly interesting as the first Agricul-
tural and Industrial Exhibition of Uganda, held November
9 and 10, 1908, — held at Kampala in a valley slumbering
beneath the shadows of Mengo Hill, from whose crest,
in 1877, King Mutesa issued orders for the assassination
of the first party of pioneers of the Christian faith (mem-
bers of the Church Missionary Society) that ventured
to seek foothold in the heart of far-away Equatorial Africa.

While there were one hundred thousand visitors, many
come distances of from one hundred to two hundred
miles, the management was spared the vexatious trans-
portation difficulties usually incident to such affairs, for
99,932 (the natives) came afoot, 50 (local officials and
missionaries) came on bicycles or in rickshaws, and the
remaining 18 of us came from Nairobi by the Uganda
Railway and the good ship Clement Hill of the Victoria
Nyanza service.

King's birthday morning, November 9, we dropped
anchor off the new port of Luziro, deep in Murchison
Bay. One little tin warehouse broke the solid wall of
forest that lined the shore, one wobbly little pier gingerly
reached out a few yards toward deep water to meet our

209

210 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

approaching boats — and that was all there was of
Luziro.

Come ashore, we found hidden away among the trees
perhaps a score of rickshaws, and — would you believe
it? — an automobile, a big bus affair with side seats,
the Governor's state chariot. Captain Buxton, Mr.
Sewall, and I, who were invited to lunch with His
Excellency, the Governor, Sir H. Hesketh Bell, K. C.
M. G., had no more than begun to congratulate our-
selves upon a spin across the Uganda Hills in an auto be-
fore our hopes were dashed. Up came an aide who had
been conferring with Lieut. Hampden of the Clement Hill
to tell us that the expected supplies, which included auto
materials, fuel, etc., and a rare lot of fireworks ordered
for the fete, the last southbound French mail steamer had
failed to land at Mombasa. Instead, it had steamed
away south with them for Madagascar — perhaps (who
knows?) from a patriotically malicious intent to spoil
one British festival in revenge for the checkmate France
suffered at Fashoda.

And there stood our steed, come to us pluckily but
spent of its last ounce of energy in the coming, sound of
body but empty of belly — of no more use, with its tanks
empty, than its weight in scrap iron !

To be sure the "railway" remained, but unfortunately
it was not an available alternative — no more use to us
than the gasoline and pinwheels bowling away toward
an ever-higher-rising Southern Cross, for it then only
covered a scant two of the five miles that separate Luziro
from Kampala. Moreover, that particular "railway"
looked as if you could pack it on your shoulders more
easily than ride on it.

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 211

It is a " mono-rail system" is Kampala's, of a sort
quite largely installed in India in sections where the
freight traffic stacks up no more than a few tons a week,
and where the people are as little concerned about time
as about eternity. Laid along one side of the excellent,
wide Kampala road, this lonely rail with its tiny ties looks
like a primitive ladder prostrate. There the motive
power is cattle. Where mules or horses are available,
I am assured the high express speed of six miles an hour
is attained. The cars used have two wheels, one of
which trundles along the ground like any honest cart
wheel, while the other straddles the rail and on it con-
trives to accomplish a more or less successful rope-walk-
ing stunt, usually less. When finished, its time schedule
is likely to be, as closely as I could judge, tri- weekly — a
run down toward Luziro one week and a hard try to get
back up to Kampala the third week.

Once outside the belt of tall forest that lines the lake,
bowling along in rickshaws at close to tram-car speed
on down-hill and level stretches, with a sturdy Baganda
in the shafts and two of his mates pushing aft, all droning
the monotonous but musical chant without which no
Central African black can do any sort of toil, we entered
a densely settled country where round-topped grass huts
were ever peeping out of the banana groves and smiling
natives ever peeping out of the huts. The men were
decorously robed in long white Kanzus reaching from neck
to feet, the women d&colkte, bare of neck and arms but
otherwise swathed in folds of snowy cotton wound tight
beneath the arm pits and over the hips, a most striking
contrast to the buxom Kavirondo beauties who are their
next neighbors to the east, and who while never more

212 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

heavily draped of figure than by a slender string of beads
circling the waist, are far more virtuous than the Uganda
women. Fields of cotton, bananas, cassava, dotted here
and there with the graceful fronds of the date palm,
stretched as far as we could see from the tallest hilltops.

Passing, toward noon, through the one street of the
Indian Bazaar, we were in the heart of Kampala, although
one would never know it until told. About us stood the
six high hills that constitute it — Mengo, occupied by the
boy king, Daudi Chwa, his regents, ministers, and court,
the site of their ancient capitol when Lugard first won
their confidence; Nakasero, by the English military and
civil officials and the boma, or barracks, of the one com-
pany of Sikh Infantry and the King's African Rifles, the
the latter native troops; Nsambya, by Saint Joseph's
Mission; Namirembe, by the English Cathedral of the
Church Missionary Society; and Rubaga, by the White
Fathers.

Descending towards the Exposition grounds, we
bumped into another startler — nothing less than an
American merry-go-round, and a big one at that, perched
on a bench by the side of the road, whirling gayly with a
rider on its every horse, waiting native thousands throng-
ing thick about, keen for a chance of a mad gallop -
this the one only (but never lonely) prototype of Chicago's
"Streets of Cairo" or St. Louis's "Great White Way" the
modest little Exhibition could boast.

The Exhibition gounds lay in a little valley at the
foot of Namirembe Hill and covered a space of nine
hundred by three hundred feet.

While impaired by heavy showers, the scene when
Governor Bell formally opened the Exhibition was one

OPENING OF THE FIRST UGANDA EXPOSITION: ENGLISH CATHEDRAL IN

DISTANCE

THE KAMPALA MERRY- Go- ROUND

•»-•» ,

tipafi

GOVERNOR BELL AND STAFF ARRIVING AT FIRST UGANDA EXPOSITION

THE EXPOSITION OPENED BY GOVERNOR BELL: KING OF ANKOLE, THE
GIANT FIGURE ON LEFT

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 213

to dwell always in the minds of all lucky enough to be
present.

At the north end of the grounds stood the pavilion
of honor, ablaze with the colors dear to British hearts,
facing Namirembe Hill and the graceful pinnacles of the
English Cathedral that crown it. Grouped at the other
end and along the east and west lines stood the Exhibi-
tion buildings, all, like the pavilion, walled and thatched
with glistening gray elephant grass that made the green-
sward of the parallelogram look like a vast velvet rug
bordered with silver. Drawn up fifty yards in front of
the pavilion stretched the grim lines of a company of
Sikh Infantry, stern-faced, bushy-bearded, red-turbanned
stalwarts ; to the right, a company of the King's African
Rifles, massive blacks of a dozen different races but
chiefly Nubians and Soudanese, uniformed in black
jerseys and tall black tarbooshes; nearer still the band.

Massed just without the policed lines were thousands
of white-robed blacks.

The pavilion itself was a bank of the most brilliant
variegated color — the blue and gold of the uniforms of
the Governor and his staff; the white and gold of the
line officers; the heavily gold-embroidered robes of the
native kings and chiefs, some of black broadcloth and
some of rich russet-hued bark cloth of native make; the
purple and scarlet skull caps of rich Indian merchants;
the delicate hues of the Paris gowns of a score of English
ladies, wives of the officials; white and black robed Sis-
ters of the Church, black and white gowned brethren of
the faith — many of the officers and a few of the officials
starred of breast with decorations that told of distin-
guished services to the State, the decoration that natu-

2i4 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

rally dwarfed all the others, both in magnificence and in
demand for space on human topography, being the "Star
of Zanzibar," that of one of earth's smallest potentates,
the Sultan of Zanzibar.

To the right of the Governor sat the bright-faced boy
King of Uganda, his Highness, Daudi Chwa; to the
left; his senior regent, Sir Apolo Kagwa, K. C. M. G.,
a full-blood Baganda, but, if you please, a belted knight
of the British Empire. Near about were grouped, each
surrounded by his elder councillors and chiefs, the Kings
of Unyoro, Toro, and Ankole, and the Kakunguru and
the Saza Chief of Usoga, all feudal lords of his diminu-
tive Highness of Uganda.

The hour of the opening of the Exhibition was justly
a proud moment for Sir H. Hesketh Bell, K. C. M. G.,
the Governor. Of wide administrative experience, great
energy, and of exceptional executive ability, in his scant
two years in Uganda he has had remarkable success in
welding together into a fairly homogeneous whole the
previously loosely knit feudal elements of Daudi Chwa's
kingdom; and by a great amount of road building, and
good road building at that, he has accomplished more
towards the opening up of the commerce of the country
than all his predecessors. Indeed, at no previous time
would the transportation facilities of the country have
permitted the assembly of such an exhibition (amounting
to four thousand exhibits) of native products, many come
from remote points on the Nile, out of the north, and some
from far southern Ankole, near to Lake Kivu. Nor,
perhaps, at any previous time would tribal jealousies
have left such an assembly possible.

After a brief address of welcome to the visiting dig-

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 215

nitaries, and of congratulation upon their progress in
education and in organized industry, Governor Bell
received in turn the visiting feudatories and their chiefs,
and the Exhibition was declared open.

Then the dignitaries and the visitors dispersed among
the exhibits, viewed the samples of most excellent wheat,
corn, cassava flour, chillies, peas, beans, peanuts, rice,
yams, ghee (clarified butter), potatoes, rubber, beeswax;
of vegetables and fruits; saw the production of coffee in
all its stages, from the picking of the berry through curing
to the cup; were shown cotton in the boll and in the
ginning; marvelled at the native cunning of the basket
and mat and cloth weavers, the patience and fair handi-
work of the ironsmiths with none but the crudest of tools ;
stood in dumb surprise before the long line of round-
mallet-wielding bark cloth makers, and saw a small
eighteen-inch square of tree bark slowly expand to the
wide proportions of an ample mantle, the finished pro-
duct smooth and soft of texture, the color any of many
tints from a pale amber to an Indian red; saw all these
laughing, singing workers squatting to their tasks — for
no Baganda can even contrive to till or crop the soil
unless he is comfortably down upon his haunches, and
then his hands are helpless unless they are plied in time
to the lilt of some tune or song.

While an extraordinary and most interesting Exhi-
bition, nevertheless I recall no native working with any
but native tools at native tasks, making and doing the
sort of things they have been making and doing from time
immemorial, except a few lacemakers taught by mission
ladies, and the feeders of the cotton gin; indeed, there
was little in the show emphatic of material industrial

216 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

progress except in the matter of cotton growing, the pro-
duction of which has increased from the value of $30 in
1904 to $240,000 in 1907-08.

Not the least notable feature of the Exhibition was
the youthful King of Ankole, a twenty-four-year-old,
seven-foot giant, of an intelligent and most pleasing face.
Nor were his principal exhibits less notable in their pro-
portions and attractiveness than was he himself; his
cows wore horns that would make the biggest Texas steer
look like a two-year-old; and behind him throughout
the day trailed a harem of thirty-seven dusky beauties
of every tint from ebony to pale chocolate, and of all
ages, apparently, from fourteen to four hundred.

A Marathon race was started about three o'clock.
The course measured one hundred yards longer than that
of Olympia, and not only was the course an endless suc-
cession of steep hills, but during the last two hours the
runners had to contend with rain and mud so heavy that
the white judges on bicycles came in completely worn out.
Of the forty-eight starters, none were trained. Never-
theless remarkable time was made, the winner, Kapere,
a native of Uganda, finishing in three hours, three min-
utes, only seven minutes over Olympia time. Only two
others finished, one, Rubeni, coming in sixteen seconds
after Kapere, and the third, Atanansi, three minutes later.
And weirdest of all, the first two, standing for a photo
ten minutes after their arrival, showed not the least sign
of distress — not a heave of flank or a tremor. Obviously,
with decent roads and a bit of training, this pair would
be tough customers, in any company, over a twenty-six-
mile course.

What magnificent reserves of latent energy dwell

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 217

within the huge bodies of those equatorial blacks, poten-
tial to turn every acre of land they inhabit into areas of
enormously rich productivity, if only they could be freed
of the lethargy within which the ease of their winning
a subsistence enwraps them. And yet breakfasting two
days later in Entebbe at the excellent Equatorial Hotel
of Madame Berti, on purple passion fruit and ripe figs,
at a table covered with orchids that would be worth a
small fortune in New York, looking off down the perfect
roadway, surfaced with red morain, that drives straight
through the botanical gardens, and out across the
sapphire of the lake to the deep blue of its farther head-
lands, breathing an atmosphere whose every whiff suf-
fused one's senses with the passive joys of dolce far
niente, it was not at all so easy to suppress sentiments of
regret that these ease-loving children of Nature must
needs be beguiled and bedeviled by white intrusion among
them.

Throughout the half-century elapsed since the daring
of Livingstone, Speke, Burton, and Stanley made known
to the civilized world the vast store of raw riches it holds,
its enormous resources under cultivation as a producer,
not only of food and clothing but of an infinite variety
of trees and plants that supply the rare and high-priced
drugs of commerce, England and the Continental powers
have been grabbing greedily for the last square foot they
dared appropriate of Equatorial Africa.

And yet to-day, after many years of administrative ex-
perience, experiment, and study, the fundamental moot-
point as to the ultimate value of their holdings remains
unsolved.
• Is Equatorial Africa — roughly the middle third of

2i 8 IN CLOS-ED TERRITORY

the Dark Continent — ever to become a white man's
country in anything more than name and administra-
tion— a country where white colonists may settle and
subsist en masse?

This is the problem that is vexing home Colonial
Offices and local Administrative Councils, and that one
hears continually discussed by settlers on the streets and
in the clubs of Mombasa, Nairobi, Entebbe, Dar-es-
Salaam, Tanga, etc.

And the problem is all the more intensely interesting
from the fact that it is not only infinitely complex but,
in many of its elements, without precise parallel.

Of course its nearest modern parallels exist in the
conquest and colonization of North and South America.
But while in North America the red native was easily
displaced and his territory appropriated and occupied
through the gradual process of extermination, resultant
in small measure from warfare and in large measure from
vices and diseases contracted from the invaders, and
while the same end was attained in South America partly
by ruthless, indiscriminate slaughter, and partly by the
blood admixture come of broadcast inter-marriage be-
tween invading and native races, on the contrary the
native black population of Central Africa (bar the original
small Kingdom of Uganda proper, where generations of
semi-civilized rule and habit have wrecked morals and
reduced the birth rate) increases under contact with and
restraint by civilization, and its women are not of types
to leave it conceivable that white colonists will mate with
them on any wholesale scale.

The black, nearer to the primary brute vigor of the
beasts of his native jungle in every physical function than

Karrolit Desert

Mt.KoKomo

JUBULANDHoherti
Deseri

BRITISH
EAST AFRICA

SCALE Of MILES

0 60 100

Railroads
^Vf Game Reserve Boundaries __..

DETAIL MAP OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA, SHOWING "CLOSED TERRITORY" AND ROUTE OF

AUTHOR'S LONG SAFARI

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 219

is the white man, the product of untold centuries of adap-
tation to resistance to the many perils to life that lurk
along the equator, endures exposure to sun and other
climatic trials and easily recovers from wounds no white
man could survive, even eats decaying flesh or fish without
being poisoned by ptomaines — so eats without injury
or illness of any sort, except that the elephantiasis (a
terrible enlargement of the body, usually of the feet or
lower limbs), prevalent along the coast and about the
lakes, is attributed to the consumption of putrid fish.

The blacks are there, there in uncounted millions,
there in population probably more dense than that of
the wild tribesmen Caius Julius found occupying Britan-
nia, just before the dawn of the Christian era; and, in like
manner, it is easily conceivable, Caesar and the long string
of consuls that followed him through the next four hun-
dred years were, up to the last hour before their final
expulsion, constantly debating whether Britannia was
ever ultimately to become, actually, a Roman's country!

Is the history of Roman Britain to be repeated in an
ultimate expulsion of the white invaders of Equatorial
Africa? Doubtless not, literally, and yet that it may be
measurably repeated I am much inclined to believe,
repeated to the extent of prevention of its occupation
by wrhites in predominating numbers.

While, through bad diet and ignorance of all rules
of hygiene more susceptible to ordinary germ diseases
than whites, the blacks more hardily withstand them.
Inter- and inner- tribal warfare and human sacrifices to
heathen gods now stopped — conditions which alone
served to prevent a hopelessly dense overcrowding of
population in the past — it is only a matter of years, and

220 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

not so many at that, until the blacks, fecund as their
flowerpot-rich soil, fill all the land from sea to sea. This
nothing can prevent except a war of extermination, which
modern ethics forbid, or disease.

And in the matter of disease, what is to decimate
them ? Pulmonary diseases so far are a negligible quantity.
Vice and the ills it brings will not do it, for drunkenness
and licentiousness and the long train of diseases they
engender, which alone served to wipe out the North
American Indian, have for generations been widely
prevalent among them. Syphilis they apparently make
complete recovery from without classical treatment, so
local physicians told me. Even the bubonic plague has
no chance there now that a competent medical protecto-
rate over them has been established — as witness the
prompt eradication of the recent violent outbreak of that
disease at Kisumu.

Indeed, of the endlessly long list of known human ills,
only one stands as a serious threat to the equatorial black,
viz., the sleeping sickness, Trypanosomiasis, for which so
far medical science has been able to do little more than
give it a name. No more is to-day known of its actual
cause or of a cure for it than when, in July, 1891, it stole
into Kampala, come from God alone knows where, and
quickly showed itself to be the most relentless and stubborn
human scourge medical science has ever had to encounter.
Within the first twelvemonth it had claimed thirty thou-
sand victims, all natives resident on the islands of Victoria
Nyanza, chiefly of the Sessi group, or along the north and
west shores of the great lake.

Through the instrumentality of the Royal Society,
Colonel Sir David Bruce of the Indian Service, one of the

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 221

ablest bacteriologists living, spent the year 1903 in a close
study of the disease on the ground. But all he was able
to learn was that it is communicated by the bite of the
Glossina palpalis, a species of the tsetse fly, a small
grayish-black chap the tips of whose wings cross in a
"swallow-tail" when folded.

Within the infected areas of Uganda, Unyoro, and
Usoga, by the end of 1905 a full two-thirds of the popula-
tion of three hundred thousand people were dead of the
scourge, notwithstanding the enforced removal of well
natives en masse to a distance of two or three miles back
from lake shore and stream sides, beyond the known zone
of tsetse occupation; the isolation as rapidly as possible
of the sick upon islands of the lake; and the clearing
away of trees, jungle, and long grass in the vicinity of
Entebbe and Jinja.

Now it is sweeping south along Tanganyika toward
Rhodesia, east into German and Portuguese territory,
and has already left a wide swath of dead behind it in
its march around the north end of Victoria Nyanza,
through the Province of Usoga, and into the Kavirondo
country, where, already far to the east of Kisumu, it is
rapidly ascending the watersheds of the Kuja and Oyani
Rivers toward the very heart of British East Africa.

Indeed, when on January 19 last the need of food
compelled me to descend into the Oyani valley from the
Kisii Highlands, where I had been after elephant, and I
there encountered Deputy Commissioner Northcote and
Dr. Baker, engaged, with a large party of Askaris (native
soldiers), in building hospitals for the care of sleeping
sickness sufferers, I was told by them that mine would be
the last safari to be allowed to enter the Province of

222 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Kisumu, for fear the porters might contract the disease
and scatter it north and east through the Protectorate.

Looking down upon the beautiful palm-lined valley
of the Oyani, far as the eye could see the country was
brown with fields of the ripening metama, gray with the
grass-roofed villages, bright with the piebald herds of
cattle and sheep of the thrifty Kavirondo, five thousand
of whom were then sick of the disease — which means as
bad as dead of it, and almost all of whom confront practi-
cally certain extermination in the next four years.

Over the entire field of its prevalence, doubtless close
to a half-million people are dea.d of the sleeping sickness
since its first observation in 1891.

While crossing the lake from Kisumu to Entebbe, I
met Captain F. Percival Mackie, of the Indian medical
service, one of Sir David Bruce's large staff of physicians
and nurses, just in from India on a two years' detail for
further close study of the disease. Sir David had pre-
ceded him a few weeks and already had established two
hospital camps, one about midway between Kampala and
Jinja, another to the east of Jinja, in Usoga.

And there now on the very firing line this devoted but
numerically puny little band of soldiers of science stands
coolly battling, virtually at death grips, with the monster,
— the monster that, remaining uncontrolled for yet a few
years, is the one potentiality that can quickly and surely
make Equatorial Africa "a white man's country"; for
while, so far, it has claimed comparatively few white
victims, not only do the blacks easily become infected,
but all who get it die of it.

Indeed, cutting out, if it so chooses, the economics and
the humanities of the local situation, could the civilized

WAKAMBA WITCH DOCTORS

YOUNG WAKAMBA WARRIORS LINED UP SINGING AND WAITING FOR GIRLS TO

SELECT PARTNERS

THE DANCE AFTER PARTNERS WERE SELECTED

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 223

world realize what terrible sacrifice of human life might
ensue if the sleeping sickness should contrive to steal
across to European, American, or Asian shores — and
that such disaster is not impossible is proved by the fact
that often cases have not developed until months after
any possibility of infection, and by the further fact that it
is not yet definitely known that the mosquito or some other
fly than the tsetse may not communicate the disease —
scientific columns would be hastening to the front from all
the Great Powers of the world, bent on a joint assault
of the enemy before it is too late.

But that the monster will be conquered before it is
too late, the vast resources and recent accomplishments
in bacteriology, prophylaxis, and therapy leave us every
reason to hope, if not to expect.

And then, the monster shackled, what of Equatorial
Africa, socially and industrially? Logically, with the
death rate by war stopped and by disease checked, the
millions of blacks already occupying the central plateau
and the lake and Nile basins must go on increasing until,
in a few decades, they will number well-nigh all Equa-
torial Africa can comfortably hold and support; for it is
to be remembered that there are enormous areas of the
more arid plateaus of British and German East that,
while intrinsically rich as the best of our Southern Cali-
fornia, Arizona, or New Mexico lands, no native blacks
could subsist on if confined to limited sections, and which
none but the most scientific modern farming could render
profitable.

And, given the survival and increase of the blacks,
what, then, the future of the country? Of course, bar
the arising of unthinkable conditions, Equatorial Africa

224 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

must remain, for generations anyway, under white ad-
ministration — at least until a universal consent is reached
to withdraw and let the blacks work out their own prob-
lems, which is inconceivable, as meaning certain reversion
to stark savagery.

And throughout such period, be it long or short, it
is inevitable that many thousands of the adventurous or
discontented of all white nationalities will go there as
settlers.

What are their chances ? Good, capital ; none better
anywhere, be they lazy or ambitious.

First, with reasonable observance of the laws of
sanitation and hygiene, whites may preserve reasonably
average good health there, with no greater peril of malaria
than one runs to-day in many sections of this country and
less danger of pulmonary diseases than our climate is
ever threatening. This opinion, I well know, is antag-
onized by Winston Churchill, but as against him stands
the fact that the officials, missionaries, and settlers one
meets out there, men and women resident there anywhere
from ten to twenty years, are obviously as sturdy, sound,
and vigorous a lot on the average as one meets anywhere
in the temperate zone. To be sure the little churchyards
are not empty of gravestones — nor are they long so empty
anywhere else in the world where men have enclosed them.
Lieutenant- Governor Jackson, C. B., C. M. G., and C. W.
Hobley, C. M. G., of British East; S. C. Tompkins, C. M.
G., Chief Secretary of Uganda, James Martin, and Father
Laane, all there resident varying periods from fifteen to
thirty years, are types of soundness and of physical and
mental activity any man of their years would be glad and
proud of. Nor are the men here cited exceptions; such

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 225

types are the rule — possibly, very likely in fact, because,
precisely as Joaquin Miller once explained the high type of
the average California Forty-niner by contending that "the
cowards never started and the weak died on the road," so
do few feeble of body or soul ever ship for Central African
ports. Of course they (many of them) have " livers";
but, if you ask me, I believe the alleged typical "tropical
liver" is less due to conditions climatic than to too fre-
quent impalement by "a peg of whiskey."

Secondly, for that hardy, tireless, stout-hearted but
always restless though usually indolent class or type of
pioneers of the sort to whom we are indebted for the
winning of all North America from savagery — the path-
finders across the treeless plains; the trail-blazers through
forests, where danger, if not death, beset them at every
step; the venturers in frail bark craft far out over unknown
and hostile waters; the trappers and the traders; the men
of the coon-skin cap and squirrel rifle; the women of
brawn and freckles and fustian frocks; the folk of the log
cabin and the little patch of maize and potatoes — for all
such Equatorial Africa is a paradise.

Gone are they all, do you say? Gone with the times
and conditions that developed them ? Never will they be
gone so long as blood flows in Anglo-Saxon veins — or in
French or German for that matter, — and it's a lot we owe
them both. Never will they be gone so long as bold
spirits are able to find wild places where they fancy they
find a larger independence and personal freedom than
the teeming centres of civilization afford.

There their beasts may stay fat the year round on the
wild feed; no forests must be felled to build and plant;
there a man may plant, till, or harvest every day in the

226 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

year if he likes, or, if he be lazy, so fecund is the soil
that a few weeks' work in the fields will keep a family
in plenty throughout the year; there, at certain favored
altitudes, orchards may be seen standing amid fields of
ripening wheat, oats, and corn, wherein apples, plums,
apricots, etc., are thriving beside oranges, lemons, bananas,
figs, pineapples, pomegranates, papayas, while hard by
gardens grow in profusion any and every vegetable it
has suited the owner's fancy to plant ; there, in otherwise
favored sections, the rubber tree, the fibre plant, sisal,
cocoa, coffee, and a score of other plants or trees yielding
fourfold the crop value of any products of the temperate
zone, may be cultivated; there all about, in most parts,
wild meat is to be had for the shooting, so one has bought
the " small (settler's) license." Ease is there for the easy-
going, riches for the industrious.

And, while the local administrations don't yet fully
appreciate it, and persist in maintaining ordinances in-
imical to poor settlers, nevertheless it is precisely people
of the type of the old North American pioneers, the folk
who arrive scant of belongings, scantier still of cash, but
rich in brawn and pluck, the sort that come with a wife
and a string of tow-headed children, all workers at some-
thing down to the baby in arms, that can be relied on to
push out north and south from the Uganda Railway into
the wilds, the best possible advance guard for the peace-
loving plodders who quickly follow them and for whom
they promptly make way as soon as the country is per-
manently pacified.

The man or family with a few thousands should not
go there, for such are usually unsuited to life in the wilds,
too often untrained in labor or business. The country

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 227

has too many such already, who almost invariably fall
hopelessly before the temptation of acquiring ten times
more land than they have the means to develop and a
hundred times more than they know anything about the
profitable handling of.

And even the worker who goes there will need to be
a pioneer in a double sense, in his system as well as in his
practice — for there to-day no white man turns his hand
to any form of manual labor, once he has instructed the
blacks he employs in their tasks. But such as may go
there with the will and spirit of the men of the West and
North, may live in ease and plenty at the cost of no more
than a fifth of the hard work our own early pioneers had
to expend in order to save their young from hunger and
shelter them from cold.

To capitalists Equatorial Africa offers rich opportun-
ities, but they can afford and always, properly, prefer
to investigate for themselves. I may say, however, that,
as the laws now stand, for operations on a large scale one
must, to be safe, figure on indentured foreign labor, East
Indian or off the Arabian coast, for any form of enforced
native labor the laws rigidly forbid in British East and
in Uganda.

Their shambas (farms) planted and tilled by their
women for the few weeks necessary to furnish the family
a season's food supply, few of the native black men know
a harder job than idling about their grazing herds through-
out the day, weapons in hand, guarding them from attack
by lion or leopard. Richer as they are than any equally
savage races of history, possessed of all they need, no
incentive remains to voluntarily engage themselves as
laborers except as they become seized with a greed for

228 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

the gauds the Indian bazaars display, tempted, but not to
a point to lead them to part with their cattle. Thus com-
paratively few are ever available for farm or other service,
and fewer still stay long enough to become fairly adept
at such work as they may have undertaken. And yet
idle as they do, thieve as they may, no settler owns power
effectively to correct or restrain them.

Indeed, it seemed to me the humanitarians of Exeter
Hall have been sowing the wind as they never would dream
of doing if they themselves were personally familiar with
local native life and conditions, and themselves had to
toss helpless, as settlers, on the tide of native arrogance
their silly clamor for larger license for the blacks has
raised, a tide that one day may easily break into a
smother of open revolt that will take a good bit of
quelling.

To-day no white man, except while on safari remote
from any Government boma, may punish a rebellious or
lazy black; instead, the culprit must be brought to the
nearest boma for trial. Usually it is a sentence to im-
prisonment he gets — in the Nairobi jail or the Mombasa
prison, according to the degree of his offence, either about
as welcome and wholly enjoyable to the black as is her
two weeks' vacation on a Sullivan County farm to a Wall
Street Fluffy-Ruffles typewriter. And this when no
white man who knows the country will contend for a
second that any Central African black can be held to his
work except by occasional flogging with the kiboko (whip),
or by the dread of it. Argument, kindness, liberality
don't go — the more of these you hand out, the worse
your labor situation becomes. But pay them fairly, feed
them well, and let them know they will get the kiboko

IS AFRICA FOR THE WHITE MAN? 229

if they shirk or steal, and no better labor (at the price)
could be desired.

Cruel ? Inhuman ? Perhaps. But please remember
there is nothing else for it — or so I believe it will in
the end be found — except to deal with the blacks the
only way they respect, with an iron hand, or to abandon
them to their orgies and sacrifices, such orgies and sacri-
fices as no story that could be told in print could give
half an adequate idea of.

But all these labor difficulties I expect to see mend-
ing shortly, for the local administrations are alive to
existing embarrassments, and settlers are loudly crying
for relief the Colonial Office will have to grant — or
send more troops. However, it may eventually come
about, whether by some form of coercion or by innoculat-
ing him with new wants, only when and as the black is
made to work can his moral uplift begin and advance to
a point to make education of value to him.

In German East Africa the labor situation is infinitely
better, natives respectful and leaping at their tasks till
the day's " stunt" is finished — all because Germany
suffers from no Exeter Hall type of misguided philan-
thropists. Nor are the natives in German territory
inhumanely treated, either; for knowing an iron heel is
ever ready for their necks whenever they do wrong, they
seldom invite its application.

XV

RUBBERING IN UGANDA

WHILE now become in many manufactured forms
a necessity, rubber is, essentially, a luxury, -
first, because of the relatively limited supply of
the raw material heretofore available, the inaccessibility
of its habitat, and the wastefully extravagant, and there-
fore costly, methods of gathering it; secondly, because it
supplies mankind with forms of protection, ease, and
comfort never enjoyed before it came into commercial
use and for which no substitute has ever been discovered,
or, if we may believe the ablest scientists at home and
abroad, ever will be discovered.

And yet probably not one out of hundreds of thousands
of those who use the 80,000,000 pairs of rubber shoes and
boots our factories annually produce, thereby gaining
immunity from the many perils of wet feet, or who roll
about the world on rubber tires at such ease as nothing
but rubber can give to man awheel, has the remotest
idea how wild rubber is won and converted into com-
mercial form.

It was my privilege during the lovely equatorial month
of November to spend three weeks in the Mabira forest
of the Changwe District of the Uganda Protectorate.
This forest comprises one hundred and fifty square miles
and lies about twenty-five miles north of the equator,
extending north from Victoria Nyanza along the west
bank of the Nile from that river's source at Ripon Falls,

230

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 231

where it issues a booming torrent from the lake, to within
two miles of the lower end of its heaviest rapids at Owen
Falls.

Returning toward my headquarters in the Ukamba
Province of British East Africa from the Uganda Mara-
thon Race and the First Uganda Exhibition, of agri-
cultural and other products, craftsmen's work, etc., held
at Kampala, it was my good luck to come to know and
gain the friendship of James Martin, for many years and
up to a few months ago His Majesty's Collector of the
Entebbe District, a man whose name, in nearly every
book written of the discovery and conquest of the vast
Central African region extending south from Khartoum
to Lake Tanganyika and east from the Congo to the
Atlantic, figures conspicuously in connection with one
gallant deed or another, one tiresome, stubborn, in-
domitable trek or another to the relief of some imperilled
station or the taking of some strategical point in advance
of the Germans or French.

Early in the '8o's, while General Matthews was
Prime Minister to Bergash Bin Said, Sultan of Zanzibar,
James Martin served as his aide-de-camp and commanded
the Sultan's forces; in 1883 it was he who guided Joseph
Thompson from Mombasa to the head of the Nile at
Ripon Falls, and thus was one of the first five white men
(Speke and Grant and Stanley having preceded them)
ever to set eyes on the bold headlands, emerald waters,
and mirage uplifted islands of Victoria Nyanza; he who,
in '84, served under Sir Harry Johnson in the negotia-
tion of the first treaties with the chiefs about Mount
Kilima N'jaro; he who, in '87-8, led a column com-
posed of seven hundred armed Swahilis and only two

232 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

other white men from Mombasa to and across the Nile to
Stanley's relief at the time of his rescue of Emin Pasha,
missing Stanley but finding four thousand of the armed
ruffians that made up the wreck of Emin's army subsisting
themselves by raiding and rapine, captured and brought
them to the coast, and saw them safely shipped back to
their old master the Khedive; he who, in 1900, signed the
first treaty with King Mwanga that gave the Imperial
British Company a hold on Uganda, after a desperate
caravan journey afoot to beat the Germans, and who, later
the same year, escorted Captain Lugard to Mengo and
assisted in the conclusion of a final treaty establishing a
British Protectorate. He is a bright brown eyed, grizzled
and wrinkled but physically and mentally keen and alert
old Africander, with a voice resonant as a Baganda war
drum, whom all wrong-doing natives have learned to
dread and all right-doing have learned to love, and who
has himself made more thrilling history than most men
ever contrive to read.

James Martin was granted his official pension some
years before his normal term of service was expired and
is now gathering rubber in the Mabira forest.

Shipmates together aboard the tight little Sybil, from
Entebbe, via Jinja, to Kisumu, he hazarded and I was
not slow to accept an invitation to come to stay with
him at his headquarters in the forest.

Arrived at Jinja just after luncheon of a fine November
day, the equatorial sun blazing unblinking out of a
vault of cloudless blue but the air crisp and bracing with
the atmospheric high wine of a 4,ooo-foot altitude, we
first went ashore for a view of Ripon Falls, the long-

BWANA MARTINI " — JAMES MARTIN

THE WAR CAXOE LEAVING JINJA FOR BOGOXGO
RIPONT FALLS, VIEWED FROM THE EAST

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 233

sought source of the main eastern branch of the great
White Nile, and a view of the town.

Out of the generously broad and deep bosom of this
vast inland sea whose smiling waters brought us to
Jinja, for centuries untold has poured the vitalizing
flood that made the valley of the lower Nile the richest
known granary of the ancient world, a prize fought for
century in and century out, straight on down to this
generation, from times long past even before the first
stone was laid for the first temple ever reared to Isis.

Napoleon Gulf, from the north end of which the Nile
issues, is so shut in by islands it shows no entrance from
the town and looks to be a lake; and, as if scrupulously
greedy of hiding the source of its great wealth, the Nile
has craftily hidden its head in a deep, sharp bend of the
gulf where one might easily cruise within a mile of it and,
but for its thunderous voice, never suspect its presence.

Scarce more than twenty feet in height of actual fall,
Ripon stretches to the majestic breadth of close upon
three hundred yards, the water pouring down in smooth,
black, oily folds into a hell of seething torment below, save
where, at intervals, shrub-crested islands rise out of the
great volcanic dyke which, away back toward the be-
ginnings of time, imprisoned the waters of the lake, and
through which they had slowly to gnaw their way to give
birth to the Nile.

Precisely here will be the head of the railway which,
ultimately, will connect with the line slowly creeping south
from Cairo past Khartoum. Thus by means of steamer
connection with the north terminus of the line pushing
up from the south and now at Broken Hills in far Northern

234 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Rhodesia, will the "Cape to Cairo" dream of Cecil
Rhodes be realized.

And here, midway of the route and therefore of the
continent, Nature has conveniently placed power ade-
quate, I should think, to turn all the wheels of several
Pittsburgs, — and here will be one of the greatest African
cities of the twenty-first if not of the twentieth century.

A lovelier climate one may not ask and hope to find.
Hot it is in the sun from ten to three, but less oppressive
than eighty-eight degrees in the shade in New York,
while one may never comfortably sit outdoors at night
without an overcoat, or sleep under less than one or two
blankets.

To be sure malarial fevers are here, — but so were
they once, in far more virulent form, in Panama. The
tsetse fly still lurks in the noisome shade of jungle and
elephant grass along the lake, loaded with the deadly
germs of sleeping sickness, but now nearly all sick natives
have been removed to islands on the lake and the healthy
have been moved back of the known danger zone, while
near lake towns and stations the ground has been cleared
of all trees and undergrowth and the flies thereby measur-
ably, perhaps, expelled from their near neighborhood.

Aloft of the falls and the rapids below the air swarms
with fisher fowl, keen after the finny giants that are
ever leaping in the rapids or boldly mounting at the
steep falling waters of the falls themselves, while hun-
dreds of crocodiles lie, apparently basking in the sun
but alert for victims, on islands and along the shores
of the river.

To-day Jinja contains nothing besides the dwellings
and offices of Sub-Commissioner A. G. Boyle, C. M. G.,

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 235

and staff of two or three assistants, the post and telegraph
office, the police barracks, and a small native village;
but, if I am not badly mistaken, before this article can
possibly get to press the building of a railway at least
forty-five miles north from Jinja to Lake Kioga, a very
rich and densely populated district, will be authorized
from London and work actually begun, and not many
months after another strategic railway line will be pushing
west from Kioga to Lake Albert Nyanza and its navigable
water route toward Khartoum.

After dinner aboard the Sybil, a forty-foot Baganda
war canoe manned by twenty natives at racing pace
ferried us the mile across the bay to Bogongo, the landing
for Mabira, where we spent the night, lulled to sleep by
Ripon's mighty voice, toned down to soft cadence by
intervening distance, to sleep so soundly that the quick-
mounting equatorial sun was half up behind Buvuma
Island before we awoke and turned out, — to see the
mists rising from Ripon's torment a tall cloud of yellowest
gold, sharply outlined against its dark olive green Nile-
side background.

Breakfast over, our beds and luggage were quickly
transferred to the heads of sturdy Baganda porters, sixty
pounds to the head, and we started in two rickshaws on
the fourteen-mile journey to Mabira.

For the first half of the distance the path was heavy,
undried from the showers of the previous night, for the
season was that of the "little rains," lasting through
November and December, during which the days are
bright and cloudless but every night there is a downpour.
So on we slowly plodded through black mud, shut in
between solid walls of fifteen-foot elephant grass on either

236 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

hand, out of which we sometimes saw rising the tops of
the mimosa and of candelabrum cactus.

Throughout the four-hour journey the path was lined
with an almost solid procession of natives, travelling
single file to the lake, the chiefs striding haughtily along
in long, black, short-caped, Spanish-like cloaks, each fol-
lowed by a band of musicians beating deep-booming
drums, twanging at their not unmusical progenitor of
the banjo, blowing tirelessly into shrill-shrieking ivory
flutes, while behind the band trailed their half-naked
chair bearers and porters loaded with their wares.

Stop the drumbeat on a march and instantly a quick-
moving column of native porters becomes a dawdling
mob ; stop their songs in the field or at the rickshaw and
at once a group of cheery, hard workers is transformed
into slouching, dull-faced idlers.

To right and left along the way we passed small
banana plantations and groups of low grass huts half
hid among them, the monotony of their dull gray walls
only relieved by bright red hanging clusters of drying
chillies and by the low, black, oval doorways that give the
only access to their smoke-begrimed interiors.

About these hut villages women were idling, or digging
in their adjacent shambas. Here in Uganda, more
modest than their Kavirondo sisters about Kisumu, who
never are clothed more heavily than was Mother Eve
herself, all women wear from morn till night most fetch-
ing evening dress costume, the laso, wound tightly about
the body from the hips to just above the outer swell of
the breasts and falling in by no means ungraceful folds
to the feet, loose robes of any — many — brilliant colors,
usually to the exposure of handsomely turned arms and

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 237

shoulders no paler wearer of evening dress would be
anything but proud of.

But few children are seen, for the Baganda are
probably the most conspicuous living exponents of race
suicide. Always poor breeders, from reasons of extreme
immorality, and in the past recruiting their race by raids
and capture of the sturdier women of Usoga, now that
raiding has stopped and sleeping sickness has come among
the Baganda, their numbers are dwindling rapidly.

At length leaving the elephant grass, we took a plunge
into and through a corner of Mabira forest, by a good
broad road made as an outlet to Jinja for rubber and
timber, a forest beautiful as could be conjured by the
most fertile fancy as the last ideal of a tropical paradise.
Giant Fecus towered eighty to one hundred feet in height,
and slender, graceful Funtumnia Elastica, the prime rub-
ber tree here indigenous, leaped fifty feet without limb or
sprout, straight of trunk as a spear shaft, and crested
with a narrow and shallow spread of boughs, the long,
sharp-pointed tips of whose leaves, silvered by sunlight
filtering through the taller forest canopy, look like the
gleaming spear points of a waiting Baganda war host.
Portly, straight-growing mahogany and other forest tree
growth of infinite variety are there, many wound from
ground to top with mighty parasitic vines of a sort that,
serpent-like in habit as in appearance, often finish by
crushing and smothering the very life out of the tree itself,
after first feeding and fattening at its expense, until naught
remains of its once magnificent proportions and virile life
but a shrivelling, rotting core within the thick vine folds
that have wrought its ruin. Everywhere are thick festoons
of delicate flowering creepers that, high aloft, look fine

238 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

and fragile as lacework, broad-leaved plantain-like fern
growths nestling tight to giant boles high aloft, and, lastly,
those very spirits of all plant life, the air-feeding orchids,
beautiful, intangible almost as a spirit, drooping idly
from lofty boughs. It is a forest noisy with the merry
chatter of monkeys and brilliant with the flitting of parrots,
swarming with timid, tiny duyker antelope a scant eight-
een inches long, a forest at first glance all smiles and
beauty and charm for every sense, and yet a forest whose
dusky recesses are as sinister of oblivion as the very grave
itself.

Peril, deadly peril to life, attends your every
step. Powerful-jawed and sharp-toothed python often
eighteen feet long, lie along low-lying limbs, watching
for quarry. Green and black mambas fast as a good
pony are ever slipping about through the undergrowth.
Indolent cobra de capello and puff adders are always
to be closely watched for, as too lazy even to try to
get out of your way, their bite certain death in a few
minutes (if instant remedy is not at hand) like that of
the mamba, and their colors blending so perfectly with
prevailing forest hues that rarely do any but natives see
them until right upon them. Gigantic hippos at night
roam far back from the still pools of the larger streams
they pass the day in. At any turn of a path through either
forest or tall elephant grass a mob of buffalo may sweep
down upon and over you, though usually when in mobs
and unattacked they pass you by, but come suddenly on
a lone bull, or wound one, and usually you confront a
finish fight, with a mighty beast quick of foot as a panther,
armed with sharp horns often of more than four-foot
spread. Hideous crocodiles, hated alike of man and

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 239

beast and sparing none, the giant Nilotic sort close to
twenty feet long, lie near swamp or stream margins so
log-like that even natives have stepped upon them before
seeing them, only to be laid helpless before the cruel jaws
by a sweep of the mighty tail. Lastly, all about swarm
crowds of mosquitoes and flies, often charged with
malarial infection that, apparently, all must ultimately
fall prey to who escape the reptiles and the beasts.

A very hell amidst heaven is a Nileside forest, and
yet, with all its hazards, a place where white men may
go and come unscathed for years, as have indeed such
men as Lieut.-Gov. Jackson, C. B., C. M. G. (now of B.
E. A.), ex-H. M. Collector James Martin, Chief Secretary
S. C. Tomkins, C M. G., Sub-Commissioner A. G. Boyle,
C. M. G., and others of their fellow empire builders in
Equatorial Africa, if only they know their way about.

Emerging from the forest toward noon, before us on
three close-clustering hills rising three or four hundred
feet out of the valley, stood the Mabira headquarters
buildings, on one side the executive offices, on another
Mr. Martin's bungalow, on another the staff quarters,
while down to the left, in a bend of forest near the stream,
nestled the factory buildings, where the crude latex
(milk) is washed, coagulated, and boxed in hundred-
pound packages for shipment to market.

The most modern methods are here employed, tapping
being done with locally devised tools considered an im-
provement on those used by the Para rubber planters
of Ceylon, and washing and coagulation by scientific
methods, which, through perfect cleaning, etc., adds
largely to the market value of the product.

A rubber tree is nine years in maturing in the forest,

24o IN CLOSED TERRITORY

but may be tapped for from one-quarter to one-half pound
by the seventh year; after eight years, by full tapping top
to bottom the trees should yield three-quarters to one pound
to the tree.

The hundred and fifty square miles of this forest
are subdivided into blocks of four square miles, with
broad paths along the base lines between blocks, and
many narrow tapping paths penetrating each block.
Trees are carefully searched out and counted in each
block as fast as surveyed, until now five hundred thou-
sand full-bearing trees have been tallied, with much land
still unsearched, and hundreds of thousands of Nature-
sown seedlings coming on.

Tapping is done in the rainy season, which here means
ten tapping months in the year. But tapping can only
be done when trees are dry. However, since nearly all
the rain falls at night, tree trunks are usually dry enough
for tapping by 9 A. M. The tapper finishes his tapping
shortly after midday, bringing his day's take of latex
(of anywhere from one to five pounds) to his local station
in the evening, whence it is carried early the next morning
to the factory at headquarters.

So far the maximum number of tappers used is about
five hundred, the remainder of the total of two thousand
blacks here employed being engaged on road and path
making, factory labor, clearing land, and planting Para
rubber or other crops, and on the completion of head-
quarters and station buildings.

Since April, 1908, about twenty-five tons have been
shipped, thus assuring a total yield this year of not less
than seventy tons, worth in London an average of at
least four shillings per pound ($i) or, gross, S8o,ooo, which

TAPPING RUBBER TREE ix MABIRA FOREST

JAMES MARTIN AND HIS RUBBER TAPPING TOOLS
"CREPE" RUBBER JUST OUT OF THE ROLL PRESS

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 241

as nearly as I can estimate is produced at a total outlay,
including new machinery, buildings and freight duties,
and administrative expenses, of $60,000, thus leaving
$20,000 as profit on a total cash investment to date not
much in excess of $100,000.

Next year, the third, with installation of new machinery,
factory and station construction, road making, etc., all
finished, the output should be an increase of fifty per
cent to one hundred per cent on that of this year and
expense should lessen at least twenty-five per cent; and
I can see no reason why after the fourth or fifth year the
forest should not be shipping between one hundred and
fifty and two hundred tons per year.

Moreover, rubber making expense is sure to continue
to decrease through revenue derived from fuel and timber
sales. The forest is full of superb woods, especially the
muvule, which is much like the best walnut timber, and
Nysambia, which closely resembles good beech in appear-
ance and quality. While remote from large markets for
profitable shipment in wholesale quantities, local demand
for timber and fuel can probably be relied on for profit
sufficient to cover a part of the cost of maintenance of
roads and paths through the forest and to the lake.

Monday morning there arrived at the factory five
hundred pounds of latex as the product of Saturday's
tree tapping, a thin, milk-white fluid which at the factory
is poured into big tanks; Tuesday, seven hundred pounds,
and Wednesday, nine hundred and twenty pounds came.

Given average good quality in the latex extracted, and
here it produces fifty per cent in net rubber of its gross
weight, the profit in rubber making lies in its rapid and
economical washing, by which it is cleaned of all foreign

IX CLOSED TERRITORY

substances, contained resins, etc.; its coagulation and
pressing into thin sheets or ribbons which at a glance
show buyers their absolute purity in net rubber; its dry-
ing, smoking, and packing for shipment.

Oddly here, in these equatorial African jungles, whence
heretofore rubber has never been gathered and made except
by the most crude, wasteful, and uncleanly native methods,
and while over ninety per cent of the vast Brazilian,
Central and South American product is even to this day.
after a generation of experience, still taken and prepared
for market by unsuperintended Indians at a waste in
one way and another of more than a third of its value,
here in Central Africa the last resources of science are
employed to produce chemically pure rubber at minimum
cost.

Generally in Africa and in Central and South America
coagulation of the latex is obtained only by rubbing lime
juice or other acid along the incisions hi the tree trunks,
or by catching the latex in cups and fetching it to camp,
dipping broad, thin, paddle-shaped blades of wood in the
latex and holding it in the smoke of burning palm nuts
until coagulation is finished, and repeating this process
until a thick "ham" is so accumulated. In both pro-
cesses no contained resin is eliminated, much bark, dirt,
and even stones are often incorporated in the mass, and
a high moisture content remains, leaving the manufacturer
always buying more or less of a pig in a poke and paying
freight on a lot of waste material.

But a new era opened in rubber production a decade
ago with the demonstration in Ceylon that rubber forests
may be successfully and profitably grown from artificially
planted seed. And as from year to year more capital had

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 143

to be poured into these plantations to insure their proper
care and the sound maturity of the trees, chemistry began
to be ransacked for improved methods of coagulation and
mechanical art for better tools and machinery for tapping
the trees and cleaning and curing the rubber, with the
result that the cultivated Para rubber of Ceylon fetches
in the London market from eight to twenty-two cents a
pound more than the best fine hard Para taken from wild
trees.

And now here in the heart of the Uganda Protectorate,
within a few miles of the scene of Stanley's heaviest fight-
ing thirty years ago, and in a region where the pacification
of the country has only been accomplished by almost
continuous punitive operations by the stout-hearted little
staff of British civil and military officials who, with a hand-
ful of Soudanese and Sikhs, have taken and held the coun-
try for the Crown, — operations that often involved heavy
fighting, and have continued down to a few months ago, —
here in the equatorial wilderness the best Ceylon methods
have been materially improved, both in tapping and
coagulation; better tools have been devised for stripping
the outer bark off a desired incision line, a hooked blade
that cuts an even depth and width, and a set of spur-like
roller blades for quickly running along incision lines and
tapping the latex cells, whfle prolonged experiment here
by Chemist John Hughes has at last yielded a down
(chemical formula) which coagulates the latex almost
instantaneously at a cost of one-tenth of a cent per pound.

When work begins in the morning a bucket of boiling
water, the hotter the better, containing a scant ounce of
the dawa, is poured into a Nysambia trough made on
the place, three feet long, about eight inches wide, and

244 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

eight inches deep, into which is immediately poured five
pints of latex. Instantly the yellow resins and foreign
substances are eliminated and taken up in suspension by
the hot water, and within one and one-half minutes a
thick mass of clean rubber is formed which is carried to
and passed three times through steam-driven rolls that
press out the moisture and give it form, from which it
comes out a beautiful milk-white strip of what the market
calls "crope" rubber, ten feet long and six inches wide,
deeply stamped with diamond-shaped figures, the centre
of each diamond thin, the outlines thick, that at a little
distance make the ribbons look like strips of lace, — about
two and one-third pounds, the product of five pints of latex.

These strips are hung in a steam-heated drying room
until all moisture is expelled, then matured or " cured"
in the smoke room, in the creosote-laden fumes of a wood
fire, which renders it proof against all forms of attack by
bacteria and consequent decomposition.

From the smoke room the strips issue of the palest
amber tint and are folded and packed, under high pressure,
in hundred-pound boxes for shipment.

Thus Monday's latex is by the next succeeding Mon-
day converted into the highest type of commercial rubber
and on its road to market, where, as now cleaned and
prepared, the product of these wild Funtumnia Elastica
trees is commanding as high a price as the best culti-
vated Para.

And notwithstanding prevailing high export duties
and unreasonably excessive freight rates between Mabira
and Mombasa, I can see no reason why within another
year this product should not be laid down in London at a
cost well inside of forty cents per pound.

BAGAXDA DANCERS

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 245

The first week of my visit I spent in and about the
factory and offices. The third day, the big native chief
of Kioga District arrived, attired in a well-fitting Norfolk
jacket, and boasting a silver watch chain, a nickeled police-
man's whistle, and sandals for decorations, followed by
his ministers, court band, and a hundred nondescript
followers. Returning from the Exhibition at Kampala,
he stopped to pay a visit to his old friend Martin, who
employs some hundreds of his subjects, and to see the
wonders of the new rubber factory.

After the inspection Mr. Hughes handed him a bottle
of ammonia to smell, as a sample of the dawa used in
coagulation. At the first whiff he nearly threw a back
somersault and then, as salve for his wounded dignity,
proceeded to compel every last one of his followers, down
to the meanest porters, to take a stiff whiff of the bottle,
holding the noses of several tight to its mouth until they
were near strangling.

Of evenings, dining in a bungalow heavy with the
sweet scent of the scores of rose bushes and violet beds
that hedge it round about, what with my host's fascinat-
ing stories of stirring incidents of the early days of Uganda
empire building, delicious curries so hot they would make
Hades feel like a skating rink, weird Arab dishes, "mus-
catis " and " pillous," that would conjure new joys for
the most blase gourmet, lettuce and water cress tender as
true charity, palate-tickling combinations of tomatoes and
anchovy paste, fresh pines juicy and sweet (almost) as the
lips you best love, and Chianti that makes you want to
kick somebody's hat off, Mabira has taken permanent
lodgement among the dearest treasures of my memory.

Indeed, if, after death, my spirit contrives to have

246 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

quite its own way, more than likely any interested will
find it wandering in some dusky nook or bright glade of
the Mabira forest, near to Kiko's smiling face and not
far from the red bungalow on the hill.

The last week of my visit to Mabira was spent in a
tour of the forest with my host to the outlying stations,
from Mbango, the headquarters, to Kiwala, to Wan-
tarunta, to Lochfyne, etc., stations usually eight to twelve
miles apart, each in charge of a canny Scotch forester,
with a Goanese clerk and timekeeper and Goanese gang
bosses.

The journey was very comfortably made, the host
in a rickshaw and I on a tall, gray, country-bred pony,
through miles of beautiful forest cool of midday and chill
of evening, through patches of open country and elephant
grass in the burning sun, across swamps ringed round with
tall, feathery date palms and wild figs, along the wide
belt of papyrus reeds that for miles fill the entire channel
and valley of the Seziwa River, the Nile's first important
tributary, from the west below Ripon.

And whether along the forty miles of twelve-foot main
road or the two hundred miles of base line and still nar-
rower tapping paths, the latter sometimes fifty yards apart
and sometimes a thousand, according to the plenty or
scarcity of tapable trees, ever about us rose the tall silver-
gray shafts of the Funtumnia, sometimes standing singly,
sometimes in close clusters of a dozen or twenty, each bear-
ing the brown scars of the tapper's knife.

One could follow the running, singing, laughing band
of Baganda tappers into the dusky forest glades to their
work if his wind held out and he could keep his neck
from entanglement in the thick network of vines that

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 247

canopy the tapping paths, and the dread of snakes —
thicker here than even in the worst dreams of the most
bibulous — out of his mind, but to photograph them
at their work the shades forbid.

The station buildings are usually set on well-cleared
hillcrests, the superintendents' houses neat bungalows,
roofed with tin, whose walls, lintels, and door and window
frames are made of the bamboo-like stems of the elephant
grass, bound together with strands of fibrous bark, quickly
and cheaply made, but snug and cool.

Of evenings, the near-by native hut villages are ringing
with the shouts and laughter and all sorts of merrymak-
ing horse play, including wrestling matches not widely
differing from or inferior to the Graeco-Roman style.

Not content with Mabira's native wealth hundreds of
acres about Mbango and the outlying stations are cleared
and planted with Para and Funtumnia, with sisal, cocoa,
coffee, croton-oil plant, indigo, citronella, cassava, ba-
nanas, sweet potatoes, pines, papayas, — crops that, in the
thick black loam that makes all Uganda like to the most
luxuriant garden, yield in profits per acre two to four
times that realized on temperate- zone farming.

Nor is this work in any measure groping or experi-
ment, for it is under the direction of Ernest Brown, for-
merly an assistant in the botanical gardens of Entebbe,
where for years careful study and demonstration have been
going on to prove what commercially valuable tree and
plant life thrives best here. There it has been proved that,
while the Castilloa Elastica of Central America apparently
matures well it yields no latex; that Para trees 4 years
old may measure at 3 feet from the ground up to 18}
inches, and i6j at 6 feet; 7-year-old trees up to 27^ inches

248 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

at 3 feet and 23^ inches at 6 feet, and at the latter age
may be relied on for J pound to the tree, while after 9 years
they are good for i pound ; that sisal produces 3 per cent
of net fibre against the prime yield of 3? per cent in
German East African coast plantations, where sisal plan-
ters are netting profits up to 80 per cent.

These are dry statistics, perhaps, at first glance, but
vital to rubber and fibre manufacturers and users of our
own country, vital to our ever swelling surplus capital seek-
ing safe and profitable employment abroad, absorbing
to the thousands of the more adventurous of our younger
generation, sons of the men who tackled and tamed the
trans- Missouri region and whose blood cries out for
chance of like exploits and opportunities.

For myself as an old pioneer of wild places, and recall-
ing how twenty-five years ago we used to hustle and com-
pete for arid tracts of grazing land at fifty cents to two
dollars an acre, in northwest Texas and New Mexico,
lands valueless for anything but grazing and that would
carry no more than one head of cattle to fifteen acres,
how the farms of the eastern and central States had to
be hewn out of solid walls of forest and in many places
the soil delved for among rocks, in a climate where a
year's work had to be crowded into half a year to keep man
and beast from perishing during the other half, it is tre-
mendously impressive to see in British East Africa lands
that will easily carry a head of cattle to each acre and keep
them fat, or, here in Uganda, millions of acres under no
heavier growth than elephant grass whose every square
foot is rich and moist as the soil in a nursery pot. This
land, besides its high-priced tropical products, grows in big
yield (at one point or another, according to altitude and

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 249

rainfall) most of the grains, vegetables, and fruits of the
temperate zone. These lands are available to all comers
at two rupees (sixty-six cents) the acre, often at less, while
native labor is so abundant at four to six rupees a month
that no white man here ever turns a finger to manual
task, — labor rightly handled that gives the employer
quite as much as the average day labor at home, — while
good East Indian carpenters, iron workers, wheelwrights,
masons, etc., are available at fifty to sixty-five rupees,
or sixteen to twenty-one dollars, per month!

To be sure it is not all beer and skittles here. Freight
rates are shockingly exorbitant, but so were they once on
the Southern Pacific and other Western roads; land
and other laws are crude and need a lot of mending;
the Colonial Office is greedy and none too considerate
of the settler. But against all this the local administra-
tions, here and in British East, are doing all for the de-
velopment of the country that could be expected while
the Colonial Office persists in entangling all local official-
dom in a bewildering maze of East Indian bureaucratic
red tape, and settlers are sending up persistent cries for
saner laws, simpler official forms, cheaper freights, and
more rational taxation not much longer to be denied
even by the mustiest and thriftiest of the Crown's colonial
bureaucrats.

My visit ended, I reached Bogongo a day ahead of the
next mail steamer.

Rising at dawn and taking a shotgun for birds and
a heavy .38 pistol on the chance of a crack at a crocodile,
I started in my host's great sixty-foot canoe for a cruise
along the reeds of the lake shore and to get a view of
Ripon Falls from the west.

IN CLOSED TERRITORY

Just as I was stepping into the canoe, near at hand up-
rose a true Nile ibis and a lovely, lavender-hued, crested
crane. Dropping them with a right and left, I sent
them to the house for approval, and three hours later had
the ibis, beautifully roasted, for breakfast, — dark, tender
meat, in flavor much like prairie chicken, — while the
crane was condemned for everything but personal beauty.

As we glided gently along through alternating patches
of lotus pads, reeds, and still shallows, never have I seen
predatory life active in such varied forms and on such
colossal scale.

Beneath me in the shallows big fish were darting
savagely after the little ones. Above, a sort of black
and white kingfisher poised stationary, with chin bent
tight to chest, sharp beak downpointed, fierce little eyes
hungrily searching the depths forty or fifty feet below him,
wings beating so rapidly to maintain his poise you could
scarce see them, and then down straight at his quarry
like a lump of lead he would drop, disappearing entirely
under water for a second or two, to rise full or empty
clawed, according to hunter's luck.

Along the lake shore the air positively swarmed with
insect life, chiefly flies individually so small you can
scarce see them. Often in mid-lake for miles gray to
black columns may be seen rising several hundred feet
from the water that look like the smoke of freshly stoked
steamer fires, but which are really swarms of tiny flies,
which, once your vessel runs into them, shut out all view
like the densest fog, and, if at night, extinguish all lights.

All about me on the lotus pads dainty little lemon-
hued birds were hopping about industriously picking for
their insect breakfast, while aloft, at times, the air was

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 251

fairly black with swallows darting hither and yon like
the aerial corsairs they are, to whom all flies are prey.
V-shaped flights of black divers big as wild geese were ever
passing, or groups of them standing on the little rock
pinnacles that rise a few feet above the water near to the
falls, wings extended "spread eagle" fashion and lazily
flapping, apparently a sort of "warming up" for a deep
plunge after passing fish.

Distant, narrow, black lines on the water that dis-
appeared as I advanced were the heads of crocodiles, too
wary to permit of near approach by boat.

Returning soaking wet from a half-mile walk through
bush and long grass, from the old Stanley crossing to
Ripon, to get a snapshot of the west end of the falls, out
in the lake nearly a mile from shore we sighted a big
hippo bull, floating, full length exposed, near two small
jutting rocks covered with divers.

I tried to slip in for a close camera shot, but when
within a hundred yards he dropped all but his head below
water, and fearing to lose him altogether, I so snapped
him.

Meantime, the canoe having drifted to within some
eighty yards, the fancy struck me to have a try at him
with my pistol, the upper third of his head being in
full view. The first shot was a trifle too high, but at
the second I thought I had him, — we plainly heard the
"smash" of the ball upon or into the great bony head,
my boys yelled "Pigal PigaV (Hit! Hit!), and with a
snort he rose full body ,out of water and plunged down,
leaving a narrow red ribbon of blood twining among the
bubbles.

Then for about an hour he rose at minute to half-

252 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

minute intervals for air, but only for an instant's exposure
of the tips of the nostrils, which, try hard as I could, gave
me no chance of landing another shot, sometimes driving
to right and left in his dives, again in circles, too much
dazed to follow usual wounded hippo tactics of a rush
for shore and the reeds.

My only chance of hitting him again lay in a square
charge of the boat, which often the hippo makes, with
full head exposure as he rushes open-mouthed and at an
eight-knot pace for a crunch of your boat gun\vale.
If on such a rush one waits until he is within a few feet
of the boat, a deadly shot is not difficult. But no such
charge did he make. Once he rose within twenty feet
of us, but apparently by accident, for it was only for a
second's exposure of great nostrils that looked like the
business end of a young double-barrelled cannon. Nor
were the next few seconds, — until, having passed squarely
beneath us, he rose two hundred feet on the other side
of us, — overcharged with comfort, for one of the worst
things a hippo can hand you on Nyanza is to rise beneath
the canoe, usually smashing it and upsetting you into
water swarming with crocodiles as the air is with fowl.

After an hour of these frequent rises and dives he
disappeared, dead I am forced to believe, though, not-
withstanding I had the water watched till night, he did
not rise. Of course since the affair finished a scant half-
mile above the falls, an undercurrent may have swept
him down, — or, maybe, hippo have the "funnybone"
in the head and it was that I hit, for rarely will a head shot
from the heaviest rifle kill a hippo unless driven straight
into the brain through nostril or behind the eye, and to

RUBBERING IN UGANDA 253

have so scored with a pistol at the distance is rather too
much to flatter oneself.

However, all this happened only yesterday, the yes-
terday of this writing, and perhaps a wire may bring me
in the next few days news of a trophy retrieved worth
while, for Provincial Commissioner A. G. Boyle, C. M. G.,
of Jinja, kindly promised to have his Askaris watch and
search waters and shores.

XVI

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME

LIKE most other things, sport is essentially relative.
Doubtless all true sportsmen will agree that the
greater the hazard of limb and life one incurs in
any sport, the greater, the more fascinating, the sport
becomes.

Who that has ever battled with an outlaw bronco
or held a headstrong, half-broken hunter to his work
across stiff country, could drive a trotting race and
find it better than tame? Who that has run the Gati-
neau's boiling rapids and thundering chutes in a canoe
could get much of a thrill paddling about Lake Placid,
wondering if he is ever going to get a "bite"? What
scarred centre rush, hero of a score of terrible tussles
that sap the last ounce of nerve and muscle in a man,
could find a satisfactory -quickening of the pulse in a game
of ninepins ? Who that has known the fierce joy of pulling
his very heart out on his Varsity crew could long abide
a house-boat ? Who that has held the wheel of a ninety-
horse-power racing car through the thrills and perils of a
long-distance race, every sense alert and strained to the
breaking point from start to finish, could get his own
consent to ride a gymkhana donkey race ?

And, judged by such standard, compared to the best
big game shooting North or South America ever afforded,
that of Africa towers aloft in all the scornful majesty
characteristic of a "tablestake" poker player watching

254

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 255

a game of "craps." Not only will the African rhino,
elephant, buffalo, and lion carry comfortably quite as
much lead as even the grizzly bear, and the two former
much more, but they are far quicker to charge and faster
of pace. The grizzly you can outfoot, — if you can't kill
him, — by running transversely to the slope of a steep
hill. But even on a good Basuto or Somali pony you
are not safe against the charge of a lion with less than
forty yards' start, — and not in one out of a hundred lion
encounters does the sportsman have a horse beneath him
or at hand.

The habitat of the lion is — wherever his subjects,
the game, are thickest, on the low bush veldt near the
coast, on the high veldt of the interior. He is more than
the King of Beasts, for he is far and away the first true
gentleman of his court. As a rule he seeks no trouble
with man, and usually he will do all that could possibly
comport with his kingly dignity to avoid it. Often he
will leave his feast on a fresh kill at man's approach.
Seldom if ever do lions become man-eaters, deliberate,
predatory raiders of villages or camps for human food,
until so old they have found difficulty in taking even
zebra . their easiest prey, and through stress of hunger or
by some unhappy chance have learned that man is easier
and perhaps (who but lion know?) tenderer still. But
once he gets the knowledge and the taste, woe to belated
night travellers through his bailiwick, woe to villagers or
night campers unprotected by a thorn zareba (fence) he
cannot leap, for so softly and silently does he steal upon
his victim, so crushing deadly is his grip upon the neck,
so mighty his strength in tossing his kill across his shoulders
and slipping easily away with it, that very often naught

256 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

of his raid is known until those sleeping near awake to
find an empty bed, and blood along a spoor which plainly
shows he has bounded away with their comrade in mighty
leaps, free and light as those of a cat crunching a mouse.

So not long ago on the Guaso Nyiro died young
McClellan. After a good day's sport he retired, alone, to
his bed, surrounded by the tents of his escort and the
sleeping forms of his porters. Twenty feet in front of the
tent blazed a great camp fire. Back and forth through
the centre of the camp paced an Askari sentry, rifle on
shoulder. Along came a hungry man-eater. While un-
seen until too late, the facts proved that he must have
thoroughly prospected the camp, for along its outskirts
lay easy picking, the sleeping natives. But, perhaps
surfeited with black meat, or inspired by the pride of his
royal blood to disdain it while rarer spoil lay near, straight
to the Bwana's tent he penetrated and into it entered, all
so cunningly that his presence was unsuspected until.
bounding off with McClellan's limp body across his
shoulder, and partly blinded by the firelight, he cannoned
into and bowled over the Askari ; and when the next day
the headman of McClellan's party brought to the scene
Deputy Commissioner Collyer from his near-by station of
Rumuruti, the body was found near camp, unmarked
save for the mangled and broken neck. Doubtless the
Askaris' random shots had frightened the lion away, and
cries and drum beatings kept up all night by the natives
had served to prevent his return.

Nor was it more than a few weeks later, when Deputy
Commissioner Collyer was on safari in the same neigh-
borhood, that a lion entered his camp, slipped his paw
beneath a tent and caught a Kikuyu by the ear, tearing

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 257

away the lobe and a part of his cheek. The yells of the
victim stirred the camp to shooting and shrieking that
made Leo retire. But he scored all the same, — a few
days later the Kikuyu died of shock.

While ranked along with his third cousin, the leopard,
as vermin in even the closest protected sections of Africa,
as a marauding outlaw all comers are free to shoot with-
out a license, nevertheless, in his prime he is a foeman
well worthy of the best man the love of sport brings against
him. Come face to face with him at three to ten paces
at the turning of a bush, pass in the tall grass within a
few feet of a hidden lioness and her cherished tawny
pups, pursue or wound him when he is temperately retir-
ing, usually at slow and dignified pace, from the proffered
gage of your presence, and it is far worse than an even
chance that you confront a case of kill or be killed ; for,
once he charges, usually it is a battle to the death, with
odds against you even though he receives a mortal wound
before, — as in his customary tactics, — his claws are in
your shoulder and his white fangs leaping at your throat.
For while few sportsmen are killed outright, on the spot,
by lion in these days of high power rifles, once a lion
has mauled you with his carrion-tearing teeth or claws,
nothing can prevent death of blood-poisoning but the im-
mediate and most thorough disinfection of the wounds,
or, if this is lacking, an early amputation, where a surgeon
can be reached.

As chiefly a night prowler, like all predatory savages,
biped and quadruped alike, it is just hunter's luck when
you get a chance at a lion.

Of six months spent in the plains and bush of British
East Africa, a full forty days, all told, I occupied ex-

258 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

clusively hunting lion in country where they had been
thick about our camp every night, often when they had
sought entry to our boma, twice when they had made
kills within a few yards of where we slept, without yet
getting sight of one.

I have followed their fresh spoor through long grass
and mimosa thickets where one could not see more than
the length of a gun barrel ; trailed them into their very
caves and stood, expectant, while my shikaris tried to
stone them out or taunt them to action with buzzing
Somali expletives; risen before dawn, forded crocodile-
infested rivers in the dark, stumbled through bush and
hidden bowlders to some den marked down the day before,
and there lain concealed until an hour or more after dawn
in hope of sighting them on return from their night's foray,
but all without avail.

At first I found it most nerve-racking work, but now
I don't seem to mind, whether because I'm getting used
to it or because repeated failures have left me skeptical of
each new start, I don't know. Indeed, I was beginning
to harbor fears that, like Tartarin de Tarascon, my lion-
slaying must ever remain merely a hyper-heroic figment of
my dreams, until a few days ago I learned that Ronan
Wallaston Humphrey, the District Commissioner at
Machakos Fort, twenty-five miles from Juja Farm, where
I am a guest, a keen sportsman who has shot about every-
thing else, was in the country eight years before he saw
his first lion; and that another equally keen sportsman,
Chief Secretary S. C. Tomkins, C. M. G., of Uganda,
here twelve years, has never yet seen a lion except from
a train. So that, while I can as little count on eight more
months in the lion country as, at my age, I can venture

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 259

to count upon eight more years on earth, my hopes have
revived.

And why, indeed, should not one hope, when, in the
short space of eighteen months, no less than twenty men,
sportsmen or settlers all, have been killed or badly mauled
by lion within a radius of thirty miles of Juja Farm, and
twelve lion have been killed within three miles of the
farm in the same time ?

The Lucas tragedy was characteristic. Lucas and
Goldfinch were partners in a farm on the western slopes
of Donya Sabouk, ten miles from Juja. One day the
pair jumped a lion, in tall grass near the Athi River,
which retired at their approach. After him they raced
on ponies, Goldfinch in the lead. But Leo's retreat was
only a stroke of strategy, — he sidestepped them into
concealing long grass, only to leap upon Goldfinch and
his horse as they passed, sinking his right fore claws in the
pony's right flank, his left in Goldfinch's left thigh, his
rear claws tearing at the pony's hind quarter.

The mixup was such that Goldfinch could not bring
his gun to bear on the lion and that Lucas did not dare
to shoot from the saddle, so, jumping from his pony,
Lucas ran forward to his partner's aid. But their watch-
ful enemy was not so easily to be taken in flank, for before
Lucas got to a position where he could safely fire, the
lion leaped upon him and began rending him. No more
was he down, however, before Goldfinch, badly torn
though he was of the lion's claws, slipped from his horse,
ran in, and gave the lion a shot through the heart that
laid him dead.

Yet, while scarce a minute had elapsed since he firs-t
struck Lucas, Leo had taken his toll ; Lucas was so badly

260 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

mauled that, what with the delay in getting him into the
Nairobi Hospital and the severity of the wounds, the
surgeons found naught but an amputation could save
his life. This Lucas stubbornly refused, — vowed he
would rather die than live as a maimed man.

And die a few days later he did, — in a manner typical
of his dauntless soul. The evening the surgeons told
him he could not last the night out, to his bedside he
summoned two of his closest pals, "Daddy" Longworth
and another. And there throughout the night they sat,
Lucas bolstered on pillows, drinking whiskey and soda;
Lucas toasting them a long life, they him a Happy Hunt-
ing Ground in the next \vorld, until, just as the first pale
flush of the brief tropical dawn began to dim the candles,
the two watchers suddenly realized they were looking
into the face of a dead friend. For Lucas it was about
the nearest approach conceivable to active participation
in his own wake.

In the history of East African lion shooting, nothing
is more heroic than the conduct of the Somali shikaris.
Far and away the finest native race of this continent,
with a strong strain of Arab blood, light of complexion,
wavy-haired, often with little of negroid cast of feature,
tall and slender, scrupulously clean of dress and habits,
Mohammedans all, at home nomads with their flocks
and herds, abroad the Jews of the Dark Continent,
traders wandering in small bands from one tribe to another
between the twentieth degree of north latitude and the
fifteenth degree south, the Somalis are faithful and true
to their salt. No sahib who treats them half decently
is likely to find cause of complaint of their fidelity, —

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 261

they are as ready to die for him as most others are ready
to desert where peril threatens.

No one can know the Somali and not be inspired by
a profound admiration for his religion. For its exem-
plars, Mohammedanism has done three things that, not
to make comparison, let us say uplifts it high among
religious cults; it makes an absolutely temperate people,
who never know the taste of liquor in any form; instead
of filling them with a dread of death, it not only makes
them reckless of it but inspires them to seek it in battle,
as divine warrant of everlasting abode beside the sweetest
waters and beneath the best-loved shade of the most
fecund date palms of Allah's celestial abode; it makes a
scrupulously devout people who, five times a day, remove
their sandals, bathe feet and hands, spread rug or wrap,
no matter what the presence, and, facing Mecca, for ten
or fifteen minutes engage in prayer, — so pray a few yards
from your camp fire, in a crowded street, upon a thronged
railway platform, adoring, rapt, oblivious to the world,
its joys and sorrows, its benefits and threats, first standing,
then kneeling, then bending and touching the forehead to
the earth.

Cultsmen these of a faith no intruding propagandist
can win them from. Indeed, I am told by a recent high
official of the National Bank of India's branch at Aden
that a friend of his, a missionary of the Church of Scot-
land, a physician missionary at that, a man of the highest
attainments, and of untiring devotion to his task, for
nine years treated an average of twelve thousand Mo-
hammedans a year, healing their wounds, relieving their
pains, on the sole condition that each should attend his

262 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

services and listen to his pleas. Scrupulously they kept
faith, come they did and listened, — but, after nine years
the facts forced him to admit frankly he had not won a
single convert to his creed.

All this may seem a digression from my subject, but
nevertheless, to the missionary, the "benighted" blacks
are the biggest game this Dark Continent affords.

Only a few days ago, with Djama Aout and Hassan
Yusef, Somali shikaris, I followed the absolutely fresh
spoor of a lion to the mouth of a cave into which the spoor
entered, a cave high enough of roof to admit of entry
of two or three men, standing, a distance of probably
eighty feet. On into it both Somalis started, and when
I protested their folly, they simply replied: "Inshallah
(God willing), we come back." And into the cave they
went, one carrying my second rifle, the other nothing
but his skinning knife, in as far as they could get, tossed
stones into the dark recesses beyond and in every way
invited a charge, which, luckily for them, was not made.

The experience last February on the Theika, eighteen
miles north of Juja, of Geoffry Charles Buxton typified
the wonderfully fine fibre of the Somali, — and, inci-
dentally, his own. One morning he left camp at dawn
with his Somali shikari, he himself carrying a double-
barrelled .577 cordite rifle, his shikari a Mauser. When
out from the camp no more than half an hour he sighted
a big black-mane about a hundred yards away, leisurely
retiring from his approach. Bush so thick and grass so
high he could not get a good opening for a shot, Buxton
raced in pursuit until he came within fifty yards and,
himself winded, halted for a shot. At the same instant
Leo, evidently decided he had drawn sufficiently on the

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 263

reserves of his patience, stopped and turned, tail angrily
lashing, head up, and eyes blazing his royal wrath.

With a steady aim Buxton sent a great, heavy .577
ball crashing into his quarry, a shot that entered just
inside the front of the shoulder, ranged through the lion
from end to end, and dropped him quivering in the grass.
Had Buxton left him, the lion would have been dead in
ten of fifteen minutes, but, notwithstanding he knew he
had delivered a mortal wound, keen he should not lose
his trophy, Buxton fired again, and, with little to see of
the recumbent body, missed. This last shot, however,
proved quite enough for Leo and nearly too much for
Buxton; it roused the dying jungle monarch to action
— he rose and charged.

And at this crisis, while hurriedly throwing a spare
shell into his empty gun, Buxton observed that its stock
(broken shortly before in an encounter with an elephant
and mended with string wrappings) had become so loose
it was unserviceable, a dilemma to try the nerve of the
steadiest man. However, lacking time to grab his spare
gun from the Somali, as the lion rose at him, holding the
.577 loose alongside him, Buxton fired, — and, naturally,
missed.

Then in another instant the dauntless pair were at
death grips.

Sure the lion was already carrying a wound he could
not possibly long survive and that he must win the fight
if only he could save himself for a few moments, knowing
his only hope lay in keeping his feet and holding the lion
off, as they came together Buxton rammed his empty
rifle barrel down the lion's throat, down until three-fourths
its length was within the mighty jaws, where the wood-

264 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

work beneath the barrel close up to the trigger guard
is still deeply scarred by the lion's teeth.

Then ensued a struggle unparalleled, I believe, in the
history of lion hunting, between a dying lion fighting to
the last and a man who knew himself to be as good as
dead if for an instant wind or nerve failed him.

Instantly he received the thrust down his throat, the
lion sank two claws into the inner right forearm that held
the rifle, four and six inches above the hand, — sank them
into and nearly through the arm to puncture of the other
side, and this hold he held until both went down. Thus
dragging at the arm that held the gun, the lion really
helped hold it to a firmer, deeper thrust that hurt so much
he shrank back from it, but, with an advancing enemy
whose grip the nigh paralyzing pain of his wounds did
not suffice to lessen, he could not escape it.

And there they swayed and struggled, each literally
staring death in the face, Buxton, indeed, now sure he
was gone, for the fetid odor of putrescent meat told
him the lion's carrion-rending claws that held his arm
were laden with poison of the deadliest.

Meantime the beast was tearing the man to ribbons,
the hind claws slitting his legs, those of the loose fore paw
digging at the hand that held the rifle. But flinch the
man did not, — dared not, — and knowing him well, I
believe would not had he dared.

Luckily, just as Buxton was near to going down of
sheer exhaustion of the struggle and the shock of his
wounds, help came from his Somali shikari.

This man from the start of the struggle had been
trying to shoot the lion with the Mauser, but could not
discharge it. Buxton of course supposed the gun was in

MRS. DUIRS AND JlMMIE DUIRS, AND LlON SHOT BY CAPT. A. B. DuiRS

AT 30 YARDS

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 265

some way jammed, but at the finish it proved the gun had
been set at "safe," and this, through excitement, the
Somali failed to note.

At length, and just in the very nick of time, the Somali
dropped the gun and literally sprang upon the lion's
back, so hitting its ears and pounding it about the eyes
with his bare hands that it whirled to reach him and all
three went to earth together, the Somali beneath the
lion; beneath both, the Mauser.

Thus at last released, Buxton painfully rose, gingerly
pulled the Mauser free and with it blew the lion's brains
out, all done so quickly he saved his faithful follower from
fatal wounds.

A people you are apt to become fond of, are the
Somalis, when you come to know them well.

Dr. H. S. Hall, the resident physician of Juja Farm,
got to Buxton just in time to save his life. With iron
nerve, Buxton had cauterized all the thirteen wounds with
pure crystals of permanganate, and thus himself had saved
himself from poisoning. But some of the crystals bit
into and opened an artery, and only a tight tourniquet
saved him from bleeding to death until, five hours later,
Hall came, tied up the artery, dressed his wounds, and
brought him here to Juja Farm, where he lay through
several weeks of slow convalescence.

Some men are, constitutionally, greedy. In September
I met Captain Buxton out on another lion hunt, not-
withstanding his right arm was still heavily bandaged!

One of the finest lion trophies I have seen out here is
that of A. B. Duirs, late of the Imperial Light Horse,
one of the first nine men to gain entry into Mafeking at
the time of its relief, — a ten and one-half-foot black-

266 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

mane skin without any visible mark of the wound that
killed It.

One Sunday morning last summer he was out alone
stalking an impala buck on the Komo, two miles from
his home on the N'durugo, six miles from Juja. Suddenly,
when almost near enough for a sure shot, some lucky
instinct prompted him to glance to his right, — to see, not
thirty yards away, another hunter stalking the same buck
he was after, a big black-mane; and no more had he
turned than the lion discovered him and instantly began
the snarling and tail lashing that preludes a charge.
Realizing that it was a case of strike first and true, he
dropped on one knee, took careful aim, and dropped
His Majesty stone dead, the ball entering a nostril and
ranging back into the brain !

Oddly, the safest lion shooting of all, bar unsportsman-
like shooting at night from within a thorn zareba over a
donkey bait, or from a treetop commanding a water-hole,
is where the sportsman is afoot on a naked plain where
there is nothing to climb more substantial than a sun-
beam and no hole to crawl into bigger than a wart-hog's.
Under such circumstances a pony man runs the lion to
bay, while his chief approaches at another angle, afoot.
So run to bay, the lion invariably charges, charges des-
perately, but nearly always at the pony man, and not
infrequently catches and downs man and horse where care-
lessness has brought them nearer than a hundred yards.

Often one sees their fresh kills, — a month ago I
saw one of the freshest. I was driving in a gharri from
the farm to Ruero Falls, over a stretch of short-grassed,
level plain, presently entering a region of long grass.
And into the long grass I had not driven more than a

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 267

hundred yards when I caught a glimpse of a dead zebra,
a hundred to one a lion's kill. So over to it I walked,
to find a carcass still warm, eyes not yet glazed, blood still
freshly flowing and not a wound on it save two deep claw
digs on the right shoulder, and the flesh of the neck im-
mediately behind the ears torn away and the spine
crushed, just at the base of the skull. The zebra was
not dead three minutes; doubtless I should have seen the
attack if I had been looking that way, and probably old
Leo was then watching me from a near-by thicket or out
of near concealment in the grass.

Without disturbing the kill, I drove the remaining
three miles to the falls, stopped there an hour, and then
drove back within about a mile of the kill, where I left
gharri and driver and proceeded to carefully stalk the
kill, sure the lion would be returned and gorging himself.

It was aerie work by one's lonesome, going through
grass shoulder high, with clumps of mimosa on all sides,
every step a convenient ambush of the sort Leo loves, and
the picture of the zebra's yawning wound and crushed
spine persistently intruding before my eyes. However,
resentful of previous failures, I kept on till I had the car-
cass in view at about fifteen yards, only to discover Old
Cunning had not returned. Then for an hour I crawled
about through the grass and bush in a wide circle of the
kill, only in the end to score another failure.

My host McMillan is more lucky, or more probably
a better hunter, for he seems to get lion when he likes, —
has a dozen or more to his credit. On safari last spring
on the Guaso Nyiro he spoored a lion into an old aban-
doned Masai kraal, overgrown with tall grass. Slipping
softly about the eight-foot high enclosure, trying to locate

268 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

his quarry, suddenly a line of waving grass caught his
eye, and then just as he stood alert to get a bead, the
lion rose in a mighty leap at the fence crest, for once a
bit too slow, for a perfect snapshot caught him aft, ranged
through him and out of his head, and added one more to
the big game trophies that, well set up, make the " Jungle"
of a certain house in Berkeley Square look like a wholesale
invasion of that end of London by militant African
carnivora.

Mombasa, standing on a bold, high headland between
its tiny north harbor, that well served all purposes of
old Arab and Portuguese days, and its broad roadstead
to the south called Kilindini, now almost exclusively
used ; ringed round with tall brown coral cliffs all honey-
combed and sharp pinnacled; well-nigh hid beneath
broad-spreading mangoes and the lazily nodding fronds
of palms which, wherever found, are the very sign manual
of one-time Arab dominion; defended without by a
perilously narrow harbor entrance through the jagged
jaws of a broad belt of surf -beat coral reef; defended
within by a grand old coral-walled fort, that for centuries
has added its shrill tenor drum-beat to the hoarse bass
beat of the surf as a challenge to all strange comers, —
Mombasa enjoys a climate and occupies a position of
great natural military strength, commanding a trade route
that leads to such rare prizes that for a thousand years
it has known less of peace than of war — the prizes
sought, slaves and ivory.

Times and times unnumbered has Mombasa been
captured and sacked and changed sovereignty. Chinese
and Persians, Japanese and Arabs, Turk and Christian
in turn contended for it to the death, and up from the

ANGUS MADDEN, CHIEF OF POLICE, AT KERICHO BOMA
THE AUTHOR'S FAREWELL TO HIS KERICHO HOSTS

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 269

far south and over all in the sixteenth century rolled the
ruthless tide of the vandal Zimba invasion, only to fall
later before a wily Portuguese alliance with warlike native
neighbors.

For three years, from 1696 to 1698, the Portuguese
garrison of this grand old fortress withstood an unin-
terrupted Arab siege, only in the end, wasted by famine
and bubonic plague, to see their flag cut down and them-
selves fall to the last man by infidel scimitars.

Then thirty years elapsed before the Portuguese re-
gained Mombasa, only a few months later to be perma-
nently expelled by the Imaum of Muscat.

And Arab ever thereafter Mombasa has remained, for,
technically, the town is held to-day by the British only
under concession from the Sultan of Zanzibar.

From Mombasa the narrow-gauge Uganda Railway
climbs toward the high central plateaus as rapidly as its
shockingly slow service permits; at 100 miles, 1,800 feet
elevation is reached; at 200, 2,300 feet; at 327 (Nairobi),
5,450 feet; at 484, 8,340 feet, — whence descent is rapid
to 3,650 feet at Port Florence on Victoria Nyanza, 584
miles from the coast.

The country on both sides of this railway from its one
end to its other is literally alive with wild game, although
little is seen of it till the first one hundred miles is tra-
versed and the low bush veldt left behind, or after the
more thickly settled Kikuyu country north of Nairobi is
entered. But between Voi and Nairobi train passengers
are seldom out of sight of hundreds, usually in sight of
thousands, from the tiniest dik-dik antelope, slender,
delicate, and diminutive as an Italian greyhound, to
towering giraffe and massive lion. Indeed, only a few

270 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

days ago a large herd of elephant crossed the railway just
east of Voi, trekking from the bamboo forests of Mount
Kilima N'jaro to fresh pastures in the north.

On my first journey up from the coast, no more than
two hundred yards from the station of Kiu, a great lioness
crossed the track just in front of us, walking slowly away
south and no more than thirty yards from the track as
we passed. Stopped in the station, a Boer emigrant
took a shot at her from a car roof, but apparently missed.

The extraordinary present abundance of game both
north and south of this section of the Uganda Railway is
due to the fact that all the vast territory extending from
the Tsavo River to Escarpment, a distance of two hundred
and thirty miles, and from the south line of the track to
the German border, embracing about eleven thousand
square miles, is a carefully preserved game reserve, pre-
served as jealously as the Yellowstone Park, while im-
mediately southwest of it in German territory is another
reserve of the same size. Unfenced, shut in by no im-
passable streams or mountains, the game is free to wander
out of and into the reserve at will; but like the shrewd
stags of a Scotch deer forest, so well does the game seem
to know the very boundaries that mark for them sanctuary,
that little do they leave it except in periods of local drought
or as crowded out by overstocking, — so well do they know
the immunity of sanctuary that, shooting from trains
being forbidden, timid antelope, wary giraffe, and even
lion and rhino often idle within a stone's throw of the
track.

And since from the Tsavo to Kapiti Plains, one
hundred and fifty miles, there is absolutely no white
settlement north of the track, and from Kapiti west

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 271

settlers are few and scattering and practically all within a
narrow belt of forty miles, naturally the heavy out move-
ment of the game is northward, while yet other thousands
are pouring down into this central open region of Ukamba
and Kenya Provinces from north of the Guaso Nyiro River,
out of the Jubaland and Sugota Game Reserves, that
together total an area of thirty-eight thousand square
miles.

The region lying between the Athi and the Tana
Rivers is the centre of this sportsman's paradise, although
equally good and varied shooting is to be had southwest
of the railway in the Sotik country. Close upon a half-
hundred different varieties of big game are here to be
had, each in their favorite type of country: elephant
during the dry (and hotter) season, in the dense bamboo
thickets of high mountain slopes and during the rains in
the bush veldt and elephant grass country; hippo in the
streams, or from dusk to dawn feeding along the banks;
rhinos, any old place, on plain or hills, in bush or open;
most buck and antelope, preferably in the most open level
plains; duyker and dik-dik in long grass, out of which
they pop right under your feet, visible only for the instant
of each leap, artful little dodgers most men would be
more apt to get with buckshot than with bullet; reed
buck, among the scrub of steep, rocky hillslopes ; leopard
everywhere, but seldom seen and rarely killed unless by
trapping.

Elephant are to be found within at the most a week's
march of almost any camp in the Protectorate, as also
are most of those now rarer prizes, — sable antelope, roan
antelope, oryx, eland, Kudu.

By many sportsmen the buffalo is considered a far

272 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

more dangerous antagonist than the lion. Loving the
shade and concealment of papyrus swamps, dense forest
and fifteen-foot elephant grass, buffalo are seldom seen
until you are within a few yards, often a few feet of them.
Mobs of buffalo seldom charge you deliberately but,
when startled by scent of you or by a shot, they stampede ;
often the mob comes thundering straight upon you and
you are lucky indeed if by rapid close shooting you can
turn them.

The real danger with buffalo is with the wounded or
in an encounter with a lone bull. The latter will often
charge you from no more provocation than the fact of
your presence. Recently an officer of the King's African
Rifles was spooring an elephant near Mount Kenya when
he sighted a lone buffalo to his right. Keen for his
elephant, he made a wide detour to the left of the line of
spoor, to avoid chance of having to defend himself against
the buffalo. When well past the point where he had seen
the buffalo he returned to the spoor, but before he had
followed it thirty yards and before he could turn or spring
aside, with a cleverly executed rear charge, the buffalo,
which had been quietly stalking to intercept him, caught
him on its horns and tossed him upon the flat top of a
mimosa tree, where, luckily, he lodged comparatively
unhurt. And there up the tree the doughtv old warrior
held him till nightfall!

A wounded buffalo is infinitely more dangerous when
he runs from you than when he charges, for in nine cases
out of ten, after a dash that may be of a few hundred
yards or a mile, he revengefully circles back to an inter-
ception of his own trail, stands hid in grass or thicket until

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 273

his pursuer comes plodding all unconscious along the
trail, and then is out and upon him.

And yet fierce as is the temper of a lone bull, savage
his cunning, irresistible his great charging bulk, I believe
him far less dangerous than the lion, — he has less speed,
lacks the lion's poisoned weapons, and is a much bigger
target; and this opinion is substantiated by the indispu-
table fact that at least ten men are killed or mauled by
lion to one by buffalo.

While easily stalked, the rhino is a most nasty cus-
tomer, as most men will agree who have hunted him —
especially Benjamin Eastwood, Chief Accountant of the
Uganda Railway, who was mauled and tramped by one
to the near loss of his life and the actual loss of one arm
above the elbow.

If the rhino gets your scent, almost invariably he
charges, — often, probably, from sheer curiosity, only that
does n't make him any more easily disposed of. Moreover,
he runs and turns at a speed incredible of his vast bulk.
Either shoot straight or stand absolutely motionless, when,
with his bad sight, there is a possibility he may mistake
you for a tree and veer past you.

Indeed, this latter is the safest tactics in the crisis of
any and all charges, stand fast and still, — even the un-
wounded lion sometimes swerves in his charge and retires
before a man with nerve to so await his coming.

Where you sight your rhino first and can get the wind
of him, it is perfectly easy to stalk within even five or ten
yards and land a shot where alone you can be sure of a
kill, — four inches back of the eye into the brain pan,
into the spine between neck and shoulder or midway of the

274 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

body and in line with the centre of the foreleg into the
heart. And none of these shots are possible except with
a hard-nose bullet, — no soft nose will penetrate his thick
hide to any vital part.

Doubtless the most exhausting and nerve-racking
work the African sportsman encounters is in the pursuit
of elephant. Not often are they to be found except by
following their own narrow paths between walls of bamboo
thicket, jungle tangle, or elephant grass so entirely im-
penetrable to the hunter that escape from the path is
impossible. So meet an approaching frightened herd
and chance of escape is practically zero. Rarely does
one see elephant until within a few yards of them. Often
one will find himself squarely in the middle of a feeding
herd, will hear them breaking limbs or tearing up roots,
within five or ten feet of him, on all sides, and yet without
seeing one! Like any youngsters, the totos, the babies,
are playing about the outer edge of the herd. At the
first alarm, the mothers rush trumpeting about for their
young, and it is in such a position the hunter's greatest
danger of elephant lies. Imprisoned in bush through which
they easily crash, man and beast are practically in collision
before there is time for the man to stop him with a vital
shot in the chest, — the only vital spot in a charging
African elephant, — or even time for the elephant, from
surprise or fear, to swerve. Otherwise safely armored by
the massive bone structure of the head, the elephant's
comparatively tiny brain is only to be reached by a side
shot in the orifice of the ear, while the sure shot for the
heart is midway of the body and in line with the inner side
of the foreleg. Indeed, I have known several elephants
to retire, leisurely if not comfortably, with two or three

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 275

balls in the temple which had failed to reach the
brain, whether to ultimate recovery or death was never
learned.

The vitality of the elephant is enormous, as in fact is
that of all African game, down to the tiniest buck.

But occasionally a white man comes along with a
vitality as astonishing as that of his quarry. Of this
Craig Helkett, an officer of the First King's African Rifles,
is a wonderful proof.

Out for a few weeks' sport with elephant before going
on leave, he gave one a mortal chest shot at such close
range that it was upon him before he could deliver a
second shot, passed one of its great tusks first transversely
through his stomach and then through his thigh, picked
him up with its trunk and tossed him far to one side
into the bush, and then lurched away to die. And,
miracle of miracles, though it was nine days before his
men got him to Entebbe and surgical aid, he is making a
safe recovery.

Still for the experienced and prudent elephant hunter,
the sport is comparatively safe. Mr. Bell, an English-
man who has been for the last five or six years shooting
elephant for the ivory, as a business, and who has to his
credit the probably unparalleled bag to one gun of over
five hundred head, says he has never yet been charged.
Only a fortnight ago he came into Entebbe from a four
months' safari in the Congo country with the tusks of
one hundred and eighty big fellows. Deducting the
period of the journey in and out, this remarkable kill
must have been made within no more than six weeks'
actual shooting! And one day alone he bagged eighteen!
No bad business with ivory at two dollars and a half a

276 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

pound and an average tusk weight of probably one hun-
dred pounds per pair!

Asked by a friend of mine how he had contrived to so
long come off unscathed, Bell replied, "I never shoot
until I get my big tusker right; if I find myself amid a
big herd, I manage to slip out and bide my time; patience
will always get you a big tusker right, and then you have
it your own way," and, indeed, "patience" is the watch-
word of every notably successful big game hunter: wait-
ing to "get them right."

Hippo are rarely to be had in daylight hereabouts,
although they are plenty in the larger streams and posi-
tively swarm in the lakes of less than 5,000 feet altitude.
They are easiest to be had by cruising at dawn in boat
or canoe a few yards out from landings for their favorite
grazing grounds, where a fair breast or shoulder heart
shot may be had as they enter the water, or by lying in
wait on land on moonlight nights for them to come ashore.
On the water at dawn or of a night they often rise near
you, and in such position the only sure shot is through a
yawning nostril into the brain. They are trophies well
worth while, their great teeth, finer ivory than that of the
elephant, making beautiful mirror or picture frames.
On water they are beasts to have especial care of, for they
sometimes charge you and sink your canoe with a crunch
of the jaws or rise under the canoe and spill you into
crocodile-infested waters.

At the African home of my host, William Northrup
McMillan, at Juja Farm, twenty-two miles from Nairobi,
and in the heart of the great Athi Plains, all the East
African game abounds in thousands, except rhino and
elephant, sable and roan antelope and oryx — and the

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 277

latter are to be had within two to five days' journey —
hundreds nearly always in sight from the veranda of the
house. I have lighted a cigarette in my room at daylight
and gone out and killed a big Wildebeeste bull before
the cigarette was finished. In fact, the twenty thousand
acres of the "farm" so swarm with game after the rains
that before the dry season is half over the grass is eaten
short as on an overcrowded cattle range, all from the
overflow of the great game reserves north and south of
us. But notwithstanding their great numbers, it takes
marksmanship to get game on the Athi Plains, — for they
are bare of cover and it is unusual to get a shot at any-
thing but lion or hippo short of three hundred to six
hundred yards.

The heavy-bore rifles are now practically obsolete
among African sportsmen, the four, eight, and twelve
bores and even the .577, whose chief merit lay in the fact
that they sometimes kicked you out of the way of a
charging beast. Few now use anything heavier than the
English double-barrelled .450 cordite, and I and many
others find the .405 Winchester the most satisfactory of
all for all-round African work, although the 30-30 is
heavy enough for anything except a few of the bigger
fellows, while not a few, Bell and, I understand, Selous
included, prefer to trust in the higher velocity and flat
trajectory of the pencil-like .256 Mannlicher for even
elephant. While I have not yet tried the Mannlicher,
I believe it is no more than probable its devotees are right,
for such is the extraordinary vitality of all African game
that the more lead you throw into them the faster and
farther they run, unless you get brain, heart, or spine.
I have myself in a two-mile pursuit of a two hundred and

278 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

seventy-five pound wounded hartebeeste bull put nine
big .35 Mauser bullets through him before finally bringing
him down, and a few days ago Captain Dugdale and First
Officer Hampden of the S. S. Clement Hill, on Victoria
Nyanza, put twenty-two . 303*5 into a hippo before getting
him.

Even the smaller antelope, slender and delicate though
they appear, must be hit in brain, ' heart, or spine, no
matter what the calibre of your gun, or you lose them.

Not a few American sportsmen besides McMillan
have had their fling at African big game, notably Astor,
Chanler, John Bradley, and Max Fleischman, and more
are sure to come.

The journey may be made most comfortably. By
arranging close sailing connections, the German Lloyd
steamers from New York to Naples and the well-served
German East African line thence south fetch you to
Mombasa in thirty days, and two days later you can be
in Nairobi, all at a cost well within $500, or at Marseilles
one may connect with the steamers of the Compagnie
Messageries which sail once a month via Suez for all
East African ports to Mombasa, and for all island ports
thence south to Madagascar and Reunion.

Nairobi, the seat of government of this Protectorate,
now has a total white population of eight hundred and
fifty, including the military and police, while its highly
variegated assortment of colors, ranging from pale
saffron to ebony, numbers eleven thousand. Its streets,
especially about the Indian bazaar, are thronged with
Orientals and native savages, the former as weirdly pic-
turesque in the variety and styles of their costumes as are
the latter in the scantiness or entire lack of any costume

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 279

at all. Grave Sikh constables, bearded and turbaned;
Parsee merchants and clerks in long black coats and flat-
topped skull caps ; Hindu mechanics, .turbaned and often
carrying water pipes half as big as a foot bath; coast
Swahilis in long, nightgown-like kanzus of thinnest
muslin and embroidered white skull caps; flowing-
robed Arabs with sashes stuck full of enough life-taking
steel to arm a half-dozen men of any other race; tall,
slender, graceful Somalis in khaki jackets, turbans,
and flowing waist cloths; Goanese merchants and clerks
in white drill; Indian women and children wearing more
brilliant colors than even a kaleidoscope could boast,
and Kikuyu women with nothing on but a flapping,
slipping skin or length of begrimed "American!" (cotton
cloth) which sometimes covers the back and sometimes
does not, sometimes shrouds one end of the body and
sometimes the other, a cover so scanty as to leave little
to the imagination except the privilege of conjecture why
they bother to wear it at all; tall, lithe Masai warriors,
their hair in flapping red ringlets, had of a mixture of red
clay and castor oil, a skin loosely looped about both
shoulders or over one, short swords stuck in their belts
and in their hands spears with narrow blades three feet
long; gallant Kikuyu dandies with the lobes of their ears
split and stretched to hold anything from a tomato can
to a porcelain marmalade jar, or, if a bit epris by civili-
zation, swaggering under a battered helmet or strutting
about in nothing but a faded and fragmentary but tightly
buttoned frock coat; red-blanketed Wakamba, their
upper teeth filed to points sharp as pins, — these once
eaters of their enemies and of their own dead, as are still
several tribes within ten days' march of here; and here

280 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

and there the khaki-clad figure of a European, helmeted
and putteed, looking isolated in this jostling savage
throng as a vagrant cork upon the sea.

Nor are the vehicles and the beasts that draw them
less varied than the people. An Irish jaunting car
drawn by a sixteen-hand Missouri mule is followed by a
two- wheeled pleasure cart with a body much the shape
but twice the size of a theatre wagon, painted in daubs
of every gaudy color the builder could command, drawn
by a pair of hump-necked bullocks that jog along at a
clumsy but tolerable pace, the European lady and chil-
dren inside bouncing helplessly about, wondering, I im-
agine, whether heads or elbows are to get the next bump.

Then along is apt to come dear old John Boyes, King
of the Kikuyu, in an American buggy drawn by two
Abyssinian mules so diminutive I am puzzled why so
kindly a soul as he does not stow the mules under the
buggy seat and pull the trap himself.

Next, one is likely to see approach at slow, lurching
pace a pair of camels, hitched tandem to the high two-
wheeled cart of some Somali trader, the camels' faces
wearing the ghastly expression of equal parts of double
distilled agony and concentrated extract of despair that
always makes the mere sight of a camel's face run one's
temperature down to congealment of the very fountains
of content and joy. Follows a great Transvaal trek
wagon, rattling and groaning along, pulled by anywhere
from five to twenty yoke of cattle, a Hindu's cart pulled
by two dome-necked bullocks, the driver roosting on
his heels upon the tongue of the cart, tight and safe as a
fly on a wall, or a rickshaw drawn by a donkey and crowds
of rickshaws propelled by "boys."

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 281

Despite its raw appearance, Nairobi possesses an
excellent hotel, which at certain seasons is crowded with
safari parties, for here alone are the safari parties organ-
ized. Twenfy such parties went out in October and No-
vember, ten are now at the Norfolk Hotel, and forty or
fifty more are expected during December and January.
The usual party consists of two men, occasionally of only
one, sometimes of three or four. Not a few ladies come
out, — and some shoot.

Probably half the sportsmen coming out here are of
the British or Continental nobility. The more brilliant
planets of the titular firmament, princes, dukes and earls,
abound, while its lesser lights, lords, counts, and barons,
are here thick enough to form a " milky way" were it not
for the fact that theirs is, by preference, a whiskey-and-
soda way. Here are the names of a few of those either
now here or who have been here in the last few months .
Duchesse de Aosta, Prince de Furstenberg, Prince de
Chimay, Duke de Penaranola, Marquis de la Scala,
Earl of Gifford, Duke de Alba (Aide-de-Camp to the
King of Spain), Duke de Medinacoli, Lord and Lady
Waleran, Lord Bury, Lord Wodehouse, Sir E. and Lady
Plowden, Sir Charles Kirkpatrick, Count Palffy, Count
Zichy, Baron Kervyn de Leltenhone, Baron von Uklan-
ski, Baron and Baroness de Bethune, General and Mrs.
Allenby, Colonel Yardley, Colonel Colville, Professor
Agassiz, and Major Dalgety.

The sportsman need bring here nothing but his guns
and ammunition. Newland, Tarlton and Co., Limited,
the Boma Trading Co. and Will Judd make a specialty
of furnishing safari parties and do it well. A safari for
one man will consist of a white safari leader, usually a

282 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

good shot and familiar with the country and the run and
habits of its game, a headman, gun bearer, cook, mess
boy and tent boy (all Somalis), and twenty to twenty-five
shenzi (savage) porters, each carrying on his head a
sixty-pound load — tents, beds, provisions, etc., all
furnished, including food, at three hundred and fifty to
five hundred dollars a month. Horses, mules, liquors,
etc., are, of course, extra. Horses here are scarce and
dear, thanks to the tsetse fly, a Somali pony worth no
more than thirty dollars in Texas bringing readily two
hundred dollars, while Abyssinian mules, tough, wiry,
and good roadsters but little bigger than a donkey, sell
at one hundred and fifty dollars. The "big" game
license, which allows you to kill from one to ten head of
about everything afoot or a-wing, costs two hundred and
fifty dollars.

Every one is asking how long the big game here can
last. I should say certainly no more than four or five
years in anything like its present abundance and easy
access. About 1,200,000 acres have already been taken
up by white settlers, stock raisers, and farmers, who
find it difficult and in some places impossible to main-
tain fences. Buffalo and zebra especially go through
barb wire as if it were no more than thread. As a result
the settlers have been so actively urging changes in the
game laws permitting them to shoot at will trespassing
game that a few evenings ago, at the St. Andrews dinner
of the Nairobi Caledonian Society, the Governor, Colonel
Sir James Hayes Sadler, stated that while he agreed that
sport was in a way a mainstay in the making of British
manhood, public game preservation must not be per-
mitted to impede the development of the country by

THE HAZARDS OF THE GAME 283

white settlers, and further said that changes in the game
laws in this particular were under consideration. Give
the settler a free hand, and a year or two will see easy
shooting ended within seventy-five miles of the railway,
except on big estates like Juja and Kamiti, whose owners
are likely to preserve them indefinitely as shooting boxes.

Any American sportsman keen for a chance at African
big game shooting while still at its best should not long
delay coming, but I don't believe any one now living will
live to see African big game actually exterminated.

For at least the course of this generation there will
remain plenty of places where the active enthusiast can
get his elephant, lion, rhino, hippo, buffalo, and most of
the antelope family except a few of the rarer species.
Indeed, not even two or three generations will see the
swamps and jungles of the Congo, the Zambesi, the Tana,
the Juba, the Lake and the Nile basins, etc., or the forest
recesses and bamboo thickets of Central Africa's taller
uplifts, generally occupied, save as now by natives, or in
any considerable measure tamed; and until so occupied
and tamed they must remain a safe breeding region and
retreat for all sorts of the bigger game which is most
sought.

Portuguese East Africa and the Congo are full of fine
shooting, though not so varied as here. Moreover, the
climate of both sections is far more dangerous than that
of British East, and neither offers any facilities for
safari provision.

German East Africa, Matabeleland, Northern Rho-
desia, Somaliland, and Abyssinia offer capital sport, —
but all under either less convenient or less safe conditions
than here.

284 IN CLOSED TERRITORY

And, even yet, far south in Cape Colony, the Trans-
vaal, Basutoland, and the Orange Colony, it is a poor
sportsman who cannot take a few days off and slip away
to a quiet bit of bush or nook of plain where he can bowl
over a few buck or even an elephant.

THE END

INDEX

INDEX

Aboriginal instincts for location and

direction, 107, 112
Abullahi, 182
Abyssinia, 283

Abyssinia, W. N. McMillan's expe-
ditions through, 181
Abyssinian buffalo, 31
Abyssinian mules, 280, 282
Aden, branch of National Bank of

India at, 261
Admiral, of German East African

Line, 185, 201 (note), 203
Africa, country of contradictions, 58
African native, characteristics of, 38,

136, 137, 183, 184, 217-220, 227-229
Agassiz, Prof., 281
Agilo, Kavirondo chief, 84-88
Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition

of Uganda, Kampala, 1908, 209,

212-216, 231
Aikley, Carl, 161
Akuna, Masai guide, 67, 68, 72, 75,

96, IO2

Alba, Duke de, 281

Albert Edward, Lake, 204, 205

Albert Nyanza, Lake, 235

Allenby, Gen. and Mrs., 281

Allsop, Mr., 199

Araala River, 134, 203

Ambagathi River, 4

American merry-go-round at Uganda

Exhibition, 212
American sportsmen, 278, 283
"Americani" (unbleached cotton

cloth), 64, 65, 86, 279
Anglo-German Boundary Survey

Commission, 6, 62, 91, in, 199
Ankole, exhibits from, 214, 216
Ankole, King of, 214, 216
Ankori Province, Uganda, 82
Antelope family, 36, 51-53, no, 270,

271, 278, 283
Aosta, Duchesse de, 281
Apes, 32, 47, 190

Arab Barta, 128, 139, 147, 149, 156,

159
Arab dominion in Africa, 114, 137,

268, 269
Arab extraction, Somali shikaris of,

260

Arab Miner, 167
Arab Sendow, 139
Arab Tumo, 127, 128, 139-141, 147,

149, 168-173
Arabian stallions for Mr. Roosevelt's

use, 200

Arabs, weapons carried by, 279
Archery contest among Masai, 72-74
Arrow, poisoned, effect of, 71
Arrow, poisoned, found in buffalo

bull, 28, 29

Astor, , American sportsman, 278

Atanansi, third in Marathon race, 216
Athi Plains, 3, 186, 189, 190, 196, 276,

277

Athi River, 188, 189, 201, 259, 271
Automobile in Uganda, 210
Awala Nuer, of safari staff, 2, 18, 48-

50, 71, 97, 153, 156, 159, 182

B

Baboons, 50

" Backsheesh," native, 64, 86, 87

Baganda natives, 81, 134, 211, 215,

237, 246

Baker, Dr., 80, 83, 84, 88, 221
Baker, Hyde, 131
Baleka, cannibal, 82
Bananas, 212, 236, 247
Baringo, Lake, 166, 204
Bark cloth, 215
Basutoland, 284

Beads for native trade, 64, 65, 86
Bed, Wanderobo, 165, 166
Bele (Wanderobo), 165, 166
Bell, Mr., elephant hunter, 275-277
Bell, Sir H. Hesketh, K. C. M. G.,

Governor of Uganda, 204, 210, 212-

287

288

INDEX

Bergash Bin'Said, Sultan of Zanzibar,

231
Berti, Mrne., of the Equatorial Hotel,

Entebbe, 217

Bethune, Baron and Baroness de, 281
Big Game License, 188, 282
"Big rains," 5, 34, 47, 145, 176, 203
" Big Water Holes," 6
Birds, carrion-feeders, 104, 105
Bison, American, 44
Black-mane lion, 188, 262, 265, 266
Black-water fever, 146, 179
Blood-poisoning caused by teeth and

claws of lion, 202, 257, 264, 265
Blue Nile, 181

Boer history, names famous in, 201
Boer War, 196
Bogongo, landing-place for Mabira

forest, 235, 249
Boies, John, ivory hunter, 114
Boma Trading Co., 281
Bomaed camp, 40
Bongo, 130, 188, 204

Botha, , farmer, 201

Bow, Masai, 73, 74
Bowmen, Masai, 67
Boyes, John, King of the Kikuyu, 280
Boyle, A. G., C. M. G., Sub-Com-
missioner, 234, 239, 253
Bradley, John, 278
Brazilian rubber product, 242
Britannia, under Roman rule, 219
British authority over natives, 4, 84,

181, 243
British East Africa, best lion pony in,

191

British East Africa, buck in, 32
British East Africa, climate of, 283
British East Africa, eland in, 192
British East Africa, enforced native

labor forbidden in, 227
British East Africa, game restrictions

in, 192
British East Africa, land productivity

and prices in, 248, 249
British East Africa, lion in, 195
British East Africa, local administra-
tions in, 249
British East Africa, population and

cultivation of, 223
British East Africa, Mr. Roosevelt's

safari in, 203
British East Africa, sleeping sickness

in, 80, 221
British East Africa, species not found

in, 205

British in Mombasa, 269

British Museum bongo trophy, 130

Briton and Yankee manners toward
strangers, 78, 79

Broken Hills, Northern Rhodesia, 233

Brooke, Bryan, 176

Brown, Ernest, 247

Bruce, Colonel Sir David, 220-222

Bubonic plague among natives, 220

Buck as fence- jumpers, 194

Buck-shooting, 190, 271

Bucks furnish cloaks and bow strings
to natives, 67

Bucks, wounded, prey of carrion-
feeding birds, 104

Buffalo, 14, 24-31, 60, 141, 147, 171,
177, 178, 190, 192, 238, 255, 271-
273, 282, 283

Buffalo tail soup, 33

Bulpett, Charles, 182

Bunbury, , of Donya Sabuk, 188

Burton, 217

Bury, Lord, 281

Bush buck, 130, 189

Bush lion, 46

Butiaba, 205

Butterenjonie, Masai chief, 134

Buvuma Island, 235

Buxton, Captain, 210

Buxton, Geoffry Charles, 262-265

Cabanoa Forest, 145, 166

Cabanoa Hills, 141, 142, 145, 147, 149,

164

Cairo, 204, 205, 233, 234
"Cairo, Streets of," at Chicago

World's Fair, 212
Camels, 280

Camp protected against beasts, 17, 40
Candelabrum cactus, 40, 236
Cannibals, 279

Canoe, Baganda war, 235, 249
Cape buffalo, see Buffalo.
Cape Colony, 284
Cape Mounted Police, 115
"Cape to Cairo" railway, 233, 234
Capitalists in Equatorial Africa, 227
Caravan road from Mombasa to

Uganda, 199

Carbonate of soda deposit, 5
Cardross, Lord, 4
Cassava, 212, 247

Castilloa Elastica, rubber tree, 247
Cave Dwellers of Mt. Elgon, 204

INDEX

289

Caves of a Hundred Lion on the Athi,

188
Central American rubber product, 242,

247
Ceylon, rubber industry in, 239, 242,

243

Chandler reed buck, in

Changwe District of Uganda Protect-
orate, 230

Chanler, , American sportsman,

278

Chant of natives at toil, 211, 215, 236

Charge of beast, how best to meet, 273

Cherries, wild, 107

Chevalier, Dr., 42

Chicago World's Fair, "Streets of
Cairo" at, 212

Children of Baganda natives, 237

Chimay, Prince de, 281

Chinese at Mombasa, 268

Chipalungo Forest, 204

Christmas on the Mau Escarpment, 34

Chumvi, Mt., 200, 202

Church Missionary Society, 209, 212

Churchill, Winston, 224

Churchyards, 224

Citronella, 247

City of the future at head of Nile, 234

Clement Hill, of Victoria Nyanza
service, 209, 210, 278

Climate at head of Nile, 234

Climate of British East Africa, Portu-
guese East Africa, and the Congo,
283

"Closed" territory, 115, 116

Cobra, 42, 171, 179, 238

Cocoa, 247

Coffee culture, 215, 247

Coke's hartebeeste, 109

Collyer, Deputy Commissioner, 256

Colobus monkeys, 36, 37

Colonial Office, 229, 249

Colville, Col., 281

Colville, Lady, and son, safari of, 168,
169

Colvin, R. A., 31

Congo country, ivory from, 275

Congo district, climate of, 283

Congo jungles, sleeping sickness
originated in, 80-82

Congo River, 204, 283

Coral at Mombasa harbor, 268

Corporal punishment of natives, 136-
139, 167, 182-184, 228

Cotton industry, 212, 215, 216

Crane, lavender crested, 250

"Crepe" rubber, 244
Crickets, African, 108
Crocodile, 60, 189, 192, 234, 238, 239,

251, 252

Crops of Uganda, 247, 248
Croton-oil plant, 247
Crystal Palace Exposition, London,

1851, 209

Cunningham, R. I., 161
Cunninghame, R. J., 14, 179, 182-

187, 191, 203-205
Curing of elephant feet for trophies,

167
Curios, natives refuse to part with, 94

D

Dalgety, Major, 281

Dar-es-Salaam, 218

Date palms, 212

Daudi Chwa, King of Uganda, 212,

214
Dawa (medicine), natives demand,

93.94

Derria, of safari staff, 182
Destro, John, 188
Dik-dik, 32, 189, 194, 269, 271
Dingonek, Maggori River monster,

I3I-I34
Diseases of Equatorial Africa (except

sleeping sickness, -which see), 219,

220, 223
Diseases on which white settlers have

to count, 224
Divers, black, 251
Djama Aout, 181, 182, 191, 262
Dongas in which lion hide, 199, 201
DonyaSabuk Farm, 188, 189, 191, 259
Draft animals, 192
Dress of Kavirondo natives, 84-86,

211, 236

Dress of Kikuyu natives, 279
Dress of Masai warriors, 279
Dress of Toroni's Masai, 93
Dress of Uganda natives, 211, 236
Duck Creek camp, 40
Dugdale, Captain, 278
Dugmore, Mr. Radclyffe,
Duirs, Captain A. B., 189, 191, 265,

266
Duyker, 189, 238, 271

E

East African Standard, The, quoted,
193. 194

290

INDEX

East Indian bureaucratic red tape, 249

Eastwood, Benjamin, 273

Eland, 32, 36, 37, 41, 42, 69-72, 189-

192, 271

Eldama Ravine, 166
Eldama Ravine Boma, 131
Elephant, 65, 66, 75-77, 89, 95-103,

105, 113, 114, 116, 119-123, 142,

145, 147-163, 165-171, I73-I7S.

177, 178, 181, 187, 203, 205, 255,

270, 271, 274-276
Elephant grass, 76, 77, 142, 150, 160,

169-171, 173, 174, 187, 213, 234,

235, 237, 238, 246-248, 274, 283
Elephant hunters, native, 119-123, 136
Elephant hunters, white, 89, 98, 102,

113-115, 158, 162, 275, 276
Elephantiasis, 219

Elgon, Mt., Cave Dwellers of, 204
Elk, fast gait of, 70
Elmy, Adam, 182
Emin Pasha, rescue of, 232
Enforced native labor forbidden, 227
Engabai (Masai name for Mara), 113,

"5> IX9

Engabai plains, 127
English Cathedral at Kampala, 212,

213
Entebbe, 180, 205, 217, 218, 221, 232,

275

Entebbe, botanical gardens of, 247
Entebbe District, 231
Equatorial Africa, capitalists in, 227
Equatorial Africa, division of, among

the powers, 217
Equatorial Africa, empire builders in,

239

Equatorial Africa, geographical
bounds of, 217, 218

Equatorial Africa, paradise for pio-
neers, 225

Equatorial Africa, population of, 219,
220, 223

Equatorial Africa, seasons in, 108

Equatorial Africa, socially and indus-
trially, 223, 224

Equatorial Hotel, Entebbe, 217

Exeter Hall, humanitarians of, 228,
229

Extermination of African big game,
283

Farmers in B. E. A., 192, 194, 201,

282
Farmers, native, 227

Farming, modern scientific, opportun-
ity for, 223, 247

Fashoda, French defeat at, 210

Feast, elephant, 161-163

Fecus trees, 237

Fencing in B. E. A., 194, 282

Fevers, 146, 179

Field Columbian Museum, represent-
ative of, 161

Fire sticks, native, 105

Fires, grass, 145, 163, 164, 168

Fish at Ripon Falls, 234

Fleischman, Max, 278

Foaker, Collector, 131

Food, native manner of consuming,
106, no, 138, 161-163, 219

Forest camp, 129, 130

Forest guinea fowl, 129

Forty-niners, California, 225

Freight rates, 249

French defeat at Fashoda, 210

Frontal head shot takes effect on
rhino, 23

Funtumnia Elastica, prime rubber
tree, 237, 244, 246, 247

Furstenberg, Prince de, 281

Game, abundance of, 178, 189, 190,

192, 269-271, 276, 277, 282
Game, herd of, numbering thousands,

124-126
Game-killing by natives forbidden,

62, 74
Game laws, 113, 191, 192, 257, 282,

283
Game near Uganda Railway, 206-

208, 269, 270
Game preservation, 282
Game reserves, 270, 271, 277
Game shooting in Africa, 254
Game unafraid of man, 44, 270
Garnets, 43

Gatineau River rapids, 254
George, Mr., 188
Gerenuk, 32
Germ diseases, blacks susceptible to,

219
German border, country along, 181,

187, 270
German East Africa, conditions for

sport in, 283
German East Africa, labor situation

in, 229

INDEX

291

German East Africa, population and

cultivation of, 223
German East Africa, sisal industry in,

248

German East African Line, 185, 278
German seizure of ivory hunter's

camp, 113

German territory, ivory trade in, 119
German territory, Maggori River

valley in, 105
German territory, sleeping sickness

in, 221

Germans, natives fear, 62, 229
Gharri, Boer, belonging to Juja Farm,

189

Ghee (clarified butter), 215
Gifford, Earl of, 281
Gilgil, 204
Giraffe, 14-16, 51, 125, 126, 189, 269,

270

Giraffe tail meat, 33
Glossina pal pal is, species of tsetse fly,

221
Goldfinch, , companion of Mr.

Lucas, of Donya Sabouk, 259
Gondokoro, 180, 205
Gould, Jay, Masai chief resembled, 72
Government, ivory hunters assist

cause of, 114, 115
Gower, Leverson, 46
Grahamstown, 196
Granadilla vines, 200
Grand Hotel, Mombasa, 206
Grant, 231

Granti, 44, 189, 191, 194
Grasshoppers, 108

Gratitude, natives not capable of, 137
Grazing lands of Northwest Texas

and New Mexico, 248
"Great White Way" at St. Louis Ex-
hibition, 212
Greater Kudu, 166, 204
Greek ivory traders, 119
Grizzly bear hunting, 177, 255
Guaso Narok River, 166, 204
Guaso Nyiro River, 5, 6, 10, 12—14,

16, 17, 24, 204, 256, 267, 271
Guns, 22, 23, 27, 54, 55, 90, 99,

IS3-IS5. IS8. 262-265, 277
Gwasi range, 83

H

Habia, Masai tracker, 70, 71, 75, 89,

96, 103, 105-107, 112
Hadji Ali, 182

Halaled meat, 66, 186
Hall, Dr. H. S., 265
Hall, Ft., 167, 204

Hammond, , of Kamiti Farm, 190

Hampden, Lieut., 210, 278

Hartebeeste, 189, 278

Hassan Yusef, 182, 191, 196, 262

Hazard and sport, 254

Heatley, Hugh H., 190

Helkett, Craig, 275

Hill, Clifford and Harold, 187, 195-

202, 206
Hinde, Provincial Commissioner S. L.,

201

Hindu merchants in Nairobi, 279
Hippo, 60, 189, 238, 251-253, 271,

276-278, 283
Hobley, Provincial Commissioner, 131,

134, 224
Hoima, 205
Homa, Mt., 83
Honey birds, 105, 107
Honey, wild, 106
Horns of old and young buffalo bulls,

28

Horse sicknesses, fatal, 192
Horses, 192, 282
Hotel at Nairobi, 281
Huebner, Mr., 207
Hughes, John, chemist, 243, 245
Human sacrifices, 219
Humphery, District Commissioner R.

W., 197, 258
Hunger of natives, 163
Hunter in Africa, dangers that

threaten, 179
Hunting, ethics of, 104
Hut tax, annual, 86, 117
Huts, native, 236
Hyena, 56, 91, in, 167, 189, 192

I

Ibis, Nile, 250

Impala, 32, 46, 48, 68, 125, 130, 189,

266
Imperial Boundary Survey, 35, 40, 42,

62

Imperial British Company, 232
Imperial Light Horse (Boer War),

196, 265

Imprisonment of natives, 228
Indentured foreign labor, 227
India, "mono-rail" railway systems

in, 211
Indian Bazaar, Kampala, 212

292

INDEX

Indian Bazaar, Nairobi, 278, 279
Indians of North and South America,

218, 220
Indigo, 247

Insect life about Victoria Nyanza, 250
Ironsmiths, native, 215
Isaac, Deputy Commissioner, 130, 201
Isogu River, 176
Isuria Escarpment, 52, 67-69, 108,

127, 204
Isuria range, 64
Ivory from hippo teeth, 276
Ivory hunters, see Elephant hunters
Ivory trade, 113, 119, 158, 268, 275,

276

J

Jackals, 56

Jackson, Lieutenant-Governor, 116,

224, 239
Jalou Nilotic Kavirondo, villages of,

77

Japanese at Mombasa, 268
" Jews of the Dark Continent," 260
Jinja, 204, 221, 232-235, 237
Johnston, Sir Harry, 180, 231
Jones, Deputy Commissioner L. A.

F., 176
Jordan, John Alfred, 114-127, 129-

136, 139, 142-144, 146, i47, 149.

152-160, 163-166, 175

Joubert, , Boer farmer, 201

Joubert, General, 201

Journey to African hunting grounds,

278

Juba River, 283

Jubaland Game Reserve, 204, 271
Judd, William, i, 22, 26, 27, 37, 38,

44, 45, S2, S3, 60, 64, 65, 179, 180,

281
Juja Farm, 159, 176, 186-189, I91'

196, 200, 202, 203, 258, 259, 262,

265, 266, 276, 277, 283

Kagwa, Sir Apolo, K. C. M. G., 214

Kakunguru, the, at Uganda Exhibi-
tion, 214

Kamiti Farm, 190, 283

Kamiti River, 190

Kampala, 209-212, 220, 231

Kapere, Uganda native, winner of
Marathon race, 216

Kapiti Plains, 177, 186, 109-201, 270

Kapiti Station, 200

Karungu, 79, 83, 119
Katelembo Farm, 195, 196
Kavirondo country, sleeping sickness

in, 221

Kavirondo country, trophies from, 187
Kavirondo tribe, 66, 78, 84-87, 89,

134, 211, 222; see Jalou Nilotic

Kavirondo

Kavirondo villages, location of, 78, 80
Kenia, Government launch, 205
Kenya, Mt., 167, 180, 187, 203, 272
Kenya Province, 271
Kericho, 114, 139, 166, 168, 175, 176
Khartoum, 205, 231, 233, 235
Khedive of Egypt, 232
Kibaibai Hills and Springs, 40, 46
Kibokos (whips) of hide, 23, 136, 182,

228

Kibololet, 51
Kidong valley, 64
Kikuyu country, 269
Kikuyu hills, 3

Kikuyu natives, 3, 5, 10, 114, 279
Kikuyu porter killed by lion, 256, 257
Kilima N'jaro, Mt., 200, 231, 270
Kilima Theki Farm, Sir Alfred

Pease's, 186
Kilimanjaro giraffe, 14
Kilindini Harbor, 201 (note), 206,

268

Kimberley blue clay diamond forma-
tion, 43
Kindness, natives misunderstand, 136,

228

King of Beasts, lion the, 255
Kingfisher, 250
King's African Rifles, 212, 213, 272,

275

Kioga District, native chief of, 245
Kioga, Lake, 235
Kipp, Miss, 189
Kirkpatrick, Sir Charles, 281
Kisii country, 65, 96, 187
Kisii Government boma, 79, 84, 142,

169

Kisii herd, range of, 169
Kisii Highlands, 65, 89, 103, 166, 175,

221

Kisii natives, 84, 163
Kisumu, 205, 220, 221, 232, 236
Kisumu, Province of, 83, 84, 221, 222
Kitanga, 199, 200, 201, 206
Kiu, station on Uganda Railway, 207,

270

Kivu, Lake, 82, 214
Kiwala, Mabira forest, 246

INDEX

293

Komo River, 266

Komo Rock, 189

Kongoni, 123, 125

Koorhaan, 33

Korkosch, Mongorrori chief, 134

Koydelot, chief of the Masai, 63, 64,

67, 119
Kudu, 271; see lesser Kudu and

greater Kudu

Kuja River, 75, 77, 83, 88, 170, 221
Kumbari, 25, 48

Laane, Father, 224

Labor in Equatorial Africa, 227-229,
249

Labusoni (Wanderobo chief), 119-
122. 136, 144, 165

Lacemakers, native, 215

Ladies who shoot big game, 281

Laikipia country, 168

Land laws, 249

Land owners in B. E. A., 192

Land productivity and prices, 248, 249

Land to be acquired by white settlers,
227

Lanjaro Spring, 201

Laso, women's garment, 236

Latex (milk), rubber, 239-244

Laws, 249

Legerdemain tricks puzzling to na-
tives, 63

Leltenhone, Baron Kervyn de, 281

Lenani's Southern Masai, 4, 34

Lenderut River, 47

Lenderut River, cascades of, 47, 48

Lengijabi Mountain, 39

Leopard, 69, 90, 91, 177, 190, 192,

257. 27i

Lesser Kudu, 32, 43, 204

License for natives, demand for, 228

Lichtenstein hartebeeste, 90, 91, 103,
104

Limerick Plains, 168, 203

Lion, 19, 40, 41, 46, 55, 56, 60, 68,
69, 123, 124, 141, 171, 177, 178,
181, 182, 186-190, 192-199, 201-203,
206-208, 255-260, 262-270, 272, 273,
277, 283

Lion, black-mane, 188, 262, 265, 266

Lion, maneless (bush), 46

" Lion," Swahili word for, 208

"Little rains," 3, 58, 235

"Livers, tropical," 225

Livingstone, 217

Loam, rich, of Uganda, 247, 248
Lochfyne, Mabira forest, 246

Loder, , African farmer, 192

Loder, Sir Edmund, 206

Loita Masai, tribe of, 34, 75; see

Toroni (Masai chief)
Londiani Station, 204
London, Mr., deceased, 193
London, price of rubber in, 240, 243,

244

Long Juju Farm, 188, 202
Long Tom, Juja pony, 191
Longworth, "Daddy," 260
" Looseandgiddy " camp, 94, 95, 103,

108, 161

Lucania Range, 201
Lucas, Miss, of Donya Sabuk, 189
Lucas, Mr., killed by lion, 189, 259,

260

Luck bird (Ol Toilo), Wanderobo, 122
Lugard, Captain, 212, 232
Lumbwa country, trophies from, 187
Lumbwa highlands, 75
Lumbwa range, 64
Lumbwa station on Uganda Railway,

64, 65, 175, 176
Lumbwa tribe, 64, 116-119, 127, 131,

135, 138, 161, 162, 171
Luquata, lake monster, 134
Luziro, 209-211

M

Mabira forest, 230, 232, 235, 237-247
Mabira headquarters, 239, 245, 246
Machakos Fort, 197, 258
Machakos Range, 196, 199-201
Mackie, Captain F. Percival, 222
Mad Mullah, 181
Madagascar, steamers for, 278
Madden, Angus, 176
Mafeking, relief of, 265
Mafuta, 137-139
Magadi, Lake, 5, 9, n, 193
Maggori River, 75, 89, 93, 94, 96,

105-107, 131, 132, 135, 137, 138, 161
Mahdi's downfall, 181
Mahdist swordsmen, 181
Mahogany, 237
Makalinga, 193

Malarial fever, 146, 179, 234, 239
Mamba, 171, 238
Man-eating lions, 193, 194, 207, 208,

255. 256

Maneless (bush) lion, 46
Manga Lumbwa tribe, 127

294

INDEX

Manual labor performed by blacks,

227, 249

Maps, African, 88
Mara River, 52, 57, 58, 60, 61, 66, 67,

88, 108, 113

Marabout storks, 16, 56, 104
Marathon race, Uganda Exhibition,

216, 231

Marauding night prowlers, 91, 92
Marini, Menyamwezi native, 137-139
Marlow, William, 188, 202
Martin, ex-Collector James, 134, 224,

231, 232, 239, 245
Masai tribe, 4, 34, 61-65, 67, 68, 72-

75, 89, 93-96, 98-101, 105, 106, 119,

134, 135. 279
Matabeleland, 283
Mataia (Lumbwa chief), 119, 127,

128, 131, 133, 134, 139, 143-145.

147, 152-157, 159, 166, 167, 171
Matthews, General, 231
Mau Escarpment, 8, 17, 24, 34-36, 64,

•203

Mau Plateau, 40, 44
Mbango, Mabira forest, 246, 247

McClellan, , killed by lion, 256

McClure, District Commissioner, 4
McMillan, William Northrup, 181,

183, 186, 188, 192, 201-203, 20S>

206, 267, 268, 276, 278
McMillan, Mrs. William Northrup,

206

Medinacoli, Duke de, 281
Melbourne, S. S., 177 (note), 201

(note), 206

Mengo Hill, Kampala, 209, 212, 232
Merry-go-round at Uganda Exhibi-
tion, 212
Mesageries, Compagnie, steamers,

278
Mesageries Maritimes, Cie, 177 (note),

206

Metama, 66, 78, 86, 222
Miller, Joaquin, 225
Missionaries, 209, 261, 262
Missionary, medical, among Mo-
hammedans, 261, 262
Mohammedan Somali shikaris, 260,

261

Mohammedan Swahili, 66, 181, 186
Mohammedan worshippers, 18, 19, 261
Molo, of safari staff, 2, 37-39
Molo River, 166
Mombasa, 131, 186, 193, 199, 202,

206, 207, 210, 218, 231, 232, 244,

268, 269, 278

Mombasa prison, 228
Mongorrori tribe, 134
Monkeys, 7, 32, 36, 37, 57, 58, 101,

189, 238

"Mono-rail system," Kampala's, 211
Moose, danger from a wounded, 177
Mosoni, 128, 131, 133, 139, 159, 167
Mosquito a possible communicator of

sleeping sickness, 223
M'piri (cobra), 42
M'tongwe, natives of, 193
Mud, natural element of elephant, 77
Mules, 192

Mules, safe-footed, 76
Munyata, Masai, 61
Murchison Bay, 209
Muscat, Imaum of, 269
Musical instruments, native, 236
Mutesa, King, 209

Muvule, species in Mabira forest, 241
Mwanga, King, 232

N

Nabrisi (Wanderobo), 165, 166

Nairobi, 3, 57, 78, 167, 176, 186, 203-
205, 209, 218, 269, 276, 278-281

Nairobi Caledonian Society, St. An-
drew's dinner of, 282

Nairobi Hospital, 260

Nairobi jail, 228

Naivasha, 203

Naivasha, Lake, 203

Nakasero Hill, Kampala, 212

Namirembe Hill, Kampala, 212, 213

Napoleon Gulf, 233

Native methods at Uganda Exhibi-
tion, 215

Native races in North and South
America and Central Africa, 218,
220

Natron, Lake, 20, 24, 26

N'durugo River, 188, 266

Neville's Horse (Boer War), 196

New Mexico, grazing lands of, 248

New Year's Eve in the jungle, 45, 46

Newland, Tarlton and Co., Limited,
193, 281

N'garami, Lake, 9

N'gararu Hills, 166

N'gari Kiti River, 16, 17. 34, 36

N'gari Kiti swamp, 24-26

N'gari Nyiro River, 34

N'garoyo River, 145

Ngong range, 4

Ngong Spring, 5

INDEX

295

N'guraman Mountain, 17

Nile, Blue, 181

Nile delta, 201 (note)

Nile River, 88, 177, 204, 205, 214, 223,

230-234, 246, 283

Nile, upper, navigation, head of, 205
Nile, White, 233
Nimule, 205

Nobility, sportsmen from the, 281
Noises emitted by lion, 19, 40, 41, 68
Norfolk Hotel, 281
North America, big game shooting in,

254

North America, settlement of, con-
trasted with that of Equatorial
Africa, 218, 220

North American pioneers, 225-227

Northcote, Assistant Deputy Com-
missioner, 83, 84, 88, 89, 108, 161,
221

Nsambya Hill, Kampala, 212

Nubians, 213

Nundewat, 83

Nyeri, 204

Nysambia, species in Mabira forest,
241

o

Ogadan, plains of, 181

Okapi, 131

Ol Albwa, Mount, 40-43

Ol Toilo, Wanderobo luck bird, 122

Olympia Marathon race, 216

Omdurman, battle of, 181

Orange Colony, 284

Orchids, 238

Oribi, 46, 109, no

Oryx, 271, 276, 277

Osman, of safari staff, 182

Ostrich, 189, 196

Ostrich Hill, 189

Outram, George Henry, i, 6, 8, n,
12, 14, 22, 24, 25, 27, 35, 40-42,
44-46, 48, 52, 54, 56, 60, 62, 68,
69, 72, 78, 79, 86, 89, 96, 97, 99,
loo, 102, 109-111, 113, 134, 139,

160, 166, 175, 176
Outram Pass, 34, 35
Owen Falls, 231
Oxus, S. S., 206

Oyani River, 75, 77-79, 83, 84, 88, 96,

161, 221, 222

Palffy, Count, 281

Palms, trace of Arab dominion, 268

Panama, malarial fevers at, 234

Papayas, 247

Papyrus swamps along the Kamiti,
190

Papyrus swamps along the Seziwa, 246

Para rubber, 239, 240, 243, 244, 247

Parasitic vines, 237

Parenti, Cavaliere A., 206, 207

Parrots, 238

Parsee merchants in Nairobi, 279

Paths made by the Big Ones, 17

"Patience," watchword of big game
hunters, 276

"Patients," native, 93, 94

Patterson, Colonel, 208

Pease, Sir Alfred, 186, 195, 199,
200, 203, 206

Pease, Lady, and daughter, 206

Penaranola, Duke de, 281

Penton, , of Donya Sabuk, 188

Permanganate, pure crystals of,
wounds cauterized with, 265

Persians at Mombasa, 268

Photographs, 48

Pigs, wild, 126

Pineapples, 247

Pioneers, 225-227

Plains, Western, in early '7o's, 44

Plantain trees, 238

Plowden, Sir E. and Lady, 281

Poisoned arrows, 28-30, 71

Polar Star not visible, 59

Policemen as lion-hunters, 208

Ponies, how used in lion shooting, 202,
255, 266

Ponies, Juja shooting, 191

Ponies, value of, 282

Population of Equatorial Africa, 219,
220, 223

Population of Uganda, Unyoro, and
Usoga reduced by sleeping sick-
ness, 221

Port Florence, 79, 269

Porters, safari, 2, 3, 7, 10, 37-39, 66,
68, 76, 77, 88, no, 148, 167, 183,
185, 186, 222, 235, 236, 282

Portuguese at Mombasa, 268, 269

Portuguese East Africa, 283

Portuguese territory, sleeping sickness
in, 221

Posho, vegetable food for porters, 3,
66, 79, 86

Power at head of Nile, 234

Prayers of Mohammedan worship-
pers, 1 8, 19, 261

Predatory beasts, 192, 194

296

INDEX

Prinsloo, , Boer farmer, 201

"Protected" game, 192

Ptomaine poisoning, natives not sub-
ject to, 219

Puff adders, 238

Pugge, Outram's terrier, 54, no, in

Pulmonary diseases among natives,
220

Pungwe River, 2

Python, 171, 179, 189, 191, 238

R

Race suicide among Baganda natives,

237

Raids, inter-tribal, 237

Railway between Luziro and Kam-
pala, 210

Railway, "Cape to Cairo," 233, 234

Railway from Jinja to Lake Kioga,

235

Railway to Lake Magadi, proposed, 5
"Records of Big Game," Rowland

Ward, 30, 159
Reed buck, 189, 271
Regalia of Kavirondo chief, 84, 85, 87
Reunion, steamers for, 278
Rhino, white, 204
Rhinos, 14, 20-24, 46, 117, 139-141,

169, 171-173, 177, 178, 180, 192,

199, 204, 255, 270, 271, 273, 274,

276, 283

Rhodes, Cecil, 234
Rhodesia> 81, 221, 234, 283
Rhododendron-like bush, 140
Riches of natives, 227
Rift Valley, 9, 24

Ripon Falls, 230-235, 246, 249, 251
Road from Entebbe to Hoima, 205
Roads in Uganda, 204, 214
Roan antelope, 52, 53, no, 128-130,

204, 271, 276
"Roar" of lion, 41
Robertsi, 44

Robinson, , 14

Robley, Adam, 182

Roman rule in Britannia, 219

Rongana River and adjacent country,

118, 135, 144, 145, 148, 163-165,

167, 204

Roosevelt, Kermit, 185, 186
Roosevelt, Mr., 34, 177, 178, 180-187,

189-192, 195, 200-206
Royal Geographical Society, 88
Royal Society, 220
"Rub-downs," elephant, 95, 96, 103

Rubaga Hill, Kampala, 212

Rubber industry, 230, 232, 237, 239-

244, 246-248
Rubber, wild, in "closed" districts,

116

Rubeni, second in Marathon race, 216
Ruero Falls, 266
Rumuruti Boma, 166, 204, 256

Rutherfoord, , African farmer, 192

Ruwero River, 188

Ryall, Mr., killed by lion while asleep

in railway carriage, 207

Sable antelope, 271, 276

Sadler, Col. Sir James Hayes, 282

Safari, discipline of natives on, 136,

137, 182-184, 228
Safari leaders, professional, 179
Safari life training in patience, 3
Safari outfitting, 281, 282
Safari parties made up at Nairobi, 281
Safari, Mr. Roosevelt's, in B. E. A.,

203

Safari staff, 2, 181, 182, 281, 282
Safari travel, 5, 37-39, 57, 76, 176, 281
Safari, white men on, 185, 186, 281
Saiba, headman, 78
Saint Joseph's Mission, Kampala, 212
St. Louis Exhibition, "Great White

Way" at, 212
Salem, of safari staff, 2, 90, 133, 144,

162, 182

Salt springs on Rongana River, 144,

148
Sambi River, 142, 148, 151, 160, 161,

163, 165, 169

Sandals, porters', made from giraffe

skin, 14-16

Sanseviera, wild fibre plant, 32
Scala, Marquis de la, 281
Schlobach, Herr Hauptmann, 91, 92
Seasons in Africa, 58, 108
Selous, F. C., 31, 180, 184, 185, 203,

277

Sessi group of islands, 81, 220
Sessi River, 175
Setik, John Alfred Jordan in the,

114

Sewall, Mr., 210
Seziwa River, 246
Shambas (farms), native, 227
Shammers, treatment of, 7
Shombol Mountain, 24
Signal fires, 39

INDEX

297

Sikh constables in Nairobi, 279

Sikh Infantry, 212, 213

Simba, station on Uganda Railway,

208

Sisal, 247, 248
Skinning of elephant, 161
Slave trade of Mombasa, 268
Sleeping sickness, 80-83, 134, 179,

220-223, 234, 237
Sleeping Sickness Camp of Assistant

Deputy Commissioner Northcote

and Dr. Baker, 78-80, 82-84, 161,

221

"Small (settler's) license," 226

Smith, Colonel G. E., 199

Smithsonian Institution, representa-
tives of, 185, 1 86

Snakes in Mabira forest, 247

Sobat River, 178, 181, 205

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals, 177, 192, 194

Soiat Hill, 166

Somali, food of, 66

Somali shikaris as lion hunters, 260,
262, 264, 265

Somali shikaris, characteristics of, 182,
183, 260-262, 265

Somaliland, 181, 283

Somalis as safari staff, 182, 183, 191,
282

Somalis, dress of, 279

Sony a (volcano), 24

Sotik boma, 169, 204

Sotik boma chief, 169

Sotik country, 65, 168, 187, 203, 271

Soudanese, 213

South America, big game shooting in,

254

South America, settlement of, con-
trasted with that of Equatorial
Africa, 218

South American rubber product, 242

Southern Cross, 58, 59, 210

Southern Masai, see Masai

Southern Masai Reserve Boma, 4

Spear thrusts of Arab Tumo, 171-173

Speke, 88, 217, 231

Speke's discovery of Victoria Nyanza,
88

Spirits, use of, by Africanders, 83, 225

Spooring, skilful, 70

Sport, British, 282

Sport, essentially relative, 254

Sportsman's license, 113, 115, 131,
167, 188, 191, 192, 226, 257, 282

Sportsmen, dilettanti, 179

Stallions, Arab, for Mr. Roosevelt's
use, 200

Stanley, 217, 231, 232, 243, 251

Stanton, Mr., 193, 194

Stars of southern sky, 58, 59

Stations in Mabira forest, 246, 247

Steady shooting dependent on regular
breathing, 21

Steamers operated by Uganda Rail-
way on Victoria Nyanza, 205

Styles change among natives, 64, 65

Sugota Game Reserve, 271

Sultan Hamud, station on Uganda
Railway, 207

Sultani of Jalou Nilotic Kavirondo
villages, 78

"Sundowner," 83

Swahili, food of, 66, 185, 186

Swahilis as safari staff, 182, 185

Swahilis, dress of, 279

Swallows, aerial corsairs, 25 1

Sweet potatoes, 247

Swift, , African farmer, 192

Sybil, 232

Syphilis among natives, 220

Tana River, 271, 283

Tanga, 218

Tanganyika, Lake, 221, 231

Tanks, natural, on Lenderut River, 48

Tarlton, — , professional safari leader,

179, 193, 281
Taxation, 249

Terrier as game dog, 54, no, in
Texas, grazing lands of, 248
Theika River, 262
Theki Farm, 186, 187, 195, 200, 201,

203, 206

Theki, Mt., 199, 200, 202
Thompson, Joseph, 231
Thompsoni, 189
Thorn bush interwoven with elephant

grass, 150, 173
Tick fever, 179
Tiger, Asiatic, 177
Timber trees in Mabira forest, 237,

241

Times, London Weekly, 88
Tommys, 46, 68, 191, 194
Tompkins, S. C-, C. M. G., Chief

Secretary of Uganda, 224, 239, 258
Tools for rubber tapping used at

Mabira forest, 239, 243
Topi, 51, 53-55, 68, 69, 89

298

INDEX

Toro, King, of, 214

Toro, Uganda Province of, 204

Toroni (Masai chief), 75, 76, 89-91,

93-95. 161

Totos, Kavirondo, 85
Trade goods, 64, 65, 86
Transportation facilities to Uganda

Exhibition, 209
Transvaal, 284
Transvaal trek wagon, 280
Transvaal War, 115
Trophies, 19, 23, 24, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37.

59, 90, 91, 158, 159, 167, 176, 179,

253, 265, 268, 276
"Tropical livers," 225
Trypanosomiasis, see Sleeping sickness
Tsavo River, 270
Tsavo, station on Uganda Railway,

208
Tsetse fly, 35, 80, 81, 221, 223, 234,

282
Turks at Mombasa, 268

u

Uasin Guishu Plateau, 204

Uganda Exhibition, 209, 212-216, 231

Uganda Hills, 210

Uganda natives, 211, 212, 236

Uganda Protectorate, 80, 199, 204,

214, 218, 221, 227, 230, 232, 236,

243, 247, 248, 271
Uganda Railway, 64, 79, 114, 175,

176, 186, 205-209, 226, 269, 270
Uganda, sleeping sickness in, 82
Ukamba, District of, 197
Ukamba Game Reserve, 4
Ukamba, Province of B. E. A., 231,

271

Uklanski, Baron von, 281
Unclassified species of African game,

130, 131, 133, 134
" Unknown " regions of Africa, 88
Unyoro, King of, 214
Unyoro, sleeping sickness in, 221
Usoga, Saza chief of, 214
Usoga, sleeping sickness in, 221
Usoga, women of, 237

Vegetarians, native, 34, 66

Vehicles and beasts in Nairobi streets,

280
"Vermin" under game laws, 192, 257

Vice among natives, 220
Victoria Nyanza, Lake, 57, 75, 79-81,
88, 133, 134, 204, 205, 209, 220,

221, 223, 230, 231, 250-252, 269, 283

Victoria Nyanza, Lake, islands in,

220, 221, 231, 234
Vitality of game, 33, 37, 53, 54, 89,

109, no, 177, 275, 277
Voi, station on Uganda Railway, 269,

270

Volcanic region deficient in water, 5, 8
Volcanic region, scenery in, 8
Vultures, 56, 104

w

Wakamba tribe, 62, 66, 72, 279
Wakikuyu tribe, 62, 66
Waleran, Lord and Lady, 281
Walleye, Juja pony, 191, 196
Wami Farm, 195, 201
Wami, Mt., 199, 200, 202
Wanderobo, 4, 19, 28-30, 64, 66, 117-

123, 127, 129, 130, 134-136. i38.

139, 142, 143, .145. l63, i65. l66
Wantarunta, Mabira forest, 246
War dance, Kavirondo, 87
Ward, Rowland, 23, 30, 59, 159
Warfare, inter-tribal, 219, 223
Wart-hog, in, 189, 266
Wasoga tribe, 134

Wassama, Regal, 2, 13, 18, 19, 66, 181
Waste in rubber industry, 242
Water buck, 51-56, 109, 123, 129, 189
Water python, see Python
Water supply, 5-11, 40, 45
Water tanks, natural, 5-7, 9, n, 45
Weavers, native, 215
Wembe, Kavirondo, 87
West, freight rates in, 249
White Fathers at Kampala, 212
White men at Victoria Nyanza, first,

231

White Nile, 233
White settlers in Equatorial Africa,

218, 224-228, 239, 249, 271, 282, 283
White victims of sleeping sickness, 82,

179, 222

Wild dog, 41, 42
Wildebeeste, 26, 44, 123-125, 277
Wind, working up, in stalking game,

59
Wives of Chief Mataia, treatment of,

128
Wives of King of Ankole, 216

INDEX

299

Wodehouse, Lord, 281

Women, Kavirondo, 85, 86, 211, 212,

236

Women, Kikuyu, 279
Women, native, work the farms, 227,

236

Women of Usoga, 237
Women, types of native, 218
Women, Uganda, 211, 212, 236
Wounds and punishment, recovery

from, 165, 184, 219
Wounds inflicted by lion, 202, 257
Wrestling matches, native, 247

Yankee and Briton manners toward

strangers, 78, 79
Yardley, Col., 281
Yellowstone Park, 270

z

Zambesi River, 283

Zanzibar, Star of, 214

Zanzibar, Sultan of, 214, 231, 269

Zebra, 125, 189, 194, 255, 282

Zichy, Count, 281

Zimba invasion, 269

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