Chapter III: Part 3

Such scenes were probably more frequent in earlier days, when, in the Orange Free State, a single hunter would kill five-and-twenty lions. This was so even down to the year 1863, when impallah antelopes (_Æpyceros suara_) had already become very rare in Bechuanaland, and in Natal a keen control had to be instituted over the use of arms. Times have changed. In the year 1899 much sensation was aroused by the fact that a lion was killed near Johannesburg, and so far back as 1883 there was quite a to-do over a lion that was seen and killed at Uppington, on the Orange River. To Oswald and Vardon, well-known English hunters, as well as to Moffat in Bechuanaland, the encountering of as many as nine troops of lions in a day was quite an ordinary experience, and I still found lions in surprising numbers in 1896 in German and British East Africa. The practical records of the Anglo-German Boundary Commission in East Africa, the observations made lately by Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, and the evidence of many other trustworthy witnesses, have confirmed these facts.

Although I do not think that lions, at least in districts where game is very plentiful, are so dangerous as some would make out, yet I quite agree with the statement made by H. A. Bryden that a lion-hunt made on foot must be reckoned as one of the most dangerous sports there are. The experience of an authority like Selous, who was seized by lions during the night in the jungle, proves this.

In the region in which I had such success lion-hunting in 1897, there were many mishaps. My friend the commandant of Port Smith in Kiku uland, who was badly mauled by lions, has since had more than one fellow-sufferer in this respect.

Captain Chauncy Hugh-Stegand, who, like Mr. Hall and so many other hunters of other nationalities, had been several times injured by rhinoceroses, was once within an ace of being killed by a lion which he encountered by night, and which he shot at and pursued. Severely wounded, and cured almost by a miracle, he had to return to England to regain his health. “Such are the casualties of sportsmen in Central and East Africa” is the dry comment of Sir Harry Johnston in his preface to the English edition of my book _With Flashlight and Rifle_.

When I read about such adventures I call to mind vividly my own. I live through them all again, and the magic of these experiences reawakes in me.

To-day I would fain give the reader some account of the capturing of lions. Not of captures made by means of a net, such as skilful and brave men used in olden days to throw over the king of beasts, thus disabling him and putting him in their power, but of a capture that was not without its many intense and exciting moments.

Proud Rome saw as many as five hundred lions die in the arena in one day. That was in the time of Pompey. Nearly two thousand years have passed since then, and one may safely affirm that in the intervening centuries very few lions have been brought to Europe that were caught when full grown in the desert. The many lions that are brought over to our continent are caught when young, and then reared, despite the credence given sometimes to statements to the contrary.

It goes without saying that lions which have matured in confinement cannot compare with the lions that have come to their full development in the wilderness. Full-grown tigers and leopards are still nowadays in some cases ensnared alive, and we can see them in our zoological gardens in all their native wildness, and without any artificial breeding, marked with the unmistakable stamp common to all wild animals. It is an established fact that all captive monkeys show symptoms after a certain time of rachitis. This is also the case frequently with large felines. Lions brought up in captivity, however, have far finer manes than wild ones.

Of course a certain number of the lions used in the arena-fights in Rome were probably reared in the Roman provinces by some potentate. But without doubt a large number were caught when fully grown by means of nets, pitfalls, and other devices of which we have no precise details.

It seemed to me worth while to make a trial of the means which had once been so successful. As I have already pointed out, there is a great difference between a man who scours the wilderness solely as a hunter, and one who makes practical investigations into the life of the animal world. The sportsman may possibly sneer at the use of pitfalls. He has no mind for anything but an exciting encounter with the lion, an encounter which, thanks to modern means of warfare, is much easier for the man than formerly.

ANOTHER OF MY HUNTING CARDS. THE RECORD OF MY LION-HUNT OF THE
25TH JANUARY, 1897, ON THE ATHI PLAINS, WHEN I KILLED TWO LIONS
AND A LIONESS (“LÖWE”=LION; LÖWIN=LIONESS).]

However, I have no wish whatever to lay down the law on this question of the relative amount of danger involved in the shooting or the trapping of lions. In many parts of Africa lion-hunting is a matter of luck, above all where horses cannot live owing to the tsetse-fly, and where dogs cannot be employed in large numbers (as used to be the practice in South Africa) to mark down the lions until the hunter can come. For example, we have it on good authority that the members of an Anglo-Abyssinian Border Commission, aided by a pack of dogs, were able to kill about twenty lions in the course of a year. But on entering the region of Lake Rudolf all the dogs fall victims to the tsetse-fly. Hunting with a pack of dogs is very successful. Dogs were used by the three brothers Chudiakow, who, some nine years ago, near Nikolsk on the Amur, in Manchuria, killed nearly forty Siberian tigers in one winter[6]; whilst a hunting party near Vladivostock killed in one month one hundred and twenty-five wild boars and seven tigers. Tigers are so plentiful near Mount Ararat that a military guard of three men is necessary during the night-watch to ward off these beasts of prey.[7]

My extraordinary luck on January 25, 1897, when I killed three full-grown lions, fine big specimens, was of course a source of much satisfaction to me. The little sketch-map of the day’s hunt which accompanies this chapter shows the route I took on that memorable occasion, and gives a good idea of the way in which I am accustomed to keep a record of such things in my diary. I must add that my adventures and narrow escapes while trying to secure lions have been of a kind such as would be to the taste only of those most greedy of excitement.

In 1897 I had already observed that the lion was to be found in great troops in thinly populated neighbourhoods, where he was at no loss for prey and where he had not much to fear from man. As many as thirty lions have been found together, and I myself have seen a troop of fourteen with my own eyes. Other sportsmen have seen still larger troops in East Africa. Quite recently Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, who, on the occasion of his second African trip, made some interesting observations in regard to lions, has borne witness to the existence of very large troops. During the period in which I devoted myself entirely to making photographic studies of wild life, and consequently left undisturbed all the different species of game which swarmed around my camp, I was sometimes surrounded for days, weeks even, by great numbers of them, sometimes to an alarming extent. I have already described how one night an old lion brushed close by my tent to drink at the brook near which we were encamping, although it was just as easy for him to drink from the same stream at any point for miles to either side of us. On another occasion, as could be seen from the tracks, lions approached our camp until within a few yards of it. When I was photographing the lions falling upon the heifers and donkeys, as described in _With Flashlight and Rifle_, I must have been, judging by the tracks, surrounded by about thirty. I trapped a number of them, either for our various museums, where specimens in various stages of development and age are much needed, or to protect the natives who were menaced by lions, or whose relatives had perhaps been seized by them.

It is the more necessary to have recourse to traps in that one may spend years hunting in Equatorial East Africa without getting a single chance of firing a shot at a lion. The hunt has to take place at night, for the lion leads a nocturnal life, and makes off into inaccessible thickets by day.

But what I was most anxious to do was to secure a specimen or two that I could bring alive to Europe. To do this, I required the lightest possible and most portable iron cages, which should yet be strong enough to resist every effort of the imprisoned animals to get free. This problem was solved for me as well as it could be by Professor Heck, the Director of the Berlin Zoological Gardens. Yet even he declared it to be impossible to make such cages under 330 lbs. in weight. For the transport of one such cage the services of six bearers would be necessary. I arranged for several such cages to be sent oversea to Tanga, and took them thence into the interior. Thus I had the assurance of keeping my captives in security, but first I had to get hold of them without hurting them. By means of a modified form of iron traps I was able to manage this eventually. Those who are not acquainted with the difficulties of transport in countries where everything has to be borne on men’s shoulders will hardly be able to realise the straits to which one may be put. Thus I was much hampered, when carrying back my first lion (which was unharmed save for a few skin scratches), by a lack of bearers owing to famine and other causes.

I had found the tracks of a lioness with three quite little cubs. I followed them for an hour over the velt--they then got lost in the thick bush. As I had already observed the tracks of this little band for several days, I naturally concluded that the old lioness was making a stay in the neighbourhood. So I decided, as one of my heifers was ill from the tsetse sickness and bound to die, to pitch my tent in the neighbourhood and to bait a trap with the sick animal.

I found water at about an hour and a half’s distance from the spot where I had observed the lion’s tracks. I was thus obliged to encamp at this distance away. Later on in the evening, after much labour, I succeeded in setting a trap in such a way that I had every reason to hope for good results.

In the early hours of the following morning I started out, full of hope, to visit my trap. Already in the distance I could see that my heifer was still alive, and I immediately concluded that the lions had sought the open. But it was not so, for to my surprise I presently found fresh tracks of the old lioness and her cubs. Evidently she had visited the trap, but had returned into the bush without taking any notice of the easy prey. The lie of the land allowed me to read the lion’s tracks imprinted into the ground as if in a book. They told me that the cubs had at one point suddenly darted to one side, their curiosity excited by a land-tortoise whose back was now reflecting the rays of the sun, and which in the moonlight must have attracted their attention. They had evidently amused themselves for a while with this plaything, for the hard surface of the tortoise’s shell was marked with their claws. Then they had returned to their mother. I concluded that the old lioness was not hungry and had no more lust for prey--another confirmation of the fact that lions, when sated, are not destructive. This new proof seemed to me to be worth all the trouble I had taken.

The two following nights, to my disappointment, the lions approached my heifer again without molesting it.

This was the more annoying because I had hoped by capturing the old lioness to obtain possession of all the young cubs as well.

In this case, as in many others, the behaviour of the heifer was a matter of great interest. As already remarked, in most cases I made use of sick cows mortally afflicted by the tsetse-fly. In many districts in German East Africa the tsetse-fly, which causes the dreadful sleeping sickness in man, also makes it impossible to keep cattle except under quite special conditions. This heifer, then, was already doomed to a painful death through the tsetse illness, and the fate I provided for it was more merciful, for the lion kills its prey by one single powerful bite. I observed, moreover, that the bound animal took its food quite placidly and showed no signs of unrest so long as the lion came up to her peaceably, as in this case. This accorded entirely with my frequent observations of the behaviour of animals towards lions on the open velt. Antelopes out on the velt apparently take very little notice of lions, though they hold themselves at a respectful distance from them.

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

THIS LION, AN OLD ANIMAL WITH A FINE MANE, HAD DRAGGED AWAY THE
IRON TRAP SOME DISTANCE. HE MADE FOR ME THE MOMENT I HAD TAKEN
THIS PHOTOGRAPH AT NEAR RANGE, BUT THE TRAP IMPEDED HIS MOVEMENTS
AND A WELL-PLACED BULLET PUT AN END TO HIM.]

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

CARRYING IN TRIUMPH TO MY CAMP A LION WHICH I HOPED TO BRING BACK WITH ME TO EUROPE.]

In spite of my want of success, I decided to try my luck once more, though the surroundings of my camp were not very alluring and game was very scarce with the exception of a herd of ostriches, which for hours together haunted the vicinity. I hoped this time the lioness would be bagged. But no, I never came across her or her young again.

Instead, on the fourth morning, I found a good maned specimen--an old male--at my mercy. Loud roars announced the fact of his capture to me from afar. The first thing was to discover whether he was firmly held by the iron, and also whether he was unhurt. I assured myself of both these points after some time, with great trouble and difficulty, and, needless to add, not without considerable danger. I leave the reader to imagine for himself the state of mind in which one approaches the King of Beasts in such circumstances. I can vouch for it that one does so with a certain amount of respect for His Majesty.

The roaring of an enraged lion, once heard, is never to be forgotten. It is kept up by my captive without intermission, a dull heavy rumble suddenly swelling to a tremendous volume of sound. The expression of its face and head, too, show fierce anger and threaten danger. The terrible jaws now scrunch the branches within reach, now open menacingly.

It was now necessary to free the lion from the trap and to bring it into camp. It would take a week to get my cage, but meanwhile I decided to fasten the animal by means of a strong chain and with a triple yoke specially made for such a purpose in Europe.

But even the bravest of my men absolutely refused to obey my command. It needed the greatest persistence to persuade some of them, at last, to lend a helping hand to me and my assistant Orgeich. As usual they required the stimulus of a good example. After some time I had, as can be seen on pages 485 and 499, set up my photographic apparatus right in front of the lion so as to take several photos of him at the distance of a few paces.

Then we cut a few saplings about as thick as one’s arm, and with these we tried to beat down the lion so as to secure him. At first this did not succeed at all. I then had recourse to strong cord, which I made into a lasso. It was wonderful, when I caught the head of the prisoner in the noose, to see him grip it with his teeth and to watch the thick rope fall to pieces as if cut with a pair of scissors after a few quick, angry bites. During this trial I made a false step on the smooth, grassy ground, so well known to African explorers, and was within a hair’s breadth of falling into the clutches of the raging beast had not my good taxidermist happily dragged me back. After various further efforts, during which my people were constantly taking fright, I at length succeeded in fastening the head as well as the paws of the beast. With the help of the branches the body was laid prostrate on the ground, a gag was inserted between the teeth, the prisoner was released from the trap and, fastened to a tree-trunk, was carried into camp.

But what takes only a few words to describe involved hours of work. It was a wonderful burden, and one not to be seen every day! In my previous book I have already described how we carried a half-grown lion in a similar manner, and I have given an illustration of the scene. Unfortunately some of my best photographs, showing my bearers carrying this full-grown lion, were lost while crossing a river.

I was full of delight at the thought of my captive as he would appear in my encampment. But to my great chagrin the lion died in it quite suddenly, evidently from heart failure. We could find no trace of any wound.

There was something really moving at this issue to the struggle, in the thought that I, using wile against strength, should have overpowered and captured this noble beast only to break his heart!

This failure made me fear that I should never succeed in capturing a lion by such methods. It seemed almost better to use a large grating-trap in which it could be kept for several days and gradually accustomed to the loss of its freedom. But this meant an expensive apparatus which was quite beyond the funds of a private individual with narrow means like myself. My efforts to capture lions by means of pits dug by the natives were quite unsuccessful, because the lions always found a way out.

A younger male lion which was entrapped lived for nearly a month chained up in my camp. This one had hurt its paw when captured, and in spite of every care a bad sore gradually festered. It wounded one of my people very badly by ripping open a vein in his arm when he went to feed it.

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

FLASHLIGHT PHOTOGRAPH OF A LION. THE ANIMAL HAD MOVED SO SWIFTLY THAT THE APPARATUS WAS NOT QUITE IN TIME TO TAKE IN ITS WHOLE BODY.]

Thus terminated my efforts to bring an old lion to Europe.

Much that is easy in appearance is troublesome in reality. Even when the animal is overcome, the transportation of it to the coast is accompanied by almost insuperable difficulties. It means something to carry beast and cage, a burden amounting to something like eight hundred pounds, right through the wilderness by means of bearers. Even with the help of the Uganda Railway it has not been possible to bring home a full-grown lion. I have repeatedly caught lions for this purpose, but have always experienced ultimate failure.

Sometimes the animals would not return to the place where I had tracked or sighted them, or would steer clear of the decoy. One often meets with this experience in India with tigers, which are decoyed in much the same way, and then shot from a raised stand. Interesting information about the behaviour of tigers in such cases may be found in the publications of English hunters, as well as in the very interesting book on tropical sport by P. Niedieck, a German hunter of vast experience. I might perhaps have succeeded on subsequent occasions in transporting old lions, but I never had the strong cages at hand. Now perhaps they are rusted and rotted, as well as the other implements which I hid or buried on the velt, not having bearers enough to carry them, and hoping to find them again later.

I had a most interesting adventure, once, with a lion on the right bank of the Rufu River.

For several nights the continuous roaring of a lion had been heard in the immediate vicinity of my camp. In spite of all my attempts to get a sight of the beast by day I could not even find the slightest trace of it. Moreover, the vegetation in the neighbourhood of the river was not at all suitable for a lion-hunt. I decided to try my luck with a trap. A very decrepit old donkey was used as a bait, and killed by the lion the very first night. But to my disappointment the powerful beast of prey had evidently killed the ass with one blow, and with incredible strength had succeeded in dragging it off into the thicket without as much as touching the trap. Very early the next morning I found the tracks, which were clearly imprinted on the ground. Breathlessly I followed up the trail step by step in the midst of thick growth which only allowed me to see a few paces around me. I crept noiselessly forward, followed by my gun-bearer, knowing that in all probability I should come upon the lion.

The trail turned sharply to the left through some thick bushes. Now we came to a spot where the thief had evidently rested with his spoil; then the tracks led sharply to the right and went straight forward without a pause.

We had been creeping forward on the sunlit sand like stealthy cats, with every nerve and muscle taut, my people close behind me, I with my rifle raised and ready to fire--when, suddenly, with a weird sort of growl it leapt up right in front of us and was over the hard sand and away. It is astonishing how the stampede of a lion reverberates even in the far distance!

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT A DISTANCE OF ABOUT FIVE PACES OF A LION
WHICH I CAPTURED ALIVE AND BROUGHT BACK TO CAMP--A SPECIMEN OF
THE MANELESS LIONS OF THE MASAI VELT. SOME OF THE VERY OLD LIONS
DEVELOP MANES EVEN IN THIS REGION, BUT NEVER TO THE EXTENT USUAL
WITH LIONS IN CAPTIVITY, OR WITH THE ALMOST EXTINCT SPECIES OF
THE ATLAS COUNTRY OR OF SOUTH AFRICA.]

A few steps further I came upon the remains of the ass. The lion had gained the open when I got out of the brushwood. It was useless to follow the tracks, for they led only to stony ground, where they would be lost. Discouraged, I gave up the pursuit for the time, but only to return a few hours later. Approaching very cautiously to the place where I had left the remains of the donkey, we found they were no longer there. The lion had fetched them away. We followed again, but to my unspeakable disappointment with the same result as in the morning. I managed this time, however, to get near the lion through the brushwood, but he immediately took to flight again--when only a few yards from me, though hidden by bushes. Perhaps he is still at large in this same locality!

Lions--generally several of them together--killed my decoys on several occasions without themselves getting caught. I once surprised a lion and two lionesses at such a meal in the Njiri marshes, in June 1903. Unfortunately the animals became aware of my approach, and now began just such a chase as I had already successfully undertaken on January 25, 1897.[8]

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

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

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

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

CARRYING A LIVE HYENA BACK TO CAMP.]

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XII

A Dying Race of Giants

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Photographed at Zanzibar._

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

The elephant is no longer to be found anywhere in its original numbers. It is found most frequently in the desert places between Abyssinia and the Nile and the Galla country, or in the inaccessible parts of the Congo, on the Albert Nyanza, and in the hinterlands of Nigeria and the Gold Coast. But in the vicinity of the Victoria Nyanza things have changed greatly. Richard Kandt tells us that a single elephant-hunter, a Dane, who afterwards succumbed to the climate, alone slaughtered hundreds in the course of years.

According to experts in this field of knowledge, some of the huge animals of prehistoric days disappeared in a quite brief space of time from the earth’s surface. But we cannot explain why beasts so well qualified to defend themselves should so speedily cease to exist. However that may be, the fate of the still existing African elephant appears to me tragic. At one time elephants of different kinds dwelt in our own country.[9] Remains of the closely related mammoth, with its long hair adapted to a northern climate, are sometimes excavated from the ice in Siberia. Thus we obtain information about its kind of food, for remnants of food well preserved by the intense cold have been found between the teeth and in the stomach--remnants which botanists have been able to identify.

By a singular coincidence, the mammoth remains preserved in the ice have been found just at a time when the craze for slaughtering their African relations has reached its climax, and when by means of arms that deal out death at great, and therefore safe distances, the work of annihilation is all too rapidly progressing. The scientific equipment of mankind is so nearly perfect that we are able to make the huge ice-bound mammoths, which have perhaps been reposing in their cold grave for thousands of years, speak for themselves. And it can be proved by means of the so-called “physiological blood-proof” that the frozen blood of the Siberian mammoths shows its kinship with the Indian and African elephant!

It is strange to reflect that mankind, having attained to its present condition of enlightenment, should yet have designs upon the last survivors of this African race of giants--and chiefly in the interests of a game! For the ivory is chiefly required to make billiard balls! Is it not possible to contrive some substitute in these days when nothing seems beyond the power of science?

A. H. Neumann, a well-known English hunter, says that some years ago it was already too late to reap a good ivory harvest in Equatorial Africa or in Mombasa. He had to seek farther afield in the far-lying districts between the Indian Ocean and the Upper Nile, where he obtained about £5,000 worth of ivory during one hunting expedition.

A STORE OF ELEPHANTS’ TUSKS IN ONE OF THE WORKROOMS OF THE
IMPORTANT IVORY FACTORY OF A. MEYER AT HAMBURG. IT SHOULD BE
BORNE IN MIND THAT THERE ARE A NUMBER OF OTHER SUCH FACTORIES ON
THE CONTINENT AND IN AMERICA.]

Meanwhile powder and shot are at work day and night in the Dark Continent. It is not the white man himself who does most of the work of destruction; it is the native who obtains the greater part of the ivory used in commerce. Two subjects of Manga Bell, for instance, killed a short time back, in the space of a year and a half, elephants enough to provide one hundred and thirty-nine large tusks for their chief! There is no way of changing matters except by completely disarming the African natives. Unless this is done, in a very short time the elephant will only be found in the most inaccessible and unhealthy districts. It does not much matter whether this comes about in a single decade or in several. What are thirty or forty or fifty years, in comparison with the endless ages that have gone to the evolution of these wonderful animals? It is remarkable, too, that in spite of all the hundreds of African elephants which are being killed, not a single museum in the whole world possesses one of the gigantic male elephants which were once so numerous, but which are now so rarely to be met with. Accompanying this chapter is a photograph of the heaviest elephant-tusks which have ever reached the coast from the interior. The two tusks together weigh about 450 pounds. One can form some idea of the size of the elephant which carried them! I was unfortunately unable to obtain these tusks for Germany, although they were taken from German Africa. They were sent to America, and sold for nearly £1,000.

I should like the reader to note, also, the illustration showing a room in an ivory factory. The number of tusks there visible will give an approximate notion of the tremendous slaughter which is being carried on.

The price of ivory has been rising gradually, and is now ten times what it was some forty years ago in the Sudan, according to Brehm’s statistics. In Morgen’s time one could buy a fifty-pound tusk in the Cameroons for some stuff worth about sevenpence. In the last century or two the price of ivory has risen commensurately with that of all other such wares. Nowadays a sum varying from £300 to £400 may be obtained for the egg of the Great Auk, which became extinct less than half a century ago: whilst a stuffed specimen of the bird itself is worth at least £1,000. What will be the price of such things in years to come!

In the light of these remarks the reader will easily understand how greatly I prize the photographs which I secured of two huge old bull-elephants in friendly company with a bull-giraffe, and which are here reproduced. It will be difficult, if not indeed impossible, ever again to photograph such mighty “tuskers” in company with giraffes. In the year 1863 Brehm wrote that no true picture existed of the real African elephant in its own actual haunts. The fact brought to light by these pictures is both new and surprising, especially for the expert, who hitherto has been inclined to believe that giraffes were dwellers on the velt and accustomed to fight shy of the damp forests. That they should remain in such a region in company with elephants for weeks at a time was something hitherto unheard of. I do not know how to express my delight at being able after long hours of patient waiting to sight this rare conjunction of animals from my place of observation either with a Goerz-Trizeder or with the naked eye, but only for a few seconds at a time, because of the heavy showers of rain which kept falling. How disappointing and mortifying it was to find oneself left in the lurch by the sun--and just immediately under the Equator, where one had a right to it! What I had so often experienced in my photographic experiments in the forests by the Rufu River--that is, the want of sunlight for days together--now made me almost desperate. At any moment the little gathering of animals might break up, in which case I should never be able to get a photographic record of the strange friendship. Since the publication of my first work I have often been asked to give some further particulars about this matter. Therefore, perhaps these details, supported by photographs, will not be unacceptable to my readers.

AN AUK’S EGG, ABOUT THREE-FIFTH OF ACTUAL SIZE. AUK’S EGGS COME
INTO THE MARKET IN ENGLAND FROM TIME TO TIME AND FETCH AS MUCH AS
£300 APIECE.]

THE SPECIMEN OF THE AUK PRESERVED IN THE BERLIN NATURAL HISTORY
MUSEUM. IT WOULD BE WORTH AT LEAST £1,000 IF OFFERED FOR SALE.

(REPRODUCED HERE BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM, DR. BRAUER VON FRL. ELFRIEDE ZIMMERMANN.)]

I candidly admit that had I suddenly come upon these great bull-elephants in the jungle in years gone by I could not have resisted killing them. But I have gradually learned to restrain myself in this respect. It would have been a fine sensation from the sportsman’s standpoint, and would besides have brought in a round sum of perhaps £500; but what was all that in comparison with the securing of one single authentic photograph which would afford irrefutable proof of so surprising a fact?

The western spurs of the great Kilimanjaro range end somewhat abruptly in a high table-land, which is grass-grown and covered in patches with sweet-smelling acacias. This undulating velt-region gradually slopes down until in its lowest parts the waters collect and form the western Njiri marshes, which at some seasons of the year are almost dry. Volcanic hills arise here and there on the plain, from whose summits one can obtain a wide view. One of the most prominent of these hills has a cavity at its summit. It is evidently the crater of an extinct volcano which is filled with water, like the volcanic lakes of my native Eifel district. A thicket begins not far from this hill, and gradually extends until it merges into the forest beyond. The burning sun has dried up all the grass up to the edge of the thicket. There is so little rain here that the poor Xerophites are the only exception that can stand the drought. Only on the inner walls of the steep crater do bushes and shrubs grow, for these are only exposed at midday to the sun’s heat.

Thus a cool moisture pervades this hollow except during the very hottest season. Paths, trodden down by crowds of game, lead to the shining mirror of the little lake. It used to be the haunt of beasts of prey, and the smaller animals would probably seek drinking-places miles distant rather than come to this grim declivity. There is, however, a kind of road leading to the summit of this hill, a very uneven road, wide at first, then gradually narrower and narrower, which had become almost impassable with grass and brushwood when I made my way up. This road was trodden by the cattle herds of the Masai. It may be that rhinoceroses and elephants were the original makers of it before the warlike shepherds began to lead their thirsty cattle to this secluded lake. Be this as it may, my Masai friends assured me that they brought their herds here time out of mind until the rinderpest devastated them.

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

A THICKET, HUNG WITH LICHENS, MUCH FREQUENTED BY ELEPHANTS AND SOMETIMES ALMOST IMPENETRABLE TO MAN.]

For weeks I had had natives on the look-out for elephants. They could only tell me, however, of small herds composed of cows and young bulls, and that was not good enough from the point of view of either sportsman or photographer. However, I made several excursions round the Kilepo Hill from my camp, never taking more than a few men with me--it so often happens that one’s followers spoil the chase, perhaps quite frustrate it. This is well known to natives and experienced elephant-hunters.

I soon became familiar with the district and its vegetation. For hours I followed paths which led through thick undergrowth, and I had some unpleasant encounters with rhinoceroses. I knew well that the neighbourhood of the hills, with its tall impenetrable growth, was a most likely one for astute and cautious bull-elephants to haunt.

Hunting elephants in this fashion, day after day, with only a few followers, is a delightful experience. It happens, perhaps, that one has to pass the night in the forest under the free vault of heaven, with the branches of a huge tree as shelter. The faint glow of the camp-fire fades and flickers, producing weird effects in the network of the foliage. How quickly one falls victim to atavistic terrors of the night! Terrors of what? Of the “pepo ya miti,” the spirit of the woods, or of some other mysterious sprite? No, of wild animals--the same kind of fear that little children have in the dark of something unknown, dangerous and threatening. My followers betake themselves to their slumbers with indifference, for they have little concern for probable dangers. But the imaginative European is on the look-out for peril--the thought of it holds and fascinates him.... Somewhere in the distance, perhaps, the heavens are illuminated with a bright light. Far, far away a conflagration is raging, devastating miles upon miles of the vale below. The sky reflects the light, which blazes up now purple, now scarlet! Often it will last for days and nights, nay weeks, whole table-lands being in flames and acting as giant beacons to light up the landscape!... My thoughts would turn towards the bonfires which in Germany of old flashed their message across the land--news, perhaps, of the burial of some great prince.... So, now, it seemed to me that those distant flames told of the last moments of some monarch of the wild.

At last I received good news. A huge bull-elephant had been seen for a few minutes in the early morning hours in the vicinity of the Kilepo Hill. This overjoyed me, for I was quite certain that in a few days now we should meet them above on the hill.

I left my camp to the care of the greater part of my caravan, but sent a good many of my men back into the inhabited districts of the northern Kilimanjaro to get fresh provisions from Useri. I myself went about a day’s journey up Kilepo Hill, accompanied by a few of my men, resolved to get a picture _coûte que coûte_.

It was characteristic of my scouts that they could only give me details about elephants. As often as I asked them about other game I could get nothing out of them, for what were giraffes, buffaloes, and rhinoceroses to them, and what interest could they have in such worthless creatures! The whole mind of the natives has been for many years past directed by us Europeans upon ivory. Native hunters in scantily populated districts dream and think only of “jumbe”--ivory, and always more ivory, as the Esquimaux yearns for seal blubber and oil and the European for gold, gold, gold! In these parts giraffes and rhinoceroses count for nothing in comparison with the elephant--the native thinks no more of them than one of our own mountaineers would think of a rabbit or a hare. Only those who have seen this for themselves can realise how quickly one gets accustomed to the point of view! In the gameless and populous coast districts the appearance of a dwarf antelope or of a bustard counts for a good deal, and holds out promise to the sportsman of other such game--waterbuck, perhaps. I have read in one of the coast newspapers the interesting news that Mr. So and So was fortunate enough to kill a bustard and an antelope. That certainly was quite good luck, for you may search long in populous districts and find nothing. As you penetrate into the wilder districts conditions change rapidly, and after weeks and months of marching in the interior you get accustomed to expecting only the biggest of big game. The other animals become so numerous that the sight of them no longer quickens the pulse.

I have already remarked that elephants are much less cautious by night than by day. The very early morning hours are the best for sighting elephants, before they retire into their forest fastnesses to escape the burning rays of the sun. But as at this time of the year the sun hardly ever penetrated the thick bank of clouds, there was a chance of seeing the elephants at a later hour and in the bush. So every morning either I or one of my scouts was posted on one of the hills--Kilepo especially--to keep a sharp look-out. It needed three hours in the dark and two in the daylight to get up the hill. It was not a pleasant climb. We were always drenched to the skin by the wet grass and bushes, and it was impossible to light a fire to dry ourselves, for the animals would certainly have scented it. We had to stay there in our wet clothes, hour after hour, watching most carefully and making the utmost of the rare moments when the mist rolled away in the valley and enabled us to peer into the thickets. It may seem surprising that we should have found so much difficulty in sighting the elephants, but one must remember that they emerge from their mud-baths with a coating that harmonises perfectly with the tree-trunks and the general environment, and are therefore hard to descry. Besides, the conditions of light in the tropics are very different from what we are accustomed to in our own northern clime, and are very deceptive.

When fortune was kind I could just catch a glimpse during a brief spell of sunshine of a gigantic elephant’s form in the deep valley beneath. But only for a few instants. The next moment there was nothing to be seen save long vistas of damp green plants and trees. The deep rain-channels stood out clear and small in the landscape from where I stood. The mightiest trees looked like bushes; the hundred-feet-high trunks of decayed trees which stood up out of the undergrowth here and there looked like small stakes. In the ever-changing light one loses all sense of the vastness of things and distances.

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

A VELT FIRE. THE BONES OF AN ELEPHANT SOON TO BECOME FOOD FOR THE FLAMES.]

_C. G. Schillings, phot._

A VELT FIRE.]

For once the mist rolls off rapidly; a gust of wind drives away the clouds. The sun breaks through. Look! there is a whole herd of elephants below us in the valley! But in another second the impenetrable forest of trees screens them from my camera. At last they become clearly visible again, and I manage to photograph two cow-elephants in the distance. The sun vanishes again now, and an hour later I have at last the whole herd clearly before me in the hollow. How the little calves cling to their mothers! How quietly the massive beasts move about, now disappearing into the gullies, now reappearing and climbing up the hillside with a sureness of foot that makes them seem more like automatons than animals. Every now and again the ruddy earth-coloured backs emerge from the mass of foliage. A wonderful and moving picture! For I know full well that the gigantic mothers are caring for their children and protecting them from the human fiend who seeks to destroy them with pitfalls, poisoned arrows, or death-dealing guns. How cautiously they all move, scenting the wind with uplifted trunks, and keeping a look-out for pitfalls! Every movement shows careful foresight; the gigantic old leaders have evidently been through some dire experiences.

Suddenly a warning cry rings out. Immediately the whole herd disappears noiselessly into the higher rain-channels of the hill--the “Subugo woods” of the Wandorobo hunters.

* * * * *