CHAPTER VIII SAFARI HUNTERS
In 1905 Nairobi was a town of tin houses, many black people, a few Hindus, and fewer white men. Before my departure for the Athi Plains, where I planned to begin my collections, I wished to find a place in Nairobi where I might store material as I sent it in from time to time from the field. Around and around I wandered without finding any one who was able to offer a helpful suggestion. Then one day, as I was passing the open door of an unpromising galvanized iron building, I heard the encouraging clatter of a typewriter and lost no time in investigating. At the rear of a bare room about thirty feet wide and forty feet long was a door on the other side of which someone was plying the typewriter furiously. Finally there came forth from behind that closed door a blue-eyed, red-haired chap, apparently extraordinarily busy and much annoyed at being interrupted. However, his annoyance vanished when I told him what I was looking for and he suggested that I use a third of the front part of his building at a rental of five rupees—about a dollar and a half—per month. This arrangement was eminently satisfactory to me and we closed the bargain at once.
The red-haired man was Leslie J. Tarlton. No description of British East Africa is complete without some reference to Tarlton, the Boer War veteran now known to hunters the world over because of the flourishing business he has built up in Nairobi—a part of which is equipping safari hunters with everything from food to niggers.
Tarlton and his partner, Newland, were Australians who had served in the Boer War. At its close they set out to make their fortunes somewhere in Africa. Coming to Nairobi with none too much of this world's goods but plenty of ambition and enthusiasm, they were casting about for an objective when on that morning in 1905 I stumbled upon Tarlton's iron house. The safari business into which they fell that day helped to make them prosperous men until the opening of the World War in 1914 put an end to African hunting for a time.
Tarlton afterward confessed to me that the typewriter that first attracted my attention would not write at all. Its only use was to make a noise when a prospective client came in sight. It was perhaps the first propounder in Nairobi of the modern business principle that nothing succeeds like success and it propounded no less diligently because Tarlton had not yet discovered what his post-war profession was to be. Two or three weeks after our first meeting, when I came in from the plains, my safari laden with collections to be packed in brine, Tarlton was much on the job, observing the process and assisting whenever he saw an opportunity. Finally he asked why he could not learn to do such work for me. His proposal was that he act as my agent, sending food and other supplies to us in the field as they were required and thus obviating the necessity of my coming in whenever a consignment of skins was made. As time is precious in the field and one does not often happen upon a helper of such ingenuity and diligence, we soon came to terms. Newland, Tarlton, and Company had acquired their first safari client. Later on we provided poison tanks and the other paraphernalia necessary in caring for trophies before they can be shipped. Since that time, Newland and Tarlton have prepared skins and packed and shipped them for innumerable safaris.
When in 1911 black-water fever so nearly got me, Tarlton was also thought to be dying in the Nairobi hospital, but he, too, surprised his friends by his unwillingness to conform to their expectations, and, while we were both convalescing, invited me to his house to stay. Those weeks in Nairobi were a great time for reminiscence. Tarlton told me a story every morning before breakfast as he whistled and chirped about his dressing. And he always ended with the assertion that some day he was going to write a book on that particular subject. One morning he recited an anecdote about Theodore Roosevelt, adding, "Some day I am going to write a book on 'Ex-Presidents I Have Known'."
But the story I recall with the keenest relish recounts the adventures of three Boer War veterans. They had reached the bottom of their luck after the war, and making a pot, went into the Congo to poach elephants. They had good shooting at first, then no luck at all. Their supplies were nearly exhausted. But they took heart one evening when they came upon elephant signs and carefully laid their plans for the next day's hunt. A last pot of jam remained in their commissariat, and a last pot of jam is treasured by a man in that country as one saves a last bottle of champagne. The hunter must have fruit, and since no wild fruit grows there, in the old days his supplies included large quantities of preserved fruit and marmalade. The three adventurers had saved that last pot of jam to be used to celebrate and they agreed that the time for celebration had come provided they brought home ivory on the morrow. Their plan was that each man should take a different direction. On his return that night the first hunter's trail crossed that of one of his companions. Both had their ivory and they went into camp together ravenously hungry, their appetites whetted by anticipation, to find that the third fellow had stayed in camp all day and had eaten the jam alone and unabetted. His companions saw red. The normal thing in a frontier country when a man fails to play his part is to kill him. That was their intention, but they made up their minds not to be rash about it. They decided to take the man into the woods some morning and come back alone. But they thought better—or worse—of it the next day.
The story ends in Tarlton's own words:
"Well, ladies and gentlemen, my next book will be entitled 'Murdered from Marmalade,' or 'The Jam that Jerked him to Jesus'."
Tarlton was the best game shot I have ever known. We had gone out together on one occasion to get meat for dinner when we sighted a Thompson's gazelle at a distance of 225 yards.
"Let me try my new Rigby on Tommie," Tarlton said, as he drew a bead on the centre of the gazelle's chest. When we reached the antelope and found the bullet one inch below where he expected it, he remarked that he had suspected that his rifle was not accurately sighted. This was no conceit on his part. He expected to place his bullet exactly where he wished and if his gun was accurately sighted he rarely missed.
Tarlton's first lion was shot about this time. The lion had charged his friend and with his front paws on the man's shoulder, and his mouth open, was reaching for the man's head when Tarlton pulled the trigger fifty yards away. The friend escaped without a scratch.
In the conduct of his business in Nairobi, Tarlton must have come in contact with all sorts of men, for there are sportsmen and so-called sportsmen of all shades and degrees. There is the man who goes over keen to get a representative head of every species of game animal. No one can take exception to him while there is plenty of game left. On the other hand, there is the man who hunts for record heads and with him I have little patience. One man came into camp in Somaliland who, although he never shot unless he believed his prey to be unusual, had killed seventy-five aoul or Soemmerring's gazelle before he got the record. Another class of sportsmen is made up of men who seem to think that the end to be attained is to kill all the law will allow them. I have seen a great many of this type. Having paid for a license which allows them to kill a given number of animals of each species, they are never content until they have killed the full number regardless of their needs, the size of the horns, or anything else. In the same class with the man who kills to his limit is the man who has made careful preparation for a hunt in Africa and who goes there determined to kill every available species within three months. One I know told his agents that he would pay them for the full time if they would so arrange it that he could get his game in three weeks. His idea is to kill and get out of Africa. He has none of that appreciation of Africa's charm and of that real interest in its animals which create in the true sportsman the desire to remain as long as possible.
There are many professional hunters in British East Africa, but perhaps R. J. Cuninghame is the most notable of the type. I met him first in 1906. I wanted elephants, and everyone at Nairobi agreed that he was the best elephant hunter. So I went to him and asked him to teach me to hunt elephants. We had some trouble in arranging the terms because he did not want any remuneration for helping an expedition bent on scientific collection. I couldn't accept his time gratis but have always appreciated this offer. Coming from a Scotchman it was quite unexpected, but it was typical of Cuninghame's generosity and indicative of his interest in scientific work.
He taught me as much as one man can learn from another about the game of hunting elephants. There are some things which one can learn only through experience, and in elephant hunting most of the essentials must be learned in that way. It is easy and natural to assume that these huge beasts will always be too obvious for the unexpected to happen. But in spite of their size they are not always easy to see, for in their own country elephants are the colour of the shadows and on occasion quite as silent. In a forest or rock environment one may almost literally run on to an elephant before being aware of its presence. The fact that Cuninghame spent so many years hunting the great game of Africa without ever being mauled is evidence of his skill.
We went together to the Aberdare and killed one elephant—the single tusker now in the group in the Field Museum in Chicago. Then we went down to the government station at Fort Hall and got permission to go up on Mt. Kenia for further elephant shooting. We spent six weeks on the slopes of the mountain, I as an amateur under Cuninghame's tutelage. And he was a real elephant hunter. He had killed many elephants, and his long experience had given him a great deal of that knowledge about elephants which would enable him to kill them without himself being killed. On the other hand, Cuninghame hunted elephants for ivory, and when a man approaches a herd looking for ivory, he is not likely to see much excepting tusks. It is natural, therefore, that from the ivory hunters we learn comparatively little of the more intimate things that we should like to know about the every-day life of the elephant. The world has no record of the knowledge of wild life that their experience should have given the ivory hunters.
It is for this reason that the camera hunters appeal to me as being so much more useful than the gun hunters. They have their pictures to show—still pictures and moving pictures—and when their game is over the animals are still alive to play another day. Moreover, according to any true conception of sport—the use of skill, daring, and endurance in overcoming difficulties—camera hunting takes twice the man that gun hunting takes. It is fortunate for the animals that camera hunting is becoming popular.
The first notable camera hunter in Africa was Edward North Buxton, whose book, "Two African Trips," was published in 1902. In the preface to this book Buxton writes that "it would better be described as a picture-book than a volume of travels." This book paved the way for another in 1905, "With Flashlight and Rifle," by C. G. Schillings. Considering the state of photography at that time, Schillings' book is a truly remarkable record of wild animal life. In 1910, A. Radclyffe Dugmore brought out his book, "Camera Adventures in the African Wilds." In it are several pictures of lions taken by flashlight at night from a blind that are photographically as good as are ever likely to be taken.
Then came the first of the moving-picture hunters. The first success was the film called "The Water Hole" taken by Mr. Lydford, who was temporarily the photographer of Paul Rainey's expedition. Although it is not photographically as good as some of the later ones, it was a remarkable achievement, as all who saw it will testify, especially when they realize that this was Mr. Lydford's first experience in making motion pictures and that his equipment was not as good as equipment is now. The film had a deservedly popular run. Like all such films it was arranged for public exhibition by piecing together parts taken on different occasions, so that the audience gets in one crowded hour the fruits of weeks and months of painstaking effort.
The next successful moving picture that I know of was taken on the expedition of Lady Grace McKenzie. It has in it the very remarkable piece of film showing a charging lion. The lion almost got the operator and ended the picture but fortunately both escaped. This reel has never been extensively shown.
After this came a film made by James Barnes and Cherry Kerton which was shown with a lecture and not, as was Rainey's, by itself. That was nearly the whole roll call until 1922 when two men came back with films. The first to reach New York was a film made by H. A. Snow. It was shown at the Lyric Theatre and had a great success for which I am personally sorry. I look upon it with more disapproval than I can well state, for I think that many of the titles on the pictures are misleading and that some of the pictures fall into the same category. All naturalists welcome the spread of animal lore by motion pictures so that a knowledge of true natural history may become more general, and there is no better way to disseminate such information. But if in order to make a film a more hair-raising and popular picture, the moving-picture producer puts misleading titles on the pictures and resorts to "fake" photography, the harm they can do is just as great as the good they would otherwise effect.
While most of us who are interested in true nature photography were feeling somewhat blue about Mr. Snow's pictures, Martin Johnson came back to New York. He came in to see me and I asked him what he was going to do about his titles. He was prompt and positive. He was quite willing to submit them all to the American Museum of Natural History. That was a big decision, for the Museum would not agree to the kind of titles which it was likely the moving-picture business might desire. This might militate heavily against his chance of selling the picture, and in Johnson's case selling the picture was a necessity, for all he had in the world and more besides was invested in it. But he stuck to his decision when the pressure came and his film goes forth, the first ever endorsed by the American Museum of Natural History, a credit to him and to the company distributing it. I feel that this is a great step. With this precedent I believe we have begun a new era in disseminating natural history through motion pictures—a step in which we can count on the assistance of Mr. Will H. Hays, the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.
But I must return to the gun hunters, for I have not mentioned the truest sportsman of them all—Theodore Roosevelt.
I first met Theodore Roosevelt on my return from Africa in 1906. Previously, on his visit to Chicago as Vice-President, soon after I had finished the deer groups for the Field Museum of Natural History, he called at the Museum and was so interested in the groups that he asked to see me, but unfortunately I was not there. From that time on he was interested in my endeavours and, learning that I was on my way out of Africa, had asked Congressman Mann to bring me to Washington. Congressman Mann's invitation was waiting for me when I reached New York.
At a dinner at the White House during that visit the Roosevelt African expedition was inaugurated. Among the other guests was a gentleman from Alaska who had been describing the hunting in that region and, as we were entering the dining room, the President remarked:
"As soon as I am through with this job, I am going to Alaska for a good hunt."
I shall never forget that dinner at the White House. I sat through course after course and did not eat a bite, for the President kept me busy telling stories of Africa. There was no time to exhaust my supply, but I believe I said quite enough, for as we were leaving the dining room, the President turned to me and said:
"As soon as I am through with this job, I am going to Africa."
"But," interposed the hunter from the north, "what is to become of Alaska?"
"Alaska will have to wait," Roosevelt replied with finality. Plans for the Roosevelt African expedition went forward at once and I had something to do with their arrangement.
At this dinner at the White House I retold to the President the story of the sixteen lions coming out of the cave on MacMillan's estate. The President, who had been very frank in his comments about all things, was having difficulties with the Senate at the time. When I had finished the story, he addressed Congressman Mann who sat beside him at the table,
"Congressman," he said, "I wish I had those sixteen lions to turn loose in the Senate."
Congressman Mann stammered and stumbled a bit, but finally drew himself together to reply.
"B—but, Mr. President, aren't—aren't you afraid the lions might make a mistake?"
"Not if they stayed long enough," was Roosevelt's rejoinder.
So he really invented the idea which they turned on him later. When his administration was over and he finally started for Africa, the cry of the Senate crowd was, "America expects every lion to do his duty." A cartoon of the day that I particularly remember showed a contented lion sitting up on his haunches with drawn and bulging stomach. Beneath, the caption read, "He was a good President."
I was planning an expedition to collect materials for an elephant group in behalf of the American Museum of Natural History about the time that Roosevelt was arranging for his African hunt, and it was a fancy of mine that he should shoot at least one of the elephants for my group. Upon my request that he should do so, we planned to meet in Africa, but as I was delayed in getting over, it was only by chance that his safari and mine met on the Uasin Gishu Plateau.
One day while on the march I sighted a safari. I was aware that the Roosevelt outfit had gone into that region, but I assumed that he had already left there for Uganda. Nevertheless, while we made camp on the banks of the river, I sent a runner to see if it could be the Roosevelt safari. My runner met a runner from the other outfit and returned with a message from Roosevelt himself which said that if we were Akeley's party he would go into camp at a near-by swamp. I mounted my pony and went to meet him as he approached on horseback accompanied by his son, Kermit, Edmund Heller, and their guide, Tarlton. We all went back to our camp for luncheon, where I gave Roosevelt a bottle of very choice brandy, a present from Mr. Oscar Strauss. Mr. Strauss had been one of our steamer companions across the Atlantic and, learning that I was likely to meet Roosevelt, he asked me to take this choice brandy to him in the jungles. Roosevelt accepted it with much interest in the accompanying message but apparently with mighty little interest in the brandy. He passed the bottle on to Cuninghame and I felt certain it would eventually meet with just appreciation.
We went over to Roosevelt's camp for the night, thoroughly pleased that the hunt we had looked forward to together, but had been forced to abandon, was to take place after all. We intended to get an early start the next morning, for Roosevelt had seen one herd of elephants that day. We started with Tarlton leading. Suddenly he slipped off his horse and directed that we swing down side to get off wind. In a clearing just ahead of us were our elephants, a band of eight cows and calves, enjoying their midday siesta and milling about under the trees. We stood hidden by a great ant-hill while I picked out a cow I thought would do for my group and pointed her out to Roosevelt. Of course, I assumed that he would shoot her from behind the ant-hill, well out of sight and protected. Instead he went around the hill and started straight toward the elephants, Kermit and I following one on either side and in back of him. I had an impulse to climb on Roosevelt's shoulder and whisper that I wanted him to shoot her, not to take her alive. But Roosevelt's theory of meeting trouble was to meet it halfway and he got just about halfway when the old cow started across the open space. Then the other seven headed toward us. Roosevelt shot. The elephant I had selected went part way down and got up again. On they came. He shot again and got her. However, there were three dead elephants instead of one when we stopped them, for Kermit and I had to shoot, too, to head off the others. The rule in elephant hunting is to get as close as you can before shooting, and in whatever Roosevelt was doing he came out in the open and went straight to the point.
Kermit's baby elephant, now mounted in the group, was taken that day, also. After we had turned them, I saw a calf I wanted, asked Kermit to shoot him, and he did so.
While Tarlton and Kermit returned for the camp equipment and the supplies required in caring for the elephants, Colonel Roosevelt and I sat together resting in the shade of an acacia. We were alone in the heart of Africa and he talked to me of his wife and children at home. He had not seen any one from the United States, excepting the members of his own party, for a good many months, while I was fresh from the States, fresh from Oyster Bay. In those three hours I got a new vision and a new view of Theodore Roosevelt. It was then that I learned to love him. It was then that I realized that I could follow him anywhere; even if I doubted, I would follow him because I knew his sincerity, his integrity, and the bigness of the man. Since his death those qualities that I caught a glimpse of in Africa under the acacia tree—those qualities that made Theodore Roosevelt what he was—I have seen more fully and completely as they are reflected in his children and his children's children.
Our remaining days together were comparatively uneventful. A grass fire, fortunately not one of the most persistent, came down upon our camp that night and all hands fell to and fought it. Lions roared about our camp all night, too. At daybreak the Colonel and I went out in our pyjamas, hoping to find them. We saw no lions, but on our return, as we approached the carcass of one of our elephants, a hyena stuck his head up on the other side. The Colonel fired but the shot was unnecessary. The hyena was trapped. In his greediness, he had rammed his head through a wall of muscle in the elephant's stomach and could not get it out. The hair was worn thin on his neck by his efforts to escape, but he was literally tied up in the thing he loved best.
A day or two later Roosevelt went on to Uganda and down the Nile.
CHAPTER IX INVENTIONS AND WARFARE
Soon after my return from my 1905 trip to Africa I got my attention turned away from taxidermy for a little while in a curious fashion. The Field Museum was still in the old Columbian Exposition Building in which it had started. The outside of this stucco building kept peeling so that it had a very disreputable appearance. The Park Department protested to the museum authorities. I happened to be in the museum one day when one of the officers had this on his mind and he said:
"Akeley, how are we going to get the outside of this building respectable at a reasonable cost?"
I got to thinking about it. In the many experiments of one kind and another that I had tried in working out methods for manikin making I had among other things used a compressed air spray. It occurred to me that it would be possible to make an apparatus on this principle that would spray a very liquid concrete on to the side of a building. I set to work and rigged up a somewhat crude apparatus and set it up outside the museum building. It was not a finished piece of mechanism and it had the further disadvantage of having its compressed air come quite a long way in a hose. Nevertheless it worked, and the old building was repaired with this apparatus. The Field Museum never used the cement gun any more but some friends came along and offered to put money enough behind the idea to perfect, manufacture, and sell it. As with all such things the first money went and then a second like amount, but in the end the cement gun succeeded, and during the war it, among other things, was used to make the concrete ships. This occupied most of my time between 1907 and 1909. In fact, I drove the first motorized cement gun down to the house of its chief financial backer on Long Island in 1909, and went back to New York to go again to Africa.
As I am no longer financially interested in the cement gun, I may say with pride that there are now approximately 1,250 machines in use, not only in the United States, but also in the principal foreign countries. In addition to the use for which it was originally designed, that of restoring masonry and concrete structures, many other important purposes are now served by this mechanism. In coal mines it is being used to keep slate roofs from falling and to fireproof the timbers. Irrigation ditches and reservoirs are being lined and dams are being faced and protected against the destructive action of water and frost by this method. In tunnel construction, a lining put in with the cement gun prevents falls and insures an absolute sealing. It protects steel, protects piles against teredo and fire, protects structures against acid, restores boiler settings and preserves them from further action of the heat, rebuilds baffle walls, makes economical floor and roof slabs, and is being used extensively in putting up walls of buildings that are permanent and fireproof.
My next trip to Africa in 1909 also served to develop another activity besides taxidermy. One of the principal objects of this trip was to get moving pictures of the Nandi spearing lions. However, I found that you can't stage a native lion hunt with any certainty, for neither the lion nor the native, once the action begins, pays any attention to the movie director. In order to have even a fair chance of following the action with a camera you need one that you can aim up, down, or in any direction with about the same ease that you can point a pistol. There were no movie cameras like this, and after failing to get pictures of several lions I determined not to go to Africa again until I had one.
When I got home I set to work on the problem and after much experimentation completed a working model that bore no likeness to the conventional motion-picture apparatus. To one familiar with the old types of camera the Akeley resembled a machine gun quite as much as it resembled a camera. During the war I used to say that the boys who operated it would be well protected and Photoplay in January, 1919, related a story of the American advance in France which bore out my opinion. While setting up the machine to make some shots in a still-burning and newly occupied village, a young lieutenant was confronted suddenly by seven Germans. Mistaking his formidable film apparatus for a new type of Yankee machine gun, they threw up their hands and surrendered. The story is probably all the better because its truth is doubtful.
Since its perfection the Akeley camera has been carried into many of the far-away corners of the globe by museum expeditions and explorers. The Katmai Expedition of the National Geographic Society, the Mulford Biological Expedition to the Amazon Basin, the Third Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, the MacMillan Arctic Association, and the British Guiana Tropical Research Station at Kartabo under the direction of William Beebe, are some of those which have been equipped with Akeleys. In taking "Nanook of the North," the picture made for popular distribution by the Revillon Frères Arctic Expedition, Mr. Flaherty used two of my cameras. Martin Johnson, whose motion pictures of the South Sea Islands and of Africa have won him renown as a "camera hunter," is planning to include three in the equipment for his next African expedition. To a degree at least, the camera is accomplishing the purpose for which it was designed.
While I had little idea at first that this camera would fill any other needs than my own, as it has been perfected it has proved its practicability for general use. The fundamental difference between the Akeley motion-picture camera and the others is a panoramic device which enables one to swing it all about, much as one would swing a swivel gun, following the natural line of vision. Thus instead of having to manipulate two cranks with the left hand, one to tilt the camera and the other to move it horizontally, the operator by means of a single control secures a steady movement which may be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal, and which enables him to keep a moving object always in the centre of the field. This flexibility especially adapts the camera not only for wild animal photography, but also for studio work, where an erratic follow-up is to be accomplished, and for news reel photography. It was this advantage, combined with another special qualification, the freer use of the telephoto lens—which brings a distant object into the foreground on the screen—which made possible a successful picture of the Man-o'-War race and the Dempsey-Carpentier prize fight. Anthropologists have found the telephoto lens useful in making motion pictures of natives of uncivilized countries without their knowledge. Because of the difficulty of securing the proper lighting in the woods, I had paid particular attention to the shutter so that as perfected the shutter admits thirty per cent. more light than the usual camera shutter. This characteristic also has commended the camera to general use. In out-of-door photography on a dark day as well as in the studio, where the lighting is one of the greatest items of expense, its advantage is obvious. Tom Mix and Douglas Fairbanks are both making extensive use of the camera now and a recent feature directed by Lawrence Trimble was made with it.
I was working on the camera, modelling a little and mounting the elephant group, when the war came on us. That meant a call for every man's energy and brains. I was keen to do something, but there popped into my head an old unfortunate phrase that had long held lodgment there. "Nothing but a taxidermist." That was the sentiment of an editorial published in the Youth's Companion, a magazine which was almost my Bible, some fifty years ago. As a youngster I always had to combat the feeling that taxidermy was of no importance, both on my own part, when I was not completely lost in the joy of my work, and also on the part of those about me. But, inasmuch as it had been the advertisements of books on taxidermy in the Companion that had given me my first encouragement, I felt a particular resentment toward a magazine which would so betray its advertisers and its readers.
My conviction that museum exhibition is playing an important part in modern education has long since satisfied me that the work which I have chosen as mine is worth while, but all through my experiences at Ward's and in Milwaukee the doubt persisted. Was I not wasting my life on something that did not count? And, needless to say, my own doubt was deepened by the indifference of others.
With the war came the cessation of all normal life. An occupation popularly considered as unessential as mine ought to stop among the first. Anyway, I had to get into it. The only way to be happy was to get into it, but there was something rather ridiculous about the idea that an African naturalist and a "good-for-nothing taxidermist" could be of much service in wartime. At first it did not strike me—or any one else, for that matter—that the principles I had worked out for taxidermy, for the cement gun, and for the camera might be applied to the mechanical devices of warfare.
But work began with an order from the Government for a lot of Akeley cameras. A call from the Signal Corps of the War Department asking me to bring them down took me to Washington shortly after war was declared, with the result that I accepted a contract whereby the entire output of the camera shop was turned over to the United States Government.
Soon after I became a Specialist on Mechanical Devices and Optical Equipment in the Division of Investigation, Research, and Development of the Engineer Corps. My chief was Major O. B. Zimmerman, who thirty years before had been my student in Milwaukee. He had wanted to become a taxidermist, but in those days taxidermy seemed a mighty poor game and I did my best to dissuade him from any such mad career. His wisdom in following my advice is proved by the fact that when the war broke out he was in Belgium as one of the leading engineers for the International Harvester Company. I had a desk in Major Zimmerman's office, but my actual work was done in the camera shop in New York, in the American Museum of Natural History, and in various laboratories. At least once each week I rode back and forth from Washington to New York. My duties were those of a consulting engineer, but they were much varied, for we had several things under way all the time. Wherever a problem, mechanical or otherwise, arose, I went to look things over, and if I had any suggestions to make, I was assigned to that job. I spent several weeks at Brunswick, Georgia, where concrete ships were under construction and where my experiments with the cement gun served me in good stead. The fact that the concrete ships were not successful was not the fault of the concrete gun. It did its part.
After devoting a good deal of thought to searchlights and searchlight mirrors, I helped in lightening the apparatus materially and developed a device for searchlight control. This control, which involves the same rotary principle as my motion-picture camera, enables the operator standing at the end of an arm to direct the rays of the light toward any object in the sky and to keep it in view by following up its movements with the light. It is one of several devices developed at that time which have since been patented by the Government in my name.
Roosevelt once asked me why I declined to wear the major's uniform offered to me. "Well, Colonel Roosevelt," I replied unhesitatingly, for I had my good reason for so doing, "if I were wearing a uniform, I could not go to my colonel and tell him he was a damn fool."
Roosevelt laughed heartily.
"You are quite right," he replied. "Stick to it!"
As a civilian I went about wherever work was going on, talked freely with the workmen, heard them discuss their mechanical difficulties, and got from them their ideas for improvements. As a civilian I was also free to carry those ideas wherever they could do the most good. If I had had to comply with the red tape of army officialdom, not only would my own work have been handicapped, but also the ideas and troubles of the private actually handling the machine might never have gone past his sergeant. When the armistice was signed, I was planning to go overseas to observe the difficulties that the men were having at the front, so that I narrowly escaped the khaki.
Whatever my services may or may not have contributed to the defeat of the Germans, at least I have escaped the accusation directed toward many a dollar-a-year man of being overpaid. The usual dollar-a-year man, though the dollar was never paid him, received his expenses, while my contract called for a salary of ten dollars per day without expense money. My original agreement was to include expenses, but some slip was made which always seemed too difficult to correct. This arrangement made my loss even greater than that of those men who received the fabulous amount prescribed by law, for needless to say my weekly stipend was inadequate to cover the one item of railway fare. Still one had to serve to be happy in those days, no matter what the cost. Inasmuch as the Akeley camera also lost heavily on war contracts, I have had the additional satisfaction of escaping governmental investigation on the score of excess profits. After it was all over, I ungrudgingly paid the normal tax on the money I had lost, and I would not swap those months with the Government for anything else in my experience.
Since the war, with the intermission of my trip to Africa for gorillas in 1921, I have stuck to my sculpture and taxidermy except for various lecture trips.
A man who is fortunate enough to have witnessed the beauties of the African forests and who has come to know the forest's inhabitants and their ways, is almost sure to be called upon to share his good fortune with others, and I have done a good deal of lecturing. My first lectures were to be given at Fullerton Hall in Chicago for the Field Museum shortly after my return from Africa in 1906. Fortunately, I had occasion to deliver a lecture in South Chicago a few days before my first museum lecture was scheduled. Otherwise, I probably would have dropped dead when I faced the Fullerton Hall audience. I think the thing that saved me from running then was the fact that I had a small audience behind a screen at the rear of the platform and knew that it blocked my escape.
I had tried to prepare a lecture, had realized that that was impossible, and had finally decided to show my audience the pictures and make whatever comments they brought to mind. Then, when I got on the platform without the vaguest idea of what I was going to say first, it suddenly occurred to me that I was no worse frightened than I had been one day on the banks of the Tana when I suddenly found myself, with nothing but a camera in my hand, charged by a rhinoceros. Apparently I had no escape except a thirty-foot drop into the crocodile-infested waters of the Tana below. But the rhino stopped ten or fifteen feet from me, gazed at me stupidly, and settled down with the apparent intention of going to sleep. I took hope when the thought crossed my mind that this new terror might settle down with the same intention as the old rhino, leaving me to my own resources quite unharmed. So I told my audience the story of the rhino, the ice was broken, and I fear I nearly talked them to death before the lecture ended.
Since that time I have talked far and wide. I hope I have given some pleasure and entertainment to the good people who have listened. I hope also that I have created in the minds of my hearers a background that will help the art of taxidermy and its practitioners in the future. More especially I hope that I have contributed something to the study of natural history and that I have stimulated a decent attitude toward wild life.
CHAPTER X A TAXIDERMIST AS A SCULPTOR
After I had got over my first youthful enthusiasm about taxidermy and had seen how it was practiced, I recognized that, as it then was, it was not an art—that it was in fact little better than a trade. I had moments when I felt like abandoning the whole thing. I used to study sculpture, particularly animal sculpture, in relation to taxidermy. I remember that when I was twenty-eight years old I came to New York and spent hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the itch in my hands and brain to become a sculptor. But one thing restrained me. I had enough common sense to know that while I might become a sculptor and even a fairly successful one I could never contribute to that art what I could contribute to taxidermy. I believed then that I could start taxidermy on the road from a trade to an art. So I turned away from sculpture. Nevertheless, the idea of being a sculptor kept running in my mind. And whenever it did, it depressed me. Finally, I gave up going near the Art Museum altogether.
But the discipline that I inflicted on myself I could not inflict on other people. I had to make little clay groups as studies and models for the animal groups that I was mounting. Many people who saw these clay models would suggest that I have them cast in bronze. If I had not still had the fever of sculpturing in my blood, these remarks would not have stuck in my mind, but as it was they did. So this idea became familiar to me.
However, it was a good many years after it first became a regular inhabitant of my mind that I put it in practice, for along with it had grown up the notion that I should not merely turn models into bronzes but that I would wait until I had a real contribution. Real contributions did not seem abundant and so year after year went by with no bronzes made.
Then in 1912 a situation arose which I thought forced sculpture upon me. I had a dream of a great African Hall of forty groups of animals with all the ingenuity, all the technique, and all the art the country could boast of. By that time I had come to feel that taxidermy could be a great art. I felt that a beautifully modelled animal required at least as much knowledge, taste, skill, and technique as a bronze or stone animal. But I knew that this conception was not common. A taxidermist couldn't talk art. Especially he couldn't talk art convincingly to the kind of men who supported great museum ventures. It was a recognized thing to support art. Taxidermy had no such tradition. The only way out of the dilemma that I could see was to prove that whether or not taxidermy was an art at least a taxidermist could be an artist.
It was my desire to make an appeal to those men who support art financially that stimulated my first work in bronze. I felt that we might expect the aid of these men in such undertakings as the African Hall if I could once get them to see the artistic possibilities of taxidermy. The American Museum of Natural History already had friends who were interested in art, but it had not occurred to them that the Museum's animal groups had any relation to sculpture because these groups had not been presented in the accepted materials of sculpture such as stone and bronze. Through the medium of bronze I hoped to lead them to see in the taxidermist's productions something worthy of their support as patrons of art.
So I set to work to do a bronze that would prove that a taxidermist could be an artist. Years before I had heard the story of an elephant bull wounded by hunters, whose two comrades had ranged themselves one on either side and helped him to escape. I have told the story in detail elsewhere. It always appealed to me as showing a spirit in the elephant that I should like to record. I set to work on The Wounded Comrade. It was a part of the story of the elephant, a theme that always aroused enthusiasm in me. And I felt it was a labour of love for African Hall. It was pleasant work. It went well. The thing seemed to take shape naturally. It was soon finished. Then came its test.
Mr. J. P. Morgan came to the Museum to talk over African Hall. I explained the whole plan, showed him the model of the hall and incidentally The Wounded Comrade. He liked the scheme. As he left he said that he was convinced. "And," he added, "I don't mind saying," pointing to the little bronze of The Wounded Comrade, "that it is what did it." I shall always be indebted to Mr. Morgan for that sentence. It gave me an extraordinary amount of contentment. A. Phimister Proctor, the animal sculptor, also came to see The Wounded Comrade in my studio. He spent a long time in silence, carefully studying the little model. I knew that Mr. Proctor never gave praise lightly, but that he never hesitated to express admiration when in his opinion the work had merit. I felt that much depended on his praise or blame. And when he finally spoke, his enthusiasm was keen. I did not realize how keen until an order came for a bronze of The Wounded Comrade from Mr. George Pratt, a friend of Mr. Proctor, whose only impression of the piece was gained from Mr. Proctor's description. Throughout my career as a sculptor nothing has meant so much to me as the encouragement and appreciation of the man who first declared The Wounded Comrade a success.
In recognition of this first bronze, I was made a member of the American Sculpture Society. Inasmuch as such a cordial reception was accorded to The Wounded Comrade by artists as well as by the general public, I felt justified in devoting more attention to sculpture. I felt that I had many stories to tell about elephants and that I could tell these stories more effectively by the work of my hands than in any other way. One chapter is told in the group of mounted elephants now in the American Museum of Natural History. Many others can be told in small bronzes. I want to tell these stories, and in the time I have on earth I could not record many elephant stories in taxidermy, for one group really done well takes years—but I can tell these stories in bronze.
After The Wounded Comrade had made a success, many of my friends came to my studio (where I did taxidermy) in the Museum and advised me to keep on making bronzes. "Here's your opportunity," they said. "You have a market. Fortune favours you. Don't neglect the fickle lady."
But I did not follow this advice and make many bronzes. It may have been because I was lazy or busy with other things, but I like to think that it was because I had decided not to make bronzes unless I had a real story to tell. I wanted to do justice if I could to my friend, the elephant. And, also, I wanted to do what I did well enough to prove that a taxidermist could be, as he ought to be, an artist.
So I progressed with sculpture very slowly. In the nine years since The Wounded Comrade was made I have made only six bronzes.
In my second piece I have pictured a scene that will always remain very vivid in my memory—a charging herd. I had been following a large herd of elephants, two hundred or more, in the Budongo Forest for two days. They had broken up into small bands and the particular band which I was following had got near the edge of the forest. Nevertheless, I was having a hard time to get a look at them. Finally, I had recourse to the somewhat hazardous experiment of beating on the tree trunks with sticks in the hope of scaring them into the open. This was successful. I followed them, but the grass was so high that I couldn't see over it. I was in the act of climbing a tree for better observation when they came rolling along, grunting and squealing, back to the forest. They passed me within twenty-five yards. They were irritated sufficiently to convince me that it was time to let them alone and go to camp. I started along the edge of the forest. As I was pushing along through the high grass a few minutes later I heard another band coming out of the forest. As I couldn't see over the grass I ran to an ant-hill. This ant-hill was six or seven feet high. As I got on top it I saw, about one hundred yards away, eleven great animals pass one by one over a little rise. I had as good a view of this majestic march as a man will ever get. When they had gone two or three hundred yards, they suddenly stopped. They had got down wind and had smelt me. Then they began to talk. There was grumbling and rumbling. Conversation of this kind meant trouble. It was an old story to me. And trouble came. They came back squealing and roaring. I had to wait the first two hundred yards of the charge without shooting for they were behind the ridge. Then they loomed up over it, led by an old cow with her trunk up and her great ears cocked. As the leader lost the scent and slowed a little, they jammed into a solid mass. Then the old cow saw me perched on my ant-hill. Changing course, they came toward me, falling apart as they came.
That picture stays in my memory. And as I saw it I have put it in bronze. The bronze shows the first seven elephants of the herd jammed together in that moment of hesitation just after the old cow saw me and turned in my direction. Her trunk is curled up tight, her ears back and all cleared for action. The elephant on her left is following her example. The others still have their trunks extended, feeling for my scent.
The next elephant story that I told in bronze grew out of another experience of mine. I was following a herd of elephants in bush country. I was some distance behind them and they knew nothing of me. Suddenly I heard a great commotion, squealing and beating of bushes. A few minutes later the herd moved on. When I came to the spot where the commotion had been I found the bushes all trampled down and, at one side of the area of destruction in the sand, the remains of a big green tree snake that had been stamped into the ground. I followed after the herd but was soon deflected from the main body by noises in a little glade off at one side of the main trail. I went to the edge of this glade and saw a young bull elephant smashing about in the forest alone, breaking down trees, squealing, and in general acting like a small boy who had been stung on the nose by a hornet. After a while he quieted down and went along after the others, grumbling and protesting. I came to the conclusion that while feeding in the bushes he had thrust his trunk too close to a poisonous tree snake and had been stung; that he had beaten the snake on to the ground with his trunk and stamped it to death. In the bronze I pictured the snake alive on the ground and the elephant in the act of trampling it to death.
In addition to these elephant bronzes I have done one other bronze of a combat between a lion and a buffalo, and I have two other elephant subjects started in clay. I have never seen a lion and a buffalo fight nor do I know of any one else who has. But I know at least two authentic records of the dead bodies of a lion and a buffalo together—mute evidence of a fight to a finish and death to both. And I have seen dead buffalo carcasses from which one could tell pretty well how the lion had killed his prey. The lion tries to throw the buffalo in much the same manner as a cowboy "bulldogs" a steer—that is, he throws him by jerking the buffalo's head down. In the bronze I have represented the lion as having "bulldogged" the buffalo by catching his nose with a front paw and bending his head to the ground in his effort to throw him. The buffalo has saved himself from a fall by bracing himself with one front foot and the scene is set for a battle royal unless the lion bolts.
One of the bronzes that will soon be published records a scene that will always be a pleasant memory to me. I was watching an elephant herd on the march through an open grass country. The elders moved along sedately enough, but at one side of the herd several babies were squealing and pushing each other—having a fine time at play. Sometimes they were ahead of the herd and sometimes behind it, but all the time in a very gay mood. There seemed to be something that they were playing with, but the grass was too high and I was too far off to make out what it was. However, where the trail of the herd finally went into the forest, I discovered the babies' plaything. It was a big dirt ball about two and one half feet in diameter, a fragment of an ant-hill. These ant-hills are made of a mixture of saliva and sand which when baked by the African sun gets almost as hard as brick. A steel-jacketed bullet will be cut all to pieces before penetrating the surface of an ant-hill at all. In some way the baby elephants had got a fragment of an old ant-hill that was nearly round and this they had used as a ball to roll along in their play. It is not so surprising, therefore, that an elephant can be made to do tricks with a ball in the circus!
I am putting the youngsters and their ball into bronze for one group.
The other is called At Bay and represents an elephant with trunk up standing at bay with his hind leg tied to a great log.
One of the native's methods of hunting elephants is to dig a pit in an elephant path, cover the pit over with a "basket"—a kind of trap—put a noose on top of the "basket," and camouflage the whole with grass and leaves. When the trap is set there is no evidence of anything but a plain and safe path. The noose is one end of a twisted rawhide cable, the other end of which is fastened to a heavy log. If the trap works, the elephant steps on the "basket" and his leg goes through. The "basket" sticks to his leg and holds the noose until the elephant moves enough to draw it tight. Then he begins to drag the heavy log through the forest. He cannot go far or fast and he leaves an unmistakable trail. He is a high-strung, nervous creature and when after a few days of trekking about with his tormenting log the natives come up with him, he is weak from lack of food and water. There he stands at bay, as I have pictured him in bronze. But his defiance is of slight avail, for there is little to be feared from his charge. It is comparatively simple for his enemies to finish him off with poisoned spears and arrows.
In my bronzes I am telling bit by bit my stories of African animals. A series of three groups telling the story of native lion-spearing will be finished by the time this book is out and will ultimately take its place in Roosevelt African Hall. In 1911 I got together a band of Nandi spearmen on the Uasin Gishu Plateau to hunt lions. I wanted a motion picture of native lion-spearing, the most dramatic thing Africa has to offer. In twenty days the Nandi had speared ten lions and five leopards. My moving pictures were not very satisfactory but I did get two other very diverse results from the trip—the determination to invent a better camera for wild-animal photography, and the idea for these lion-spearing groups.
The first two groups represent three native spearmen in the act of facing the charge of a lion and lioness, the lioness characteristically leading the charge. The third group, a sequel to the other two, shows the three hunters chanting a requiem over the dead lion.
I have done another lion—one that interests me more than all the others. And this piece of sculpture came about in this way. When I met President Roosevelt at the White House on my return from Africa in 1906, I was impressed with the power and humanity of the man as all were who knew him. One of the great experiences of my life was that quiet talk with Theodore Roosevelt in the shade of the acacia tree on the Uasin Gishu Plateau when I came to know the man and to love him. After our return from Africa, he was constantly reminding me of my unwritten African book and saying that he wanted to write a foreword and a chapter for that book. But I had no such hankering to write as I had to do sculpture, and so I put it off. At last, however, in 1919, after the war was over, I sat down one day and started to write him a letter to say that I would begin the book. I had written the two words, "Dear Colonel," when the telephone rang. It was my friend, George H. Sherwood, the executive secretary of the Museum.
"Ake," he said, "I have bad news for you. Colonel Roosevelt died this morning."
For me the bottom dropped out of everything. From that time until I got back from the funeral I did nothing. When I returned from the funeral I was terribly depressed. I had to find expression. I found it most naturally in modelling. I set to work on a lion. I meant to make it symbolic of Roosevelt, of his strength, courage, fearlessness—of his kingly qualities in the old-fashioned sense. And this modelling afforded me great comfort and relief. I worked on it day after day. Taxidermy, groups and bronzes, were all forgotten. While I was so engaged one day an old friend of mine, James Brite, an architect, called me on the telephone. I asked him if he wouldn't come up and design a pedestal for the lion. He came up not only that day but many others. Neither of us knew just what we were going to do with it when it was finished. I had a vague idea of casting it, making one bronze for Mrs. Roosevelt, and destroying the model.
We were still working when one day Archie Roosevelt came in. I showed the lion to him.
"None of us want to see statues of Father," he said. "They can't make Father," and as he put his arms about the pedestal of the lion, "but this is Father. Of course, you do not know it, but among ourselves we boys always called him the 'Old Lion' and when he died I cabled the others in France, 'The Old Lion is dead.'"
Other members of the Roosevelt family and friends of the Colonel came, and what they said encouraged us. I made one model after another, trying to blend the majesty of a real lion with the symbolism. Then one day when Mr. Brite and I were in the studio a man came in whom we had never seen before. After some desultory conversation he asked how large the lion was to be. We said we didn't know. "How big ought it to be?" we asked. "It ought to be as big as possible and it ought to be placed in Washington," was his reply.
Brite pointed out that so large a lion would necessitate a pedestal that would nearly cut him off from view from the ground. And then developed the idea of placing the lion in a great bowl.
That was the beginning of a long period of work on a great plan for a Roosevelt Memorial.
All this was originated without thought of the Roosevelt Memorial Society which had raised a million and a half dollars among other things to erect a monument to Roosevelt. The natural thing to do was to submit this offering of ours to that society. We have done this, and it will be judged in competition with the designs of others. If it should be chosen it will be because no other competitor, though they all be better sculptors, can possibly have the same deep desire as I to perpetuate the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt and to do him all honour.
CHAPTER XI HUNTING GORILLAS IN CENTRAL AFRICA
In 1910 I was in British East Africa collecting specimens for the group of elephants recently completed in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. My plan at that time was to leave the region of snow-capped Mt. Kenia when I had finished making my elephant studies, and to go into German East Africa, as it was then, in an endeavour to get specimens for a group of gorillas to be mounted for the Museum. I had obtained the proper papers from the German authorities, and I had funds for the purpose. Nevertheless, I had to abandon the plan at that time because an elephant caught me unawares and mauled me sufficiently to prevent my carrying out my project.
But the gorilla group remained as an interesting prospect ahead, and I read eagerly any reports which came to my knowledge of hunters or scientists who had seen or killed any of these animals. Most gorillas reported since their original discovery had been reported from nearer the west coast of Africa than the region which I had intended to explore for them, but I had heard of one instance of a gorilla in German East Africa. The story was of a German who had tried to catch a grown gorilla in a net. He had succeeded in getting the net over the animal and then the animal had succeeded in tearing his way out of the net and killing the man. Whether this story was true or not I do not know. Before I left Africa, in 1911, I heard that a man named Grauer had gone into the country where I had intended going and that he had come out through Nairobi with eight gorilla skins. Altogether there came to me considerable corroboration of my belief that there were gorillas in the Lake Kivu country of Central Africa, and my intention to go there and collect the material for a group remained constant although, through the period of the war, inactive.
It came to life in 1920. One night I was expounding the beauties of Africa to my friend Mr. H. E. Bradley when he turned to Mrs. Bradley and said, "Let's take him at his word and spend a year in Africa." Mrs. Bradley asked what they should do with their five-year-old daughter. Nothing pleased me more than to assure them that an expedition to Central Africa was entirely safe and practicable for women and children, and so an expedition was agreed upon. Years before, when she was a child, I had promised the niece of a friend of mine, Miss Martha Miller, to take her to Africa. I had never been allowed to forget the promise. Now the time for fulfillment had come. So the party was formed of these two ladies, Bradley, the five-year-old child, Miss Priscilla Hall, and me. Miss Hall had agreed to look after the youngster while the others hunted. Not long afterward it was definitely decided that the expedition was to be a gorilla expedition. I received a letter from an Englishman, Mr. C. D. Foster, who had shot a male and female gorilla and caught a baby in the country I had in mind. That led us to base our plans on gorillas alone, and it was a gorilla expedition, although Miss Miller killed an elephant the first time she shot at anything in Africa and both she and Mrs. Bradley killed lions.
To me the gorilla made a much more interesting quarry than lions, elephants, or any of the other African game, for the gorilla is still comparatively little known. Not many people have shot gorillas and almost none have studied them in their native habitat. The gorilla is one of the most remarkable and least known large animals in the world, and when is added to that the fact that he is the nearest to man of any other member of the animal kingdom, a gorilla expedition acquires a tremendous fascination.
An Englishman named Battell—a captive of the Portuguese of Angola—in 1590 described an animal which in all probability was the gorilla. Vague stories from other sources appeared in travellers' accounts, but no real description of the gorilla came to Europe or America until December, 1847, when Dr. Thomas S. Savage, a missionary, published a paper in the Boston Journal of Natural History. Doctor Savage was detained in April of that year at a mission on the Gaboon River in West Africa and there made his discovery. He did not see a live gorilla himself, but from skulls and information brought him by natives, made a rather remarkable description of the animals, part of which is as follows:
Its height is above five feet, it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders, thickly covered with coarse black hair, which is said to be similar in its arrangement to that of the Engé-eco (the chimpanzee). With age it becomes gray, which fact has given rise to the report that both animals are seen of different colors....
Their gait is shuffling, the motion of the body, which is never upright as in man, but bent forward, is somewhat rolling, or from side to side. The arms being longer than those of the chimpanzee it does not stoop as much in walking; like that animal it makes progression by thrusting its arms forward, resting the hands on the ground and then giving the body a half jumping, half swinging motion between them. In this act it is said not to flex the fingers as does the chimpanzee, resting on the knuckles, but to extend them, thus making a fulcrum of the hand. When it assumes the walking posture to which it is said to be much inclined, it balances its huge body by flexing the arms upward. They live in bands, but are not so numerous as the chimpanzees; the females generally exceed the other sex in number. My informants all agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in a band; that when the young males grow up a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community. The silly stories about their carrying off women from the native towns, and vanquishing the elephants, related by voyagers and widely copied into books, are unhesitatingly denied. They have been averred of the chimpanzee, but this is still more preposterous. They probably had their origin in the marvelous accounts given by the natives, of the Engé-ena, to credulous traders.
Their dwellings, if they may be so called, are similar to those of the chimpanzee, consisting simply of a few sticks and leafy branches supported by the crotches and limbs of trees; they afford no shelter, and are occupied only at night.
They are exceedingly ferocious, and always offensive in their habits, never running from man as does the chimpanzee. They are objects of terror to the natives, and are never encountered by them except on the defensive. The few that have been captured were killed by elephant hunters and native traders as they came suddenly upon them while passing through the forests.
It is said that when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell that resounds far and wide through the forest, something like kh-ah! kh-ah! prolonged and shrill. His enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp is contracted upon the brow, presenting an aspect of indescribable ferocity. The females and young at the first cry quickly disappear; he then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession. The hunter awaits his approach with his gun extended: if his aim is not sure he permits the animal to grasp the barrel and as he carries it to his mouth (which is his habit) he fires; should the gun fail to go off, the barrel (that of an ordinary musket, which is thin) is crushed between his teeth, and the encounter soon proves fatal to the hunter.
The killing of an Engé-ena (gorilla) is considered an act of great skill and courage, and brings the victor signal honor. A slave to an Mpongwe man, from an interior tribe, killed the male and female whose bones are the origin of this article. On one occasion he had succeeded in killing an elephant, and returning home met a male Engé-ena, and being a good marksman he soon brought him to the ground. He had not proceeded far before the female was observed, which he also killed. This act, unheard of before, was considered almost superhuman. The man's freedom was immediately granted to him, and his name proclaimed abroad as the prince of hunters.
Eight years afterward the first white man killed a gorilla. In 1855 Paul Du Chaillu, a French-American, went to West Africa after gorillas. To our party, with the intention of not only shooting gorillas but of studying them and taking moving pictures of them, the narrative of this intrepid little hunter had particular fascination.
On the day that Du Chaillu saw the first gorilla ever seen by a white man his black and savage attendants had assuaged a hunger that beset the party by eating a snake. This was more than Du Chaillu could do. His account[1] reads:
When the snake was eaten, and I, the only empty-stomached individual of the company, had sufficiently reflected on the disadvantages of being bred in a Christian country, we began to look about the ruins of the village near which we sat. A degenerate kind of sugar-cane was growing on the very spot where the houses had formerly stood, and I made haste to pluck some of this and chew it for the little sweetness it had. But, as we were plucking, my men perceived what instantly threw us all into the greatest excitement. Here and there the cane was beaten down, torn up by the roots, and lying about in fragments which had evidently been chewed.
I knew that these were fresh tracks of the gorilla, and joy filled my heart. My men looked at each other in silence, and muttered Nguyla, which is as much as to say in Mpongwe, Ngina, or, as we say, gorilla.
We followed these traces, and presently came to the footprints of the so-long-desired animal. It was the first time I had ever seen these footprints, and my sensations were indescribable. Here was I now, it seemed, on the point of meeting face to face that monster of whose ferocity, strength, and cunning the natives had told me so much; an animal scarce known to the civilized world, and which no white man before had hunted. My heart beat till I feared its loud pulsations would alarm the gorilla, and my feelings were really excited to a painful degree.
By the tracks it was easy to know that there must have been several gorillas in company. We prepared at once to follow them.
The women were terrified, poor things, and we left them a good escort of two or three men to take care of them and reassure them. Then the rest of us looked once more carefully at our guns—for the gorilla gives you no time to reload, and woe to him whom he attacks! We were armed to the teeth. My men were remarkably silent, for they were going on an expedition of more than usual risk; for the male gorilla is literally the king of the African forest. He and the crested lion of Mount Atlas are the two fiercest and strongest beasts of this continent. The lion of South Africa cannot compare with either for strength or courage.
As we left the camp, the men and women left behind crowded together, with fear written on their faces. Miengai, Makinda, and Ngolai set out in one party, and myself and Yeava formed another, for the hunt. We determined to keep near each other, that in emergency we might be at hand to help each other. And for the rest, silence and a sure aim were the only cautions to be given.
As we followed the tracks we could easily see that there were four or five of them; though none appeared very large. We saw where they had run along on all fours, the usual mode of progression of these animals, and where from time to time they had seated themselves to chew the canes they had borne off. The chase began to be very exciting.
We had agreed to return to the women and their guards, and consult upon final operations, when we should have discovered their probable course; and this was now done. To make sure of not alarming our prey, we moved the whole party forward a little way to where some leafy huts, built by passing traders, served for shelter and concealment. And having here bestowed the women—who have a lively fear of the terrible gorilla, in consequence of various stories current among the tribes, of women having been carried off into the woods by the fierce animal—we prepared once more to set out in chase, this time hopeful to catch a shot.
Looking once more to our guns, we started off. I confess that I never was more excited in my life. For years I had heard of the terrible roar of the gorilla, of its vast strength, its fierce courage if, unhappily, only wounded by a shot. I knew that we were about to pit ourselves against an animal which even the tiger of these mountains fears and which, perhaps, has driven the lion out of this territory; for the king of beasts, so numerous elsewhere in Africa, is never met in the land of the gorilla. Thus it was with no little emotion that I now turned again toward the prize at which I had been hoping for years to get a shot.
We descended a hill, crossed a stream on a fallen log, and presently approached some huge boulders of granite. Alongside of this granite block lay an immense dead tree, and about this we saw many evidences of the very recent presence of the gorillas.
Our approach was very cautious. We were divided into two parties. Makinda led one and I the other. We were to surround the granite block behind which Makinda supposed the gorillas to be hiding. Guns cocked and in hand, we advanced through the dense wood, which cast a gloom even in midday over the whole scene. I looked at my men, and saw plainly that they were in even greater excitement than myself.
Slowly we pressed on through the dense brush, fearing almost to breathe for fear of alarming the beasts. Makinda was to go to the right of the rock, while I took the left. Unfortunately, he circled it at too great a distance. The watchful animal saw him. Suddenly I was startled by a strange, discordant, half human, devilish cry, and beheld four young gorillas running toward the deep forests. We fired, but hit nothing. Then we rushed on in pursuit; but they knew the woods better than we. Once I caught a glimpse of one of the animals again, but an intervening tree spoiled my mark, and I did not fire. We ran till we were exhausted, but in vain. The alert beasts made good their escape. When we could pursue no more, we returned slowly to our camp, where the women were anxiously expecting us.
I protest I felt almost like a murderer when I saw the gorillas this first time. As they ran—on their hind legs—they looked fearfully like hairy men; their heads down, their bodies inclined forward, their whole appearance like men running for their lives. Take with this their awful cry, which, fierce and animal as it is, has yet something human in its discordance, and you will cease to wonder that the natives have the wildest superstitions about these "wild men of the woods."