MR. AKELEY AND THE LEOPARD HE KILLED BARE HANDED
A LEOPARD SPEARED BY THE NATIVES
This encounter took place fairly soon after our arrival on my first trip to Africa. I have seen a lot of leopards since and occasionally killed one, but I have taken pains never to attempt it at such close quarters again. In spite of their fighting qualities I have never got to like or respect leopards very much. This is not because of my misadventure; I was hurt much worse by an elephant, but I have great respect and admiration for elephants. I think it is because the leopard has always seemed to me a sneaking kind of animal, and also perhaps because he will eat carrion even down to a dead and diseased hyena. A day or two before my experience with the leopard someone else had shot a hyena near our camp and had left him over night. The next morning the dead hyena was lodged fifteen feet from the ground in the crotch of a tree at some distance from where he was killed. A leopard, very possibly my enemy, had dragged him along the ground and up the tree and placed him there for future use. While such activities cannot increase one's respect for the taste of leopards, they do give convincing evidence of the leopard's strength, for the hyena weighed at least as much as the leopard.
The leopard, like the elephant, is at home in every kind of country in East Africa—on the plains, among the rocky hills, among the bamboo, and in the forest all the way up to timber line on the equatorial mountains. Unlike the lion, the leopard is a solitary beast. Except for a mother with young, I have never seen as many as two leopards together. It is my belief that like the lion they do their hunting at night almost exclusively, and I am quite sure that this is their general habit despite the fact that the only unmistakable evidence of day hunting I ever saw myself in Africa was done by a leopard. I was out one day in some tall grass and came upon the body of a small antelope. As I came up I heard an animal retreat and I thought I recognized a leopard's snarl. The antelope was still warm. It had evidently just been killed and the tracks around it were those of a leopard.
One of the leopard's chief sources of food supply consists of monkeys and baboons. I remember a certain camp we had near the bottom of a cliff. Out of this cliff grew a number of fig trees in which the baboons were accustomed to sleep fairly well out of reach of the leopards. They were, however, not completely immune, and we could hear the leopards at the top of the cliff almost every night, and once in a while the remnants of a baboon testified to the success of the leopard's night prowling. Besides monkeys and baboons, leopards seem inordinately fond of dogs. A pack of dogs like Paul Rainey's can make short work of a leopard, but on the other hand a leopard can make short work of a single dog and seemingly takes great pleasure in doing so. One night in a shack in Nyiri, a settler sat talking to his neighbour, while his dog slept under the table. Suddenly, and quite unannounced, a leopard slipped in through the open door. Confusion reigned supreme for a moment and then the men found themselves on the table. The leopard was under the table killing the dog and somehow in the excitement the door had been closed. One after the other the men fled out of the window, leaving the dog to his fate. A traveller had a similar but more painful experience with a leopard at the Dak Bungalow at Voi. Voi is a station on the Uganda Railroad where there was, and I suppose still is, a railroad hotel of a rather primitive kind known as the Dak Bungalow. One night a man was sleeping in one of the Bungalow rooms and, hearing a commotion outside, he started out to see what it was. As he passed through the open doorway on to the porch he was attacked by the leopard that had evidently come stalking his dogs.
Leopards are not particularly afraid of man. I never knew one to attack a man unprovoked except when caught at such close quarters as the case at Voi, but they prowl around man's habitation without compunction. I had a camp in Somaliland once where the tents were surrounded by two thorn thickets—the inner and outer zareba. A leopard came in one night, killed a sheep, dragged it under the very fly of my tent on the way out, jumped the zareba, and got away. Fifteen years ago, when Nairobi was a very small place, the daughter of one of the government officers went into her room one evening to dress. As she opened the door she heard a noise and looking she noticed the end of a leopard's tail sticking out from under the bed with the tip gently moving from side to side. With great presence of mind the young lady quietly went out and closed the door. Nairobi had many possibilities of thrills in those days. It was about the same time that a gentleman hurrying from town up to the Government House one evening met a lion in the middle of the street to the embarrassment of both parties.
There are some phrases in Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" that put me in mind of the rhinoceros, or "rhino," as everyone calls him in Africa.
"Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die."
But it is stupidity, not duty, that keeps the rhino from reasoning. He is the stupidest old fellow in Africa. I know that many experienced hunters likewise consider him one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. I can't quite agree with this. Of course, if he runs over you not only is it dangerous, but it is also likely to be fatal. It is also true that as soon as he smells man he is likely to start charging around in a most terrifying manner, but the rhino is never cunning like the elephant, nor is his charge accurate like that of a lion, nor is the rhino vindictive like the buffalo or the leopard. Most men's estimates of the relative dangers of African animals are based upon their own experiences. The animals that have mauled them worst or scared them worst they hold most dangerous. I have been mauled by an elephant, chewed by a leopard, and scared half to death a dozen times by lions, so that I have the very firmest convictions about the dangers of these animals. On the other hand, I have twice been caught by rhinos in positions where an elephant, a lion, or a leopard would have had me in no time, and both times the rhinos left me unmolested.
When I first went to Africa I had the same experience as everyone else. Rhinos getting wind of me would charge me and to save myself I'd shoot. I suppose I had stood off twenty of these charges with my rifle before I discovered that if I did not shoot it would not necessarily be fatal. I discovered the fact, of course, quite by accident. I was going along the bank of the Tana River one day with my camera. My gun boys were some distance behind so as not to disturb any animal that might afford a picture. Suddenly I was set all a-quiver by the threshings and snortings of a rhino coming through the bushes in my direction. I very hastily took stock of the situation. There was nothing to climb. Between me and the thicket from which the rhino was coming was about twenty-five feet of open space. Behind me was a 30-foot drop to the crocodile-infested waters of the Tana. The only hope I saw was a bush overhanging the brink which looked as if it might or might not hold me if I swung out on it. I decided to try the bush and let the rhino land in the river, trusting to luck that I wouldn't join him there. The bushes were thrust aside and he came full tilt into the opening where he could see me. Everything was set for the final act. He suddenly stopped with a snort. His head drooped. His eyes almost closed. He looked as if he were going to sleep. The terrible beast had become absolutely ludicrous. While this was going on I felt a poke in my back. I reached behind and took my rifle from the gun boy who had come up with equal celerity and bravery. I drew a bead on the old fellow but I could not shoot. A stupider or more ludicrous looking object I never saw. I began talking to him, but it did not rouse him from his lethargy. There he stood, half asleep and totally oblivious, while I, with the gun half aimed, talked to him about his ugly self. About this time my porters came into hearing on a path behind the rhino. He pricked up his ears and blundered off in that direction. I heard the loads dropping as the porters made for the trees. The rhino charged through the safari and off into the bush.
At another time, somewhat later, three of them charged me when I was sitting down and unarmed. I couldn't rise in time to get away or reach a gun, so I merely continued to sit. This time they didn't stop and doze, but they went by on both sides ten or fifteen feet away. Such a charge was much more pleasing to me and apparently quite as satisfactory to them as one in which they were successful in their attack. These experiences have led me to think that in his blundering charges the rhino has no clear objective, as a lion has, for instance. Even his blundering charge is dangerous, of course, if you are in the way, but I firmly believe that the rhino is too stupid to be either accurate in his objective, fixed in his purpose, or vindictive in his intentions.
This does not mean that a lot of people have not been killed by rhinos. They have; but I do believe that compared with other African animals the danger of the rhino is generally exaggerated. When he smells something he comes toward the scent until he sees what it is. As he can't see very far, no man with a gun is likely to let him come within seeing distance without shooting. So the stupid old beast goes charging around hoping to see the source of what he smells and in addition to getting himself shot has made a reputation for savagery. In fact, he has blundered around and been shot so much that old rhinos with big horns are growing scarce.
I remember coming up over the top of a little rise one day and seeing across the plain an old rhino standing motionless in the shade of a solitary acacia about two hundred yards away. The usual tick birds sat on his back. It was a typical rhino pose. As I stood looking for more entertainment, a second rhino came mouching along between me and number one. Number one evidently heard him. The birds flew off his back, he pricked up his ears, and broke into a charge toward number two. Number two reciprocated. Their direction was good and they had attained full speed. I longed for a camera to photograph the collision. But the camera would have done me no good. The collision did not happen. When about twenty feet from each other they stopped dead, snorted, and turned around, number one returning to doze under his tree and number two continuing the journey which had been interrupted. I suppose that rhinos have acquired the habit of charging whenever they smell anything because until the white man came along they could investigate in this peculiar manner with impunity. Everything but an elephant or another rhino would get out of the way of one of these investigating rushes, and of course an elephant or another rhino is big enough for even the rhino's poor eyes to see before he gets into trouble.
The coming of the white man with the rifle upset all this, but the rhino has learned less about protecting himself from man than the other animals. Man went even further in breaking the rules of rhino existence. The railroad was an even worse affront than the rifle. The rhino furnished some of the comedy of the invasion of the game country by the Uganda Railway. In the early days of that road a friend of mine was on the train one day when a rhino charged it. The train was standing still out in the middle of the plain. An old rhino, either hearing it or smelling man, set out on the customary charge. The train didn't move and he didn't swerve. He hit the running board of one car at full speed. There was a terrific jolt. My friend rushed to the platform. As he reached it the rhino was getting up off his knees. He seemed a little groggy but he trotted off, conscious, perhaps, that railroad trains cannot be routed by the rhino's traditional method of attack.
"The land teems with the beasts of the chase, infinite in number and incredible in variety. It holds the fiercest beasts of ravin, and the fleetest and most timid of those beings that live in undying fear of talon and fang. It holds the largest and the smallest of hoofed animals. It holds the mightiest creatures that tread the earth or swim in its rivers; it also holds distant kinsfolk of these same creatures, no bigger than woodchucks, which dwell in crannies of the rocks and in tree tops. There are antelope smaller than hares and antelope larger than oxen. There are creatures which are the embodiments of grace, and others whose huge ungainliness is like that of a shape in a nightmare. The plains are alive with droves of strange and beautiful animals whose like is not known elsewhere; and with others even stranger that show both in form and temper something of the fantastic and the grotesque."
So Theodore Roosevelt, in that vivid word picture of jungle sights and sounds, the foreword of "African Game Trails," suggests the vast variety of animal acquaintances the hunter may make in Africa. I have sought out or happened upon many others besides my particular friends, the elephants and gorillas.
One of those whose "huge ungainliness is like that of a shape in a nightmare" is the hippopotamus. The small dugout in which the native makes his way up and down the Tana River is just a nice mouthful for him. He can splinter one between his great jaws in no time if he is sufficiently stirred up, but fortunately for the natives he is not easily enraged. He is more or less like the rhinoceros except that, while he is equally stupid, he rarely gets mad and so is not often dangerous.
Along the Tana River in 1906 the hippos were still very abundant, and I presume that a hunter passing along that stream to-day might shoot all he could possibly want. Although I saw probably only a small proportion of all I actually passed, I counted more than two hundred in a ten-mile march along the Tana. Sheltered by the rather high and precipitous banks of the river, the hippopotami if undisturbed bask quietly on the sand-bars during the day. If one is disturbed, he takes to the water, leaving exposed only the top of his head, his eyes, and nostrils, so that if he remains motionless one usually has to spend some time to determine whether the object protruding from the water is a hippo's head or a slate-coloured rock. If really frightened, he submerges entirely, exposing only his nostrils and those just long enough to blow and take in a fresh supply of air. Then down he goes, not to appear again for several minutes, frequently in quite a different place.
Cuninghame and I had a good opportunity to test his disposition one day as we were crossing Lake Naivasha. I was sitting at the tiller in the stern of the boat about half asleep in the hot sun of midday when there was a sudden explosion and our boat was lifted well out of the water. The keel had struck the back of a submerged hippopotamus. He came up thirty yards away with his mouth open, but he made no attempt to attack. We had the good luck to come down right side up, shipping only a little water. I hope he was as badly frightened as I was.
Because he is so little sport, even the pot hunters have left the hippo alone. However, most of the African tribes consider hippopotamus meat good eating and he is frequently killed by the natives for food. The fact is that in times of famine this animal is a valuable source of supply. In 1906, when we were on the Tana River, I found a bone yard with the bones of a great number of hippopotami along with various human bones. In a famine some fifteen or twenty years earlier, so the story goes, the natives had gravitated toward the Tana River to kill hippopotami to keep from starving and there had fought over this last source of food.
Double rows of tracks with grass growing between them, like those made by a wagon, trail along the Tana and are cut deep into the river's banks, where through long years the hippos have come up at night to graze and browse. His is a double track, because in travelling he does not place one foot before the other. He finds no food in the water, but he is at home there, and sometimes travels long distances overland from one pool or stream to another. How far he treks in this way I do not know, and the question is much disputed. I am certain that it is sometimes as much as fifty miles.
While I have found but little enjoyment in shooting any kind of animal, I confess that in hunting elephants and lions under certain conditions I have always felt that the animal had sufficient chance in the game to make it something like a sporting proposition. On the other hand, much of the shooting that I have had to do in order to obtain specimens for museum collections has had none of this aspect at all and has made me feel a great deal like a murderer. One of the worst of my experiences was with the wild ass of Somaliland on my first trip to Africa. These animals are rare, and as they are the only members of the horse family in that part of Africa, the Field Museum of Natural History was anxious to get specimens of them.
After several heart-breaking days' work my companion, Dodson, and I had secured but one specimen and several were needed for a group. One day under guidance of natives who promised to take us to a country where they abounded, we started out at three o'clock in the morning, with a couple of camels to bring back the skins if we got them. At about eight, as we were crossing a sandy plain where here and there a dwarfed shrub or tuft of grass had managed to find sustenance, one of the gun-bearers pointed out in the distance an object which he declared to be an ass. We advanced slowly. As there was no cover, there was no possibility of a stalk, and the chance of a shot at reasonable range seemed remote, for we had found in our previous experience that the wild ass is extremely shy and when once alarmed travels rapidly and for long distances. We approached to within two hundred yards and had begun to think that it was a native's tame donkey and expected to see its owner appear in the neighbourhood, when it became uneasy and started to bolt; but its curiosity brought it about for a last look and we took advantage of the opportunity and fired. It was hard hit, apparently, but recovered and stood facing us. We approached closer, and thinking it best to take no chances fired again—and then he merely walked about a little, making no apparent effort to go away. We approached carefully. He showed no signs of fear, and although "hard hit" stood stolidly until at last I put one hand on his withers and, tripping him, pushed him over. I began to feel that if this was sport I should never be a sportsman.
We now discovered that our scant supply of water was exhausted and although we wished to continue the hunt we realized that to get farther from camp without water would be risky indeed. The guide had assured us that there would be plenty of opportunity to get water on our route but we knew that it was five hours back to water, the way we had come, and five hours without water in the middle of the day would mean torture. It is said that in that region thirty hours without water means death to the native and twelve hours is the white man's limit. The guide assured us that if we would continue on an hour longer we would find water. After four hours of hard, hot marching we arrived at a hole in the ground where some time there had been water but not a drop remained. After a little digging at the bottom of the hole the natives declared there was no hope. Our trail for the last hour had been under a pitiless noonday sun along a narrow valley shut in on either side by steep, rocky hills, while we faced a veritable sand storm, a strong, hot wind that drove the burning sand into our faces and hands. The dry well was the last straw.
The guides said there was one more hole about an hour away and they would go and see if there was water there. They with the gun-bearers started out, while we off-saddled the mules and using the saddles for pillows and the saddle blankets to protect our faces from the driving sand, dozed in the scant shade of a leafless thorn tree.
At four o'clock the boys returned—no water. Dodson and I received the report, looked at one another, and returned to our pillows beneath the saddle blankets. A little later a continued prodding in the ribs from my gun-bearer brought me to attention again as he pointed out an approaching caravan consisting of several camels and a couple of natives. Each of the natives carried a well-filled goatskin from his shoulders, and realizing that these goatskins probably contained milk, I knew that our troubles were nearly over. I instructed the gun-bearer to make a bargain for part of the milk and covered my head again to escape the pelting of the sand and waited.
We were both in a semi-comatose state and I paid no further attention to proceedings until I was again prodded by the gun-bearer who was now greatly excited. He pointed to the receding camels while he jabbered away to the effect that the natives would not part with any of the plentiful supply of milk. The white men might die for all they cared.
When I had come to a realization of the situation, there seemed to be only one solution to the affair—a perfectly natural solution—precisely the same as if they had stood over us with their spears poised at our hearts. I grabbed my rifle and drew a bead on one of the departing men and called to Dodson to get up and cover the other. I waited while Dodson was getting to an understanding of the game and then when he was ready and I was about to give the word the natives stopped, gesticulating wildly. The gun-bearer who had been shouting to them told us not to shoot, that the milk would come, and it did. Milk! Originally milked into a dung-lined smoked chattie, soured and carried in a filthy old goatskin for hours in the hot sun. But it was good. I have never had a finer drink.
An hour before sundown, greatly refreshed, we started back to camp. Just at dusk the shadowy forms of five asses dashed across our path fifty yards away and we heard a bullet strike as we took a snap at them. One began to lag behind as the others ran wildly away. The one soon stopped and we approached, keeping him covered in case he attempted to bolt. As we got near he turned and faced us with great, gentle eyes. Without the least sign of fear or anger he seemed to wonder why we had harmed him.
The only wound was from a small bullet high in the neck, merely a flesh wound which would have caused him no serious trouble had he continued with the herd. We walked around him within six feet and I almost believe we could have put a halter on him. Certainly it would have been child's play to have thrown a rope over his head. We reached camp about midnight and I announced that if any more wild asses were wanted, someone else would have to shoot them. I had had quite enough. Normally, the ass is one of the wildest of creatures and it is difficult to explain the actions of these two. They appeared not to realize that we were the cause of their injuries but rather seemed to expect relief as we approached—and yet one English "sportsman" boasted of having killed twenty-eight.
While I have never had a zebra stand after being wounded, in all other respects his habits resemble very closely those of his kin, the wild ass of Somaliland. Occasionally, man has captured and domesticated zebras so that he may use them in a four-horse team. But this is done only for the amusement it affords, because the zebra, like all wild animals, has never quite enough of the endurance that is bred into a domesticated horse to make him useful in harness. In wild life he requires only sufficient stamina to outrun a lion for a short distance.
There is no fun in shooting zebras and wild asses. It makes one uncomfortable. Probably we are particularly thin-skinned when it comes to shooting the members of the horse family because we are used to them, or at least to their kindred, as domesticated friends, but as a matter of fact that is quite as reasonable as to think of killing deer or antelope as a sport. With most deer there is no danger. The only problem is to get close enough for a shot. While an approach may be difficult in some parts of the world—and this is true with certain species of antelope in Africa—most of the plains antelope cannot be shot on the ground of sport. For food and scientific purposes, however, the case is different.
One of the hardest to shoot among the so-called bovine antelopes is the koodoo. He is a beautiful, high-bred animal with clean-cut head and long spiral horns. While almost as large as an elk, he is gracefully built and stylish in action. His coat is gray, delicately marked with white stripes. As the animal matures, the hair becomes short and thin and the stripes fade. All in all, the koodoo is one of the finest big antelope. On that score he has no competitors except the sable and the roan.
A group of greater koodoos was a particular desideratum of the Field Museum and therefore one of the special objectives of my first African trip. As a matter of fact, we succeeded in collecting the material necessary and the group is on exhibition in the Field Museum in Chicago now. The old bull standing with lifted head on top of the rock in the present group was the second koodoo that I ever saw. The first one was his mate whom I was about to shoot, totally unconscious of the presence of the old bull. He stood beside her, his outline broken up by surrounding rocks and bushes, and I overlooked him entirely until he began to move. As he started to run I fired a shot. He bounded into the air, and as he struck the ground I fired again. The first shot had gone through his heart and the second broke his back.
When talking to people about shooting, I like to recall my koodoo experiences, because, while I am not a good shot as shooting goes in Africa, my two experiences with koodoos compare pretty favourably with the best. On the first occasion, one of my two shots landed in the heart and the other broke the koodoo's back. In my next koodoo hunt, my shooting was even more remarkable and for me more unusual. I came in sight of this second koodoo when he was too far away to shoot at and he rapidly ran out of sight through a country of little hills and ravines and scrub growth. I tracked him until I lost his trail. Then I decided to try to follow him by instinct and, constituting myself an escaping koodoo, I went where I thought such an animal should. I knew I was not exactly on his route because I could see no tracks. Then, too, something cord-like, weaving together the bushes on either side of my path, for a moment impeded my progress. It was a strand of web, the colour of gold, spun by a handsome yellow spider with black legs. Twisted together, it was substantial enough to be wound around and around my watch chain where I wore it for several years. Had my koodoo passed between those bushes, the web would, I knew, have been his necklace instead of my watch charm.
After following instinctively for two or three miles, I came to the top of a ridge which looked down across a ravine 500 to 600 yards wide. I crawled to the edge and looked over carefully, hoping to see my prey, but as I saw nothing I decided to get up and either scare him or give up the chase. As I stood up I saw him halfway across the ravine a little more than 300 yards away. When I rose, he began to run in the opposite direction. I had little chance of hitting him and so I fired at the rocks on the other side of the ravine. The wind was blowing from him to me and I did not know how distinctly he could hear the rifle, but there was no doubt about his hearing the rocks clatter down where the bullets struck. He stopped abruptly, listening, and as he did so I lay down and rested my rifle on the rocks. He was pausing behind a candelabra euphorbia so that I could see nothing but his head. I took careful aim and fired. A fraction of a second after the shot, when I had recovered from the kick of the rifle and had focussed my eyes on the spot, the koodoo was nowhere in sight. When I reached the euphorbia, he lay there dead. I looked him over to find where the bullet had hit him but found no sign of it. I turned him over and looked at his other side with no better results except that I found a few drops of blood. On further search I discovered that the bullet had gone in behind his ear. As he listened to the falling rocks, the ear had been thrown forward; as he fell, the ear had swung back to normal position and covered the tiny hole made by the full mantled bullet. The bullet had come out of his eye, but when I got there the eye was closed, so that the point of exit had been concealed also.
One day as I approached the hills, while I was still hunting koodoo for my group, I saw in the distance four animals which I took to be koodoo. They stood on a rock-strewn slope beneath an acacia tree and, as there were no horns visible, I assumed that they were cows and calves. I required one of each to complete my group. I made a careful stalk along the same ravine from which I had approached my first koodoo and, when I thought that I was at about the right point, I peered out and found the animals standing where I had seen them first, apparently about 200 yards away. I fired, and one dropped in his tracks. They were startled but had not located my direction and ran about confusedly. My second shot dropped another and the third shot wounded one which ran almost directly toward us. He covered the distance in an amazingly short time and went down beneath the bush only a little way from me. It was then that I came to a realization of what was happening. Instead of being koodoo 200 yards away, these were antelope pygmies less than 50 yards away and not more than twenty-three inches high at the shoulder. I had been completely fooled, but by what? That was the question.
I went over to the bush where the wounded animal had gone down near me, and stood for a moment looking at him open-mouthed and wondering what he was. Never had I heard of such an antelope. He had sharp straight horns four inches long and was a beautiful French gray in colour. Before I could observe anything else, he sprang to his feet and darted away on three legs faster, it seemed to me, than anything I had ever seen travel. I shot several times but never touched him. I followed for hours but did not overtake him. Later I learned that he was one of the little beira antelope. The species had been described some time before from fragments of skin obtained from natives. As far as records show, these specimens, an adult female and a half-grown one, were the first specimens taken by a white man.
This is a good example of a mistake that a hunter may easily make where there is nothing about of known size to give scale. The outline of the beira, characterized by the large ears, is almost a miniature of that of the koodoo. These tiny antelope had stood against a background of acacias on a pebbly slope. Acacias grow both large and small and a pebble among pebbles on a distant hillside may appear as a large boulder.
I continued hunting the little devils in a desperate effort to get a male at least. Several times I spent the day working about the two cone-shaped hills, now and then catching glimpses of the beira, only to have them disappear before I could shoot or get near enough to shoot. Several times when leaving the hills at dusk I turned around to see just on the skyline the heads and necks of three little antelope watching me as I went away discouraged. I believe they are the cunningest little beasties in all Africa.
As my beira antelope was the first specimen ever taken—or at least recorded—by a white man, it was a record. Another record head which I took came equally by chance. One evening as I came out of the forest, after some rather troublesome experiences with elephants, I caught sight of a bush buck. He caught sight of me also, and instead of making off he seemed to glare at me and stood stamping his foot. I may have imagined his emotions, but it seemed to me that all the animals were angry with me that day. I remember that it went through my mind, "I believe this fellow is going to charge, too." Then it occurred to me that we needed meat in camp, so I shot him and told the boys to cut him up and bring him in. As soon as they reached him, they called to me and I went over to see what was the matter. They showed me an unusually fine head. So I saved it. It turned out to be the record bush buck head at that time and I am not sure that it is not still.
The lesser koodoo, which is to be found in Somaliland in the aloe country at the base of the Golis range, is likewise a truly sporting animal, keen of sight and scent and fleet of foot. My first lesser koodoo stood looking at me through a bush no more than twenty-five yards away. My gun boy tried to point him out to me but I saw nothing until something bit the koodoo's ear and he flicked it. Realizing that he had given himself away, he jumped before I could shoot and I tracked him for an hour before I again came upon him. Then I saw him first. There is no finer sight in Africa than a lesser koodoo bull bounding over the spiny aloes with all of the grace of a porpoise in the water.
One of the most interesting antelope of Somaliland is the dibitag or Clark's gazelle. The dibitag live in the waterless bush country of the Haud and are shy and difficult to stalk. With their long legs and long necks they resemble and are closely related to the gerenuks (Waller's gazelle), but are less well known as they are confined to a limited range. In following an old male who had been travelling at full speed I found that its stride averaged twenty-eight feet, but at the same time he kept so close to the ground that midway of the stride, when one foot was carried forward, it scraped the sand. The animal weighs no more than seventy-five pounds. It is the most beautifully developed antelope I have ever handled, with muscles and loins rounded out like those of a prize fighter. These gazelle never have any fat and never drink any water. In fact, there is no water to be had except that in the vegetation, which is very little in a country where it has not rained for two years.
Unlike these sporting animals, the gazelle of the plains remind one of great herds of sheep, so gentle where they have not been hunted that one may come close enough to throw stones at them. On the other hand, where they have been shot, they grow wild and very difficult to approach. Here again is evidence that the thing that makes animals wild is man. In the antarctics and other places where man has not previously come and where the animals know no fear, the explorer can fairly tickle the seals under the chin. Animals in their natural state are not instinctively afraid of man, but they have learned from sad experience that man is bad medicine.
In direct contrast to the camp in Somaliland where we had been forced to quench our thirst with soured goat's milk taken from a passing caravan at the point of a rifle, was our camp on Lake Hannington, the home of the flamingos. The caravan route from Nakuru on the Uganda Railway to Lake Baringo swings in close to the Laikipia Escarpment at the east side of the Rift Valley and just at the north end of Hannington. Therefore, travellers usually get their first view of the lake at this northern point where few flamingos are to be seen except in breeding season and where the water is shallow, bordered by low mud flats crusted with a deposit of salts mingled with feathers, bones, and the droppings of the great colony. If the unattractiveness of the place were not sufficient to discourage a disposition to explore the lake, the sickening stench from the green waters must dishearten any one who has not a definite object in further investigation. Being unfamiliar with the region, we ignored the trail which would have given us this forbidding northern approach. As we neared the escarpment from the south, we found a small stream of crystal-clear water, and although it was too warm to be palatable, we were delighted with the discovery since the porters and horses were sadly in need of water. We decided to make camp here, and while selecting a place for the tents, the cook discovered a spring of boiling water which he appropriated for his uses. A little farther on a spring of ice-cold water was located so that we had all modern improvements as far at least as water supply was concerned.
After making camp, an hour's walk brought us to the top of a rocky hill from which we had an excellent view of nearly the entire length of the lake, an irregular sheet of water eight or ten miles long by perhaps two miles at the widest point. It lay before us, a shimmering blue-green mirror with occasional strips of snow-white beach. At the south end, that part nearest us, the water was much darker in colour owing to its greater depth, and the steep slopes of the escarpment were mirrored in its surface. Here and there along the shores jets and clouds of steam spurted forth from the numerous boiling springs and miniature geysers. Far away toward the centre of the lake what seemed great peninsulas and islands of rosy pink broke the placid surface of the lake—these were the flamingos that we had come to see.
A two hours' journey up the tortuous rock-strewn western shore brought us to the region which seems to be their favourite haunt. On our approach, the great flocks rose from the water and flew across toward the opposite shore, many alighting in mid-lake. As the birds arose, the splashing of water made by their running over the surface to get a start, the beating of wings, and the "kronk-kronk" of their calls created an indescribable din, while the charm of the marvellously beautiful sight was tempered by the odours that arose from the putrid waters churned by the activity of the birds.
The flamingos that had settled in mid-lake soon began to drift back in our direction and we hurriedly constructed a rude blind of green boughs on the shore. Here I awaited their return, camera in position, and within half an hour was surrounded by acres of the beautiful creatures. The greater number of the birds proved to be of the small, more brilliantly coloured species of African flamingo (Phoenicopterus minor), although a few of the larger species (Phoenicopterus roseus) were in small isolated flocks or scattered here and there among their smaller relatives. Evidently flamingos spend the entire year at Lake Hannington. So greatly did they interest us on this January visit that we returned in May hoping to find them nesting, but we were some six weeks too late. The young birds in their gray plumage were abundant and traces of the nests were to be seen at the north end of the lake.
One soon forgets about snakes in Africa although there are many poisonous species. In my experience of more than five years in the jungles, wandering about with from one hundred to two hundred and fifty semi-naked, barefoot men, I have never had to deal with a snake bite. On my last journey to the Kivu I had glimpses of two snakes all told.
Nor have I been pestered by mosquitoes. In all my African experience I have never had as many mosquitoes to contend with as I have had in a single night in my apartment on Central Park West. However, one avoids a single African mosquito as one would avoid the pest, because that is just what he may turn out to be. For six months at a time my mosquito nets have remained in the duffle bags.
In the game country there are millions of ticks, but as a rule their worst offence is simply to crawl over one. The spirillum tick must be avoided. I have never seen one but I have been incapacitated and brought near the door of death as a result of his work. And when the jigger decides to establish a colony under one's toenails he cannot be too quickly nor too carefully dispossessed.
There are other pests besides insects, snakes, and drouth to be guarded against in Africa. One of these is fire. In making a camp, it is always wise to burn off the ground about the tents for the sake of protection. The most strenuous fight I ever had to make against a grass fire took place in Uganda the day that I killed the big bull elephant now in the Milwaukee Public Museum. We had been working hard from eleven o'clock in the morning until early evening. Meanwhile, camp had been made close to our work in a country of bush and high grass. Immediately surrounding our camp the grass was five feet high and very dense and dry. To the east of us was a great jungle of elephant grass, a sort of cane growing to a height of ten or fifteen feet. For two or three hours I was conscious of a great fire to the east, but there was little wind and it travelled slowly. Whenever it came to one of the fields of elephant grass the roaring and crackling was quite appalling, and when it finally reached the clump of grass nearest our camp we realized that we would probably have to make a fight. There was no time to backfire and so we tried the next best thing. About twenty-five yards from the tents we started to make a trail stretching for a hundred yards across the path of the fire. This was done by bending the grass down on both sides, leaving a path along which we could move freely. Then the job was to stop the fire at the parting of the grass. A hundred men, each provided with an armful of green branches, scattered along this thin line to beat the fire out as it reached the division. We had a terrific fight. In several places the fire jumped across the trail, but each time enough men concentrated at that point to kill it before it got an overpowering foothold. It was hot, smoky, desperate work. When it was ended, the tents were safe although the men were thoroughly done up.
It was one of these grass fires, although by no means such a persistent one, that threatened Roosevelt's camp the night after our elephant hunt on the Uasin Gishu Plateau.
He is a little Kikuyu thirteen years old who has attached himself to our safari; a useful little beggar, always finds something to busy himself with; better take him with you. We call him Bill. "Come here, Bill."
Bill came up—a little, naked, thirteen-year-old "Kuke" with great black eyes. The eyes did it. Mrs. Akeley decided that Bill should go with us. He was given a khaki suit two sizes too big for him which made the black eyes sparkle. He was made the assistant of Alli, Mrs. Akeley's tent boy, and his training as tent boy began.
In six months Bill had become a full-fledged tent boy, with plenty of time always at his disposal to mix up with almost everything going on in camp. I think of him now, after three expeditions in which he has been with me, as the best tent boy, the best gun-bearer, the best tracker, and the best headman that it has ever been my lot to know—a man who, I know, would go into practically certain death to serve me. If I were starting out on an expedition among unknown people in Africa I would rather have Bill as a headman and as a counselor in dealing with the savages, even though they were people of whom Bill knew nothing, than any one I know of.
During that first six months' apprenticeship Bill was always busy. When there was nothing to do about camp he would borrow some of Heller's traps and set them for jackals, or he would be poking about the bush looking for lizards or snakes that we might want for the collections. Months passed, and Bill was an inconspicuous member of our little army of followers. We were camped on the top of the Aberdare; Cuninghame and I were returning from a fruitless four days on elephant trails. As we neared camp we saw Mrs. Akeley come out on the road ahead of us, with Alli acting as gun-bearer. An elephant had passed a few hundred yards from camp and she had come out to the road in the hope of getting a shot as it crossed. A little farther on toward camp we met Bill, stripped to the waist, carrying my 8 mm. rifle and a pocket of 6 mm. cartridges. If there was anything doing Bill had to be in it.
A few weeks later on, our wanderings took us into Kikuyu country and near to Bill's native village. He sent for his "mamma," to whom he wanted to give some of his earnings. So his mother came to camp and Bill introduced her. He led me out to where she was leaning against a rock, and pointing to her said, "mamma." She was a young shenzie woman of the usual type, dressed in a leather skirt and bead and brass ornaments.
One day Bill had the sulks and was scolded for not doing something that he had been told to do. He said he knew his work and didn't have to be told what to do. It made him perfectly furious to be continually told to do things which he knew to be a part of his duties. Nor would he shirk his duties. If he failed to do things at the proper time, in nine cases out of ten it was because someone had been telling him to do the things and it had made him ugly. This characteristic is as pronounced now as ever, and has been the cause of the most of poor Bill's troubles.
At last our work was over and we returned to Nairobi to prepare for our departure from Africa. As soon as we arrived Bill demanded his pay. We wanted him to stay until we were ready to leave Nairobi, but no, he wanted to be free to spend his money; so he left us in spite of the fact that in doing so he sacrificed his backsheesh. He promptly spent all his money for clothes, having them made to order by the Indian traders, but within two weeks he had lost all the clothes in gambling. Thus ended Bill's first year's career as a tent boy.
Four years later we returned to East Africa. Several months previously, Alli and Bill had been engaged for the Roosevelt Expedition, but before we reached there Bill had disgraced himself, and had been turned out and black-listed. But knowing something of the probable conditions which had contributed to his downfall, we were glad to get him and he was glad to come. There were four of our party, and most of the other tent boys and the kitchen contingent were Swahilis, so we rather expected that Bill would have trouble. But his first real trouble came of an exaggerated sense of loyalty to me, or at least that was his excuse. During my absence from camp one of my companions asked Bill for some supplies from a box to which Bill had the keys, but he refused to get them, saying that he must have an order from his own Bwana. It was cheek, and he had to be punished; the punishment was not severe, but coming from me it went hard with him and I had to give him a fatherly talk to prevent his running away. Whenever we reached a boma, or Nairobi, we expected Bill to have a grouch. His irresistible impulse to spend money and the desire to keep it, too, upset him, and going to Nairobi usually meant that he would be paid in full and discharged; but the next day he would turn up and continue to do his work with a long face until he would manage to screw up courage to ask if the Bwana would take him on the next trip, and then he would be all grins and the troubles were over.
Sometimes in hunting dangerous game I would take him along as extra gun-bearer and usually on these occasions his marvellous keenness of eye and ability to track would result in the regular gun-bearers being relegated to the rear. One time while hunting elephants in Uganda I let him go with me. We had finished inspecting a small herd, decided there was nothing in it that I wanted, and were going back to take up the trail of another lot in a section where the country was all trodden down by the going and coming of numerous herds. As we went along Bill detected the spoor of two big bulls and I told him to follow it, not thinking for a moment that he would be able to hold it in the maze of herd tracks. On our last visit to town he had invested in a stiff brim straw hat and a cane, and he looked like anything but an elephant tracker as he walked jauntily along with his straw hat on the back of his head and swinging his cane like a dandy. For five hours he followed that trail with the utmost nonchalance, in places where it would have given the professional tracker the greatest trouble and where nine out of ten would have lost it. At last, as it led us through a dense bush, Bill suddenly stopped and held up his cane as a signal for caution; as I drew up to him there were two old bulls not twenty feet from us. When one of them was dead and the other gone I felt much more comfortable than when I first realized the situation into which we had blundered.
But the time that Bill earned our everlasting gratitude and immunity from punishment for present misdeeds was when I was smashed up by the elephant on Mt. Kenia. He was with Mrs. Akeley at the base camp when the news reached her at dusk, and it was past midnight when she was ready to come to me through that awful twenty miles of forest and jungle in the blackness of a drenching rain. While headman and askaris were helpless, stupidly sharing the fear and dread of the forest at night which paralyzed the porters and guides, it was Bill with a big stick who put them in motion and literally drove them ahead of Mrs. Akeley to me. And then it was he who directed the cutting of the road out of the forest for the passage of my stretcher, enlisting the services of a chief with his people to cut a road in from the shambas to meet our porters who were working outward.
One day when I was convalescing, Bill called on a porter to perform some service about my tent. The porter refused to come. Bill went out to "interview" him. The porter was twice as large as Bill—there was a little scuffle, and Bill came right back and did the work himself. Then he went over to the doctor's tent and conducted him out to where he had left the porter. It took the doctor a half hour to bring the porter to. Then the other porters came up in a body and said that Bill must go or they would all go. I told them that the first of their number who complained of Bill or refused to do his bidding would get "twenty-five." The average black boy would have taken advantage of the situation created by these victories—not so with Bill. After that, whenever he had occasion to pass an order to a porter, he always did it through the headman.
Perhaps I should explain at this point just what the normal personnel of a safari in British East Africa is. First, there is the headman, who is supposed to be in charge of the whole show, excepting the gun-bearers and tent boys, who are the personal servants and under the immediate direction of their masters. The askaris are soldiers who are armed and whose duties consist of the guarding of the camp at night and looking after the porters on the march. There is one askari to from ten to twenty porters. The cook and his assistant or assistants, the number of whom is determined by the size of the party, are important members of the safari. Then there are tent boys, one to each member of the party, whose duty is to look after the tents and clothing, and to serve their masters or mistresses at table. The syces are pony boys, whose duties are to look after the horses and equipment. In addition to those already named come the rank and file of porters whose duties are manifold, carrying loads on the march, gathering wood under the direction of the askaris and the cook, bringing in game, beating for lions, setting up the tents under the direction of the tent boys, and so forth.
I do not know of any case where Bill's character was better demonstrated than at the time when I was convalescent after the elephant smashed me up. I was able to walk about, but had to have someone carry a chair along so that I could sit down to rest. A little distance away from camp, at the edge of the Kenia forest, there was a great swampy place surrounded on three sides by a high ridge and on the fourth side by the forest. One day the natives came in and reported that an old bull elephant had come out into this swampy place, and they said that he would probably stay in there for a week or ten days. These old lone bulls come out into one of these feeding grounds, where they are not likely to be disturbed by their companions, and for a time simply loaf around and feed and then go away again. We started out one morning to look this one up, and went to the edge of the forest, where the boys showed us his trail. We followed it, and found that it was joined by the fresh trail of a second elephant. I started to walk down the trail, but found that I was not in physical condition to go on, so I sent the boys up and around the ridge of this crater-like depression, instructing them to throw stones into the bush as they went along. They had not gone far when one of the elephants was beaten out and started to go across the bottom of the crater, over open ground. He was probably three hundred yards away from me, and as he approached the forest on the other side it occurred to me that I might get him rattled by shooting into the trees ahead of him. So I shot—the bullets crashed through the trees in front and frightened him, and he wheeled around and started back. I had hoped that he would come my way, but he did not. In the intense excitement I shot at him three or four times. A little puff of dust from his dry hide told me the story of my aim, and while one or two of the bullets apparently struck in the right place, it was evident that there was not sufficient penetration to get results.
The whole thing was very foolish, but since I had wounded him it was absolutely essential that I finish the job. The elephant turned again and went on across to the opposite side, and now I had to get on his trail and follow him. From a hundred yards away he got our wind momentarily, and threatened to charge. Another shot turned him, and he disappeared into the bush. An hour later I had a good view of him at about seventy-five yards and under conditions where I normally could have made an approach to within a distance from which I might have dropped him in his tracks. But at this point I was so exhausted that I took a final shot at him from where I stood, seventy-five yards away. He went down, but got to his feet again and went into the bush. The boys helped me back into camp. I felt perfectly certain that we would find him dead in the morning. The whole thing had been stupid and unsportsmanlike.
The next morning, with a few of the boys, I went back and took up his trail; but much to my disappointment and surprise I found that he and his companion had kept right on into the forest and were apparently going strong. I knew that he was mortally wounded, and it was necessary that he should be followed and finished off. It was too big a job for me in my condition, so it was up to Bill. I gave Bill one of my gun-bearers and each of them a heavy .470 cordite rifle, with instructions to stick to the trail until they found the elephant. They were not to shoot except in emergency. When the elephant was found, one of them was to remain with it while the other came back to report.
I went back to camp and waited. The boys had no supply of food with them and I had no idea but that they would be back in camp before night, but it was not until midnight of the second day that Bill came to my tent, awakened me, and told his story. They had followed the elephant without ever coming up with him except that at one time they heard him ahead of them; and they had finally decided it was best to come back to get food and instructions. Bill was just about exhausted; and the gun-bearer, a big husky fellow, had fallen by the wayside. Bill had left him some five miles back in the forest on the trail. Evidently Bill considered my elephant guns of more importance than one black gun boy, as, for fear that something would happen to the rifles, he had lugged both of the heavy guns into camp, leaving the boy with nothing but his knife with which to protect himself. I felt, however, that there was little danger to the gun boy except from exposure, and against that he no doubt had built a fire. I could think of nothing to do until daylight. A half hour later some commotion in camp caused me to send for the headman, but Bill came instead. I asked him what was doing, and he said that he had had trouble in getting some of the boys to go with him. "Go where?" I asked. He replied that he was going back to the gun boy with food. Then I came to. I sent for the headman and askaris, told Bill to describe to them the gun boy's location, and told them they were to go to his relief, and Bill that he was to go to bed. This he finally did, after using up what remaining strength he had in protest. The elephant was not located.
About a year and a half later, after we had returned to the States, Bill went back into his home country and began to search for the wounded elephant. He must have done some very clever detective work, for he finally located the native who had found the dead elephant. This native had secured the tusks, and had sold one of them to an Indian trader; but the second was still in his possession. According to the laws of the land he should have turned in the two tusks to the government officials, who would have paid him a nominal price for the ivory, and I, having filed a claim with the Government, would have come into possession of the tusks; but the native had evidently thought that he could get more out of them by selling them one at a time, and had taken a chance. But he made a mistake in leaving Bill out of his calculations. Bill followed up the case with the final result that the remaining tusk was taken and sent to me, and the Government confiscated a certain number of cattle belonging to the native as penalty for the one he had sold. Thus, to both Bill and me, the final results from that particular elephant hunt were satisfactory.
One time in Uganda I was using Bill as a gun-bearer in preference to the regular gun-bearers, because I had by that time realized that Bill was the best tracker as well as the most keen and alert hunter, black or white, that I had ever known. We had followed a small band of elephants into some dense forest, and for a long time had been crouching beneath some undergrowth where we could get an occasional glimpse of the elephants' legs, but nothing more. They had been quietly feeding during this time, but at last they moved away and crossed a trail down which we had a vista of a hundred yards or so. When we thought the last one had passed, we went down this trail quickly and quietly to the point where they had crossed, and there we stopped, listening intently in an attempt to locate them. At first I thought they had gone out of hearing, when I suddenly discovered the rear elevation of a bull not more than twenty feet from us. He was motionless. We had come in so quietly that he had not heard us, and then I did not dare move for fear of attracting his attention. I craned my neck in an effort to get a glimpse of his tusks, and in doing this I became conscious of a cow standing beside the bull and looking straight at us. Bill was about five feet back and to one side of me. I stood motionless, without swinging my gun in the cow's direction, but waited for her to make the move. I doubt whether she saw us distinctly. The bull began to move away and the cow, in turning to follow, moved a pace more or less in my direction. I was perfectly certain that she was going to follow the bull, and to Bill there was no indication that I had seen her. Bill thought she was coming at me, raised his gun, and fired point blank into the cow's face. The elephants bolted. I wheeled and slapped Bill, because he had broken one of the rules of the game, which is that a black boy must never shoot without orders unless his master is down and at the mercy of a beast. Of course it did not take long for me to come to a realization that Bill's shooting was done in perfectly good faith because he thought that I had not seen the cow, and he also thought that she was coming straight at me. Bill's heart was broken and my apologies were forthcoming and were as humble as the dignity of a white man would permit.
The next day Bill came to me and said that he wanted to quit and go back to Nairobi. I satisfied myself that it was not the incident of the day before that had brought him to this frame of mind, but he admitted that he was scared and tired. In other words, the pace had been too hot for him. It was a case of nerves, and he was worn out. I persuaded him to stay, telling him that he need not go with me on elephant trails for a week. I would take the other boys and he could just stay in camp to loaf and rest. But the next morning, when I was preparing to go, Bill was on the job and would not be left behind. He told Mrs. Akeley that he was not afraid for himself but was afraid for his Bwana. So we continued our elephant work at an easier pace than before.
The Wakikuyus (to give them their full name) are an agricultural people, and one does not normally look among them for gun-bearers or hunters. They are a comparatively mild and gentle race, and thus Bill was quite an exceptional individual. Bill was always on the job, and if it were not for the two occasions of which I have told, I would be able to say that he is one human being whom I have never seen tired.
Bill never was and never will be completely tamed. His loyalty to the master in whom he believes and for whom he has an affection is unbounded, and I firmly believe that Bill would go into certain death for such a master. He has an independence that frequently gets him into trouble. He does not like to take orders from any one of his own colour. The Somalis and the Swahilis, associated with Bill, were constantly putting up jobs to get him in bad with the master because, to these two peoples, the Wakikuyus are a very inferior race. There is no doubt in my mind that Bill's disgrace with the Roosevelt Expedition was due entirely to the connivance of the Swahilis and the Somalis.
When we had finished with our lion-spearing expedition on the Uasin Gishu Plateau, numerous things had been stolen, and the Somalis insisted that Bill was the guilty party. A white man whom I had employed to take charge of the Nandi spearmen was not fond of Bill, and one day he ordered him to open his bag for inspection. Bill refused, and when the case was brought to me and I investigated it, Bill was so rebellious that we found it necessary to take him in hand for mild punishment. He ran from camp and I sent an askari after him. The askari overtook him, but he did not bring him back, because Bill had a long knife and he was prepared to use it to a finish. I realized that I would have to see it through, although my sympathies were all with Bill. We were near a government boma, and I turned my case over to the officials. Bill was arrested, put in jail, and we went on without him.
Some weeks later we were making the ascent of Mt. Kenia, back in Bill's old country, where Bill's services had been almost invaluable; and I continually felt the need and frequently an actual longing for Bill. We were up about ten thousand feet on Kenia, following an elephant trail. We came to an elephant pit in which some animal had been trapped and made its escape. I was busy reading the story, which was very simple. A giant hog had got into the pit and had worked with his tusks and feet at the sides of his prison until he had raised the bottom to a point which enabled him to scramble out and make his escape. I had been longing for Bill all morning because of certain troubles we were having with our boys. Just as we were about to leave the pit to continue our march up the mountain side I heard a voice behind me:
"Jambo, Bwana." ["Good morning, Master."]
I recognized Bill's voice. I turned and saw the most disreputable Bill that I had ever seen. His clothing was worn to shreds, his shoes were practically all gone, and the only thing about him that was perfectly all right was his grin. I wanted to hug him. I never knew just what happened at the boma except that after two weeks Bill got out, took up our trail, and followed us in all of our meanderings, and finally came up with us at the elephant pit in the gloomy bamboo forest. He had probably travelled a couple of hundred miles in overtaking us.
Bill's training as a tent boy, as I have said, was under Alli. Alli was a Swahili, and he was not only one of the most efficient tent boys and all-around men that we ever had in Africa, but he was especially valuable on safari because of his ability to entertain and amuse his fellow men around the campfire at night. Alli's sense of the dramatic was extremely keen. Night after night he would stand in the centre of a circle of admirers, telling them stories. We would often sit and watch him, and we had no difficulty in following his story, though we understood, at that time, no Swahili at all. He might perhaps be describing to his fellows some white man. He would describe his dress in detail—his tie, his shirt, his cuffs—and we were usually able to recognize the individual from the pantomime of his description. These stories were sometimes made up from the day's experience. For instance, it might be that during the day I had had some interesting experience or adventure the story of which Alli had gathered from the gun boys on their return, and when the work was finished in the evening Alli would give it to his audience in full detail—probably with some additions that furnished intense interest—often eliciting loud applause.
One time we had been on an elephant trail a day and a half. I lay beneath a tree, "all in" with spirillum fever, and felt that I could go no farther that day; so I ordered Bill to make camp. I was awakened from a doze by Bill, and when I asked him if my tent was ready he replied that it was not but that the hammock was. He had improvised a hammock which he ordered me to get into. He had doubled up the loads of the few porters so that four were released to carry me. Bill made the porters trot the ten miles to camp. It was nearly a month before Bill and I had recovered sufficiently to take up the elephant trails again.
Another time I was down with black-water fever in the Nairobi hospital. I had been booked to "go over the Divide" the night before, but somehow missed connections. I opened my eyes with my face to a window overlooking the porch, and there, looking over the rail, was Bill, like a faithful dog. It seemed to me that he stood there for hours with tears in his eyes staring at his master. A few days later he was allowed to come into my room. He approached the foot of the bed with a low "Jambo, Bwana."
I said, "It is all right, Bill; I'll soon be well."
With a great gulping sob, he burst into tears and bolted from the room.
At an African Big Game Dinner in New York almost ten years after I left Bill, one of my friends who had just returned from British East Africa came to me and announced that he knew all about me now, that he had had Bill in his safari, and Bill never lost an opportunity to tell him stories about Bwana Akeley. So I know that Bill is still loyal, and there is no one in all Africa whom I am more keen to see. I missed him constantly on my trip into the gorilla country, but because I entered Africa from the south when I headed for Kivu, I was forced to make up my safari without him.