It would be difficult to picture East Africa without her vivid abundance of Nature, for it is “the creatures of the earth” that for ever astonish all who enter this country of vast wildernesses and few habitations of white men.

In this connection I will endeavour to describe some of the forms of wild life that were most closely associated with camp and trek during the campaign.

To begin with, if I may bring them into the category of wild things, there were the natives of the country—who aided us tremendously during the campaign, and without whose aid it would have been well-nigh impossible for our columns to traverse the country. Broadly speaking, we had to deal with four distinct types of native—the Swahili-speaking tribes, the Kavirondos, the Kikuyus, and the Masai. The Swahili-speaking natives, whose tribes were numerous and included such fighting peoples as the Whahamba, Diruma, and Nandi, were most generally recruited from the coast areas; they were the most intelligent and adaptable natives in our service. Many of them made splendid Askaris, while as trained porters, for machine-guns, signalling sections, and stretcher-bearers, they were extremely useful, and many thousands were utilised for such work. Those natives were extraordinarily keen on their drills—in which they were daily instructed, whenever opportunity arose, to ensure combined movement without confusion, and quick obedience to orders—and it was a common thing to see them, after a parade had been dismissed, continue their drill within their own lines, under the direction of one of their enthusiastic headmen. They were simple, good-natured people, those blacks, and very easy to deal with if one took the trouble to understand them and their language, and ruled with a strong yet considerate hand. But they were unfortunate, and at a loss, when they came under the charge of strangers who had not had opportunity to understand them or their language—which often occurred, owing to loss of experienced men through sickness or casualties, and their replacement by men freshly arrived in the country.

When we entered German territory many Swahili natives, of the inhabited districts we passed through, were hired by all ranks as personal servants, and thenceforth became followers of the column. Those were usually boys of from fifteen years to twenty-five years. They subsisted on any kind of diet, and often foraged for scraps in camp and for fruits in the bush, with much of the instinct of animals. Those who were ignorant were taught to cook, and to do the many little duties of body-servant; and were a great boon to trek-tired men when camp was reached and they were available to cut grass for the bed on the ground, fetch water, kindle camp fires, and help in the cooking of food.

The Kavirondos from the Lake District, and the Kikuyus from the Nairobi area, were used almost exclusively for carriers and camp cleaners, and were perhaps less intelligent than the average Swahili native, and of lower type. Nevertheless, some of them were very useful, and I have used picked men from both tribes as higher-grade machine-gun porters, and found them come very close to the standard of the good Swahili.

The warlike nomad Masai roamed the upland grass-lands of their great reserves and held aloof from warfare. Only as guides in the early days on the frontier were they of usefulness to our forces, and at that time they were often seen about our camps. They were remarkable for their knowledge of direction in a country of few apparent landmarks, and for the speed at which they could cover long distances, with their ungainly shuffling run.

I turn now to the big game of the country.

I know no more interesting and wonderful sight than that we often witnessed, and that may be to-day witnessed, on the Kajiado Plains, and in the neighbourhood of the Guaso Nyero valley. Not even the wonderful migration of the vast bands of caribou in the far Canadian North can surpass the sight of game one will see here in a day. In a single day’s march herd after herd of game may be passed feeding plainly in view in the open grass veldt—herds of wildebeeste, hartebeeste, zebra, and Grant’s gazelle, are the most plentiful; and small groups of Thomson’s gazelle, oryx antelope, giraffe, and ostrich. While in the Guaso Nyero valley it may be your good fortune to sight a large herd of buffalo.

Eland antelope I only remember seeing in two localities—at Maktau on the frontier, and in the Rufiji valley.

Within German territory no such vast numbers of game were encountered: but that may have been because we did not again travel through open veldt of the same nature as contained the herds on the frontier. Most game, in German territory, were seen in the low-lying Mgeta and Rufiji valleys. At Tulo and Kissaki, some species of game were plentiful. At Tulo, reedbuck, waterbuck, mpala, and wart-hog were numerous, while a number of hippopotamus haunted the sluggish Mwuha River. At Kissaki, bushbuck, Harvey’s duiker, and wart-hog were the principal small game, while here, and out to the great Ruaha and Rufiji Rivers, the territory was renowned for elephant.

Elephant tracks, old and new, were everywhere in the neighbourhood of Kissaki, but animals were seldom seen, since they were very wary, and extraordinarily quick in scenting danger. If they detect human scent—which they will pick up a mile or more down-wind—they are at once alarmed and fast travel away from the danger, very often covering great distances before reassured that they have reached a zone of safety.

At the Rufiji River a remarkable number of hippopotamus were seen. North of Kibambawe village there is a chain of lakes no great distance apart, and I have passed one of those lakes, Lake Tágalala, when there have been scores of hippo, visible in the water. I should think the marsh-banked Rufiji River throughout its course teems with those strange, cumbersome, uncomely animals.

Rhinoceros were perhaps most plentiful on the frontier, and were often encountered when patrolling the thick bush, or bush-covered hill-country. During the many times I have met those animals at close quarters—and I have stumbled across as many as four separate animals in a single night when on particular reconnaissance—I have never known them to charge seriously when not wounded. I have experienced them rush straight on to the sound of a stick crackling underfoot, but, when they drew close and got my wind, they veered off instantly to one side, and escaped in the bush rapidly and fearfully. I remarked my experiences to Selous, for they were not what I had been led to expect, and he corroborated them by saying that he also had never seen one charge a man when unmolested.

Selous, too, in discussing lions, in his quiet, practical way, laid very little stress on the dangers of hunting those animals. He said there was little danger of their ever venturing to attack unless wounded, and then the greatest danger was in going into long grass to search for an animal that in all probability would be lying there concealed, and at bay, and ready to spring on an over-hasty pursuer. Selous’s advice was that, “in hunting lions you should try to get a clean clear shot at your quarry, at fairly close quarters, and to shoot to kill with your first shot.” “Don’t attempt snapshots and wild shooting, which only lead to a bad hit, and a dangerous lion at bay to be dealt with.”

The eerie roar of lions was often heard at night outside our camps, or near to the bivouac of a lonely outpost, and sometimes, through the day, they were seen by our outlying pickets; but I only know of three being shot by members of our battalion during our service in East Africa.

I turn now to the bird life of the country. In the bush, in the neighbourhood of water, birds, of various kinds, were often plentiful, and were remarkable, as a rule, for their brilliant plumage. But they were seldom conspicuous in numbers in the open, for, as a rule, they kept closely within the cover of the bush and jungle grass; and on this account I have often heard unobservant men remark on how little bird life they saw during the campaign in East Africa. Their unobtrusiveness, too, was added to by the fact that very few African birds are songsters.

I think the bird most commonly seen throughout the campaign was the Red-eyed Turtle Dove (Streptopelia semitorquata), and their soft cooing in the quiet evenings was certainly the outstanding note of bird life in the country. It is a truly African sound—a sound which one who has heard it will always associate with African fantasy—and which sometimes strikes the ear as most pleasant and soothing, and, at other times, haunts you with its persistent hint of native sadness.

A more remarkable call, but only heard in certain localities, was the strange bottle-bubbling echoing call of the Lark-heeled Cuckoo—a largish partridge-barred brown bird with a long tail—which was usually uttered at dark, or through the night, by a lone bird perched somewhere on the topmost twig of an outstanding bush or tree, sending his soft note-clear call out over the ocean of misty leaf-tops; where it would be picked up and responded to by another like sentinel at some other distant signal-post.

The most common bird to enter our encampments was the White-necked Raven, a bird similar in habit and colour to the British Rook, but with a large white mark on the nape of the neck. He was the chief scavenger of our camps, though, sometimes, he was ably aided by the Egyptian Kite, one, or a pair, of which species was commonly with us.

Common varieties of the neat little mouse-like Waxbills were, on occasions when we were near to permanent habitations, the only “sparrows” to visit camp.

In odd hours, when the chance occurred, I, and one or two others who became interested, collected some specimens of bird life, chiefly with catapult and trap, in the absence of better weapons, and, notwithstanding the difficulties of storage and transport of the skins, at the end of the campaign had secured the specimens below recorded; which, along with a collection of butterflies, eventually, by purchase, passed into the magnificent collection in Lord Rothschild’s museum at Tring, where such splendid scientific research in world-wide zoology is being extensively and actively prosecuted.

The correct nomenclature of all species has been very kindly formulated by Dr. E. J. O. Hartert, Director of the Tring Museum.

LIST OF SPECIES COLLECTED

This was, under the circumstance of soldier life, but a small collection, but it is interesting to note that they proved useful and of interest. Dr. Hartert wrote concerning them:

I collected also during our travels some specimens of plants for Dr. A. B. Rendle of the British Museum, and was fortunate to secure some interesting species, four of which were new, and not formerly recorded, and have been described in the Journal of Botany (October, 1916), while others, unfortunately, were too fragmentary to determine, or to give more than a genus name, though nine of them are possibly new species.

In collecting in this way, in odd hours, one was constantly moving about, and to that, strange as it may seem, I ascribe my good fortune in keeping fit and free of sickness during the first two years of service in the tropics. I feel sure, even if one feels listless and exhausted, that it is a mistake to lie about camp in the oppressive heat when off duty, pestered by flies and camp dust, and brooding over your discomforts. Some of the men of the battalion became interested in this searching for curious things, and, after a time, it was noticeable that they were the ones most contented with the hardships they endured, and among the fittest on trek. Africa had undoubtedly the power to depress men’s spirits in no light manner, and thus, to find something to do and think about, in any interval of idleness, was a good thing.