Hunting the elephant in Africa, and other recollections of thirteen years' wanderings

Front matter

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Foreword

For three-quarters of a century there have been capital books written on big game hunting in Africa, — one of the best being the earhest, that by Captain CornwaUis Harris. Of course the only type of big game hunter who can write a book really worth reading is the hunter who is also at least to a certain extent an out-of-doors naturalist. In addition, he should thoroughly enjoy the strange desolate scenery of the African wilderness, and have a sympathetic understanding of the wild men who accompany him on most of his hunts. More and more of late years the best t3^e of big game hunter has tended to lay stress on the natural history and ethnology of the regions into which he has penetrated, and to make his book less and less a catalogue of mere slaughter.

Captain Stigand is one of the most noted of recent African big game hunters and explorers, and he is also a field naturalist of unusual powers. His studies of the tracks of animals have been almost unique. The only studies approaching them are those about the tracks of the game of continental Europe, in the German hunting books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has the keenest appreciation of the vivid and extraordinary beauty of the teeming African wild life, and has vi FOREWORD made close first-hand observations of the life histories of very many species of big game. In the past there have been many big game hunters who wrote overmuch of their own exploits, so that it becomes wearisome to read the endless lists of the animals that they killed. With Captain Stigand our quarrel is the direct reverse. He tells too little of his own achievements. He has, as I can myself testify, the reputation among all first-class African hunters of being himself one of the foremost. He is equally fond of venturing into unknown regions and of the chase of dangerous game, and is an adept in the especially difiicult art of wood and bush tracking and stalking. Three times he has been nearly killed by his quarry: once by a rhinoceros, once by a lion, and once by an elephant. It is unfortunate that he will not give us more minute and extended accounts of his own personal adventures — one of the excellent features of the books of that other great African hunter Selous is that he does give such extended accounts of his personal experiences. But it is as difiicult to get Captain Stigand to tell what he has himself done as it was to get General Grant to talk about his battles. After this manuscript was in my hands, Captain Stigand was nearly killed by an elephant. It was in the Lado, and he was taken down to Khartoum ; but his letters to his friends at home touched so lightly on the subject that they had to obtain all real information from outside sources.

FOREWORD vii

However, Captain Stigand more than makes up for this reticence about himself by the keenness and wide range of his observations about the life histories of the big game, and by his sympathetic and understanding appreciation of his native allies and companions. Modern biologists have grown to realize the prime scientific value of such first-hand field observations. There are but a limited number of men who combine the opportunity and the power to make these observations about big game. In this limited number Captain Stigand stands high.

Like Mr. Selous, Captain Stigand has made much field study of the subject of protective coloration as applied to big game. Scientific men are no more immune from hysteria and suggestion than other mortals, and every now and then there arises among them some fad which for quite a time carries even sane men off their feet. This has been the case with the latter-day development of the theories of protective coloration and of warning and recognition marks — but especially the first. Because some animals are undoubtedly protectively colored and take advantage of their coloration and are served by it, a number of naturalists have carried the theory to fantastic extremes. They have applied it where it does not exist at all, and have endeavored to extend it to a degree that has tended to make the whole theory ridiculous. Most good observers are now agreed that in the higher vertebrates, that viii FOREWORD is, in mammals and birds, the coloration of probably the majority of the species has little or nothing to do with any protective or concealing quality. There are some hundreds of species which we can say with certainty are protectively colored; there are a great number which we can say with certainty are not protectively colored. As regards others we are still in doubt. There have not been sufficiently extensive observations made of wild animals under natural conditions to enable us to speak with certainty as to just the part played by protective coloration among large numbers of the smaller mammals and birds. We are, however, able to speak with certainty as regards most big birds and especially most big mammals.

Captain Stigand has shown that as regards most of the big game of Africa protective coloration plays not even the smallest part in concealing them from their foes. This is especially true of the animals of the plains, the giraffe, zebra, hartebeest, oryx, eland, roan and sable antelope, wildebeest, topi, gazelle, and the like. As to these animals we have a sufficient number of first-hand observations to warrant us in saying that the extreme theories of Professor Poulton and the Messrs. Thayer have no basis whatever in fact. It is much to be regretted that there are not more scientific writers with the clear scientific judgment displayed by Messrs. DeWar and Finn in their "Making of Species."

The big game animals of the plains do not seek to

FOREWORD ix elude observation and are not helped by their color in the struggle for life. It is astounding that some of the closet theorists who have written on this matter should have failed to understand what the conditions actually are. For example, it has been seriously asserted that zebras, oryx, and the various plains antelope are protected by their colors at their drinking places. No such statement would ever have been made by any man who had ever seen these animals approach a drinking place. They make no attempt whatever to hide, and if they pay attention to cover at all, it is merely to avoid it, because it may hold their great enemy, the lion. They often come in great herds to drink. They are in motion of course — ■ otherwise they could not get down to drink — and anything in motion at once catches the eye of any beast hunter. They move forward, now at a walk, now at a trot ; halt, wheel, and run backwards ; and often do not come down to drink until there have been half a dozen such false alarms. Occasionally, especially if they suspect the presence of a foe, they make their final rush at furious speed, gulp the water hastily down, and rush off again. The coloring of the different species is infinitely varied, and this although they are living under precisely similar conditions. It is varied in some species even between the male and female, who live in the same herd. Yet those species like eland and roan antelope, whose general tint does often shade into the landscape, make no more effort to

FOREWORD hide than such animals as the sable and the wildebeest, whose coloration is advertising in the highest degree. There is no reason to suppose that the species of one type are helped or the species of the other type harmed by their coloration. The coloration of the zebra, giraffe, and of many of the antelopes so far as it has any effect is of a revealing or advertising quality. Of course there are circumstances under which any type of coloration, no matter of what conceivable kind, is concealing ; but with most of the African big game the coloration must reveal them much more often than it conceals them ; nevertheless the circumstances of their lives are such that neither the revealing nor the concealing quality of the different coloration patterns has any effect upon the life of the species.

Mr. Wallace does not go to the extremes of the ultra concealing coloration men. But in a recent volume he has strained the recognition mark theory to an impossible point by claiming that the horns of certain African antelopes are useful as such recognition marks. He gives several pictures of these antelopes. In most of the species thus pictured only the adult males have the horns which he describes, and it can hardly be seriously contended that there has been a development of "recognition" marks to the exclusion of all of the animals of one sex and of half of the animals of another, including all the young. Among the species Mr. Wallace enumerates as having horns which serve as

FOREWORD xi recognition marks are hartebeests. Now the hartebeests have relatively small and inconspicuous horns, whereas their bodily shape is unmistakable. They live under conditions which make it certain that they must see one another in the immense majority of cases at distances such that their shape would identify them and their horns would not, and in the remaining cases they would be so near that they could not fail to identify one another even if they were absolutely hornless.

When leaders of scientific thought develop theories of this kind it is natural that many good observers should be unconsciously influenced by the opinions of those to whom they had been trained to look up as authorities. In consequence, even good outdoors men have committed themselves to statements on this subject which will not stand investigation. It is one of the merits of Captain Stigand that he is among the observers who have set forth the facts so clearly as regards big game that there is now no excuse for further mistakes or misstatements in the matter.

In short. Captain Stigand has written a book which ought to appeal to every believer in vigor and hardihood, to every lover of wilderness adventure, and to every man who values at their proper worth the observations of an excellent field naturalist.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Elephant Hunting i

II. Native Trackers i8

Chapter I

There is something so fascinating and absorbing about elephant hunting that those who have done much of it can seldom take any interest again in any other form of sport. It seems so vastly superior to all other big game shooting that, once they have surrendered themselves to its charms, they cannot even treat any other form of hunting seriously. Everything else seems little and insignificant by comparison.

The lot of the elephant hunter is now a hard one. Girt about on all sides with exorbitant and restrictive licenses, and with most of the elephant now driven into unhealthy and impenetrable country, he must needs be an enthusiast who would become a devotee of this sport.

Sometimes when struggling waist deep through a swamp or forcing a way through tall grass and noxious vegetation reaching far above his head, with a blazing sun and in a fever-stricken locality, after having paid £50 for a license to shoot two elephant, he must think bitterly on the accident of birth which brought him some fifty years too late into this world. He would hardly be human if he did not think with envy of those who had been able to shoot an unlimited number on no license in a gloriously healthy climate, and moreover in country so open that the pursuit could sometimes be carried out on horseback. There is one thing, however, for which the modern hunter has to be thankful, and that is the accuracy, lightness, and power of his weapon; in aU others he is handicapped.

In the early days in the East African Highlands things must have been much the same as in the old days in South Africa, except that the healthier parts were never so famed for elephant as the more tropical and unhealthier climes of Uganda and the low country to the north.

The late A. H. Neumann must have had a glorious time in the Meru country and the Highlands north of Laikipia, the latter a place in which elephant are seldom met with now.

The difficult and forbidding country about Lake Rudolf is at least open and absolutely devoid of vegetation. The accounts of how elephant were met with day after day in perfectly open country by Count Teleki in his discovery of Lakes Rudolf and Stephanie, a country which is now almost elephantless, read almost like a fairy tale to modern hunters.

I have never met elephant in such open country as this, but, coming as I do amongst latter-day hunters, I have perhaps Httle to grumble about, as I have often found them in quite favorable localities where it is possible to move about easily. In another forty or fifty years perhaps it will sound equally like a fairy tale, that elephant could ever offer a clear and open shot at a hundred yards' range.

The only place in which I have come across elephant in a cold and temperate climate is on the Aberdare range, and there it is often too cold to be pleasant. Owing to the thickness of the vegetation, the scarcity of shootable bulls, and other circumstances I was not successful.

The first time I visited these hills was in 1906 in company with a brother officer, Captain Olivier. The elephant appeared to consist chiefly of herds of females and young and had a sufficiently bad reputation. Shortly before, a hunter had had his arm broken by being flung aside by an elephant, whilst others had spent unpleasant moments with them.

We decided to be very careful and cautious; so when we located a herd on the lower slopes we spent some time investigating them, and trying to spot a bull from a safe distance. They were screaming and trumpeting, a sign that they were chiefly females and young. They moved along the lower slopes inside the bush belt rapidly, and where they had crossed the numerous watercourses coming down from the mountain they had pushed aside bushes and branches which had closed again over their path. In such places as these it was often necessary to crawl on hands and knees to pass the obstructions.

Finally they moved up into the hills and started grazing, and we were not able to get a good look at them. The wind was bad, and we manoeuvred about for some time without seeing them, being only aware of their presence by the sounds of breaking branches. As they appeared to be slowly coming down the hill again, we decided to wait till they reached a spot in which the bushes were shorter and where we would have a better opportunity of being able to locate a bull if there was one with the herd.

When one has a license only permitting the shooting of two elephants, one has to be very wary in approaching big herds in thick country, and cannot afford to run the risk of being charged by or shooting a female or small bull.

Whilst we were waiting, sleet began to fall, and we took refuge under a big shrub. The sleet presently turned to hail, and we cowered under our shelter. Meanwhile we heard the elephant breaking branches and feeding uninterruptedly a short distance away. During the storm an elephant with about 30 or 40 pound tusks appeared not 40 yards from us down wind and apparently quite unconcerned at the sleet.

We tried to shoot him, but we could hardly see for hail, and it is a difficult matter shooting with another man when always accustomed to shoot by oneself. We each put a shot into him, but between us bungled him. He turned and raced to the edge of a steep nullah about a hundred yards off, and appeared to fall over the edge. We ran out from our retreat, but at that moment the hail redoubled in intensity, and came down the size of small marbles, so that we were absolutely unable to stand up to it. With one accord we turned and fled to a tree close by, and pressed ourselves against the trunk.

The hail continued for about an hour, we were bitterly cold, the altitude was 8000 feet, and we were only dressed in the usual hunting shirt and shorts. I got a fit of ague and my teeth chattered so that I could not speak. While in this condition I peered round the trunk of our tree, and there, close to where the elephant had been I saw two rhino standing and calmly surveying the scene. The noise of the hail on the trees and ground, and the chattering of my teeth prevented my being able to tell Olivier of my discovery, but I nudged him and he peered round and saw what I was trying to tell him.

I fired, and one of them dropped on his knees; when trying to reload, — I was shooting with a mannlicher, — a big hailstone got into the breech and jammed it. Olivier finished him off with a shot, whilst the second one turned and ran off.

Soon after this the hail stopped and we went to look at the place where we had last seen the elephant. We found that he had fallen, picked himself up again, and made off. The ground was so thickly carpeted with hail since he had passed that it was almost impossible to follow his spoor, and we were so cold and miserable that we abandoned it, and returned to camp.

Next day we went to take up the tracks ; the hail had melted to a certain extent, although still lying thick in the shade. The whole herd of about 40 animals had, however, passed over the spoor of the bull whilst the ground was wet and slippery, and had cut it up to such an extent that the original spoor was effectually obliterated.

We stopped a day or two longer in the vicinity and saw a herd again but could not find a shootable male in it. On another occasion we saw an elephant on an opposite hill. After marking down the position we spent an immense time pushing through a tangle of vegetation, and when we at last reached the spot we found that he had moved on, and we were not able to catch him up.

A few months later I was surveying in the same neighbourhood, and after a fortnight^s work decided that I was due for two off days at the rate of one Sunday per week. I got hold of two Kikuyu who knew the hills well, it being their trade to look for honey and take it down to sell in the villages on the east side of the range. I also took three porters to carry a waterproof sheet, a blanket, and a canteen for me. One of these porters was an old man, who, according to his own account, was so well fitted out with charms and spells that he could tackle any dangerous beast with impunity and move amongst them unharmed. I was told that if a lion was lying here and another there, two spots about live yards apart being indicated, he could come and sleep between them and continue on his way next day unmoved.

The honey-hunters led us by elephant paths up the hills till we reached the bamboo forest. The whole mountain is covered with a network of these paths and the back of practically every spur, ridge, and col is crowned by an elephant road following its highest part. In places we met salt licks, either banks of red earth or old white ant-hills, on which could be seen the tusk marks of elephant who had come to break off lumps of the salt earth. All these marks, however, were of females or young and there were no impressions of big tuskers.

We had just descended a steep bamboo-covered hillside, crossed a mountain torrent, and were slowly climbing the steep opposite side of the valley when we heard a noise from the slope behind us. On looking back we at first only saw the bamboo moving by some unseen agency. Every now and again there would be a trembling in a clump of trees and the top of a stem would bend over and disappear with a cracking sound. On looking through my glasses I could distinguish here and there a black trunk soaring upwards to reach for a high branch, and occasionally a glimpse of part of a black body between the bamboo clumps.

After watching for some time I made out what I took to be three bulls on the right of the herd. Knowing that I should not, in all probability, get another sight of them, once I left my coign of vantage on the hillside, I took careful stock of their position and of any big trees on the way to serve as landmarks. Then I descended to the bottom of the valley again, crossed the stream, and began the steep toil up the slope. When I finally arrived at the spot at which I had seen them there was nothing but their spoor left; the whole herd had moved on and there was not even the noise of cracking bamboo to be heard. I followed the spoor a little way, and, as I could see or hear nothing of them, I returned to the porters and arranged a site for our camp. Having done this I went after the elephant again, taking the Kikuyus with me, and we came up with them about sunset, busily feeding in a valley covered with bamboo forest. It was too late now to try and find where the males were, so we left them and returned to camp.

The waterproof sheet was pitched on the side of the hill in the middle of the elephant path, there being no flat spot in which to put it and indeed no other place clear enough. I brewed myself some cocoa, which was very comforting, for the night was chilly, and we were at an altitude of about ten thousand feet. The rest of the repast consisted of cold meat, biscuits, and some honey the Kikuyu had found during the day. After rolling myself in my blanket and making myself as comfortable as I could on the very sloping pathway, I fell asleep, thinking how awkward it would be for us if the elephant wanted to pass by this same way during the night.

However, they did not come our way, but next morning we found them still breaking bamboos in the valley in which we had left them the evening before. We could not see them, and, as the wind was blowing dovm the valley we followed along one side of the slope and descended below them. Here we found a network of fresh tracks, quantities of elephant having been feeding off the bamboo, which was greener in the valley bottoms, whilst the upper slopes and the backs of the ridges were covered with old bamboo forest.

We had nearly reached the stream at the bottom of the valley, and we could still hear the herd busily feeding up-stream on our right when there was a stampede to our left, and we could also hear another herd beyond them charging off, crashing and crackling through the bamboos. We waited till the sounds had passed away in the distance, and still we could hear the crack, crack of bamboo from our herd feeding undisturbed.

lo HUNTING THE ELEPHANT IN AFRICA

We cautiously made our way up the valley towards them till we could locate them by the moving of the bamboos. As they were not to be seen we circled round to try and get a view and mark down a shootable bull from the hillside above them. As we did this we gave our wind to yet another herd who went crashing off with such a clatter and crackling of bamboo stems knocking against each other and breaking that we thought it must disturb our herd, but when we listened we again heard the reassuring crack, crack, showing them to be still grazing. Again we circled round, and this time stampeded a fifth herd.

We then descended a gentle slope towards our herd. A few tall junipers were dotted about in the bamboo here. I was with one of the Kikuyu and the old porter; the others I had left behind on first hearing the elephant. The old porter climbed up a tall and conveniently sloping tree to reconnoitre. Whilst he was up the tree I could hear a herd coming towards us, having evidently become uneasy from hearing the other one stampeding. I took refuge behind a tree with the Kikuyu as they appeared. They passed at about fifteen yards' distance, one female or unsizable male after another.

Now a tree is all right to stand behind when it is between you and the elephant, but when some are one side and some another, one begins to wish for a tree to grow up behind one as well as in front. So when about five had passed close by and were standing just

ELEPHANT HUNTING ii

behind me, and the remainder of the herd began to come towards my tree with the intention of passing on both sides, I felt it incumbent on me to make some sort of demonstration. The next elephant was a young male who came swinging along straight towards our tree, and there were others on each side of him, so at about ten yards I planked him in the forehead and he dropped dead, whilst the herd turned and went back the way they had come.

I was just looking at the fallen elephant and regretting the accuracy of my aim when another herd appeared on the scene, so I ran back to the shelter of my tree whilst they trooped past at thirty yards' distance. In the middle of the herd was a sizable bull, but he was surrounded on all sides by females and young. I got a momentary clear view of his head, and had a snap shot, and he fell. Instantly the rest closed round him, heads inwards, to lift him up with their tusks, and there was nothing to see but a ring of sterns. I ran out from my shelter to try and get another shot, but the next moment they had got him on to his feet and, surrounding him on all sides, so that it was impossible to get even a glimpse of him; the whole herd bore down on me.

They were not charging, they were only stampeding, and I happened to be in the direction they had chosen. I did not wait, but turned to run, and looking over my shoulder saw a perfect avalanche of flesh bearing down upon me.

As often happens with elephant, they did not go far, but suddenly stopped dead and listened. I looked round and saw that they had stopped, but could not see the wounded male. Just by me was a small tree with sloping trunk and a fork about twelve feet up. I thought that they were unlikely to come my way again, but would go off another way now, and that if I could reach this fork I might be able to get a glimpse of the bull over the backs of the others. It was a ridiculous thing to do, because twelve feet is just about level with the elephant's eye, and one would have been a very conspicuous object there.

Anyhow, I commenced clambering up this tree as best I could with my rifle in my hand. There was another wild rush in my direction, and just as they reached within a few yards of my tree I caught hold of a rotten branch, which broke, and I fell heavily to the ground, not more than a few yards from the feet of the nearest elephant.

This strange fruit dropping off the tree so startled them that they swerved away at right angles and crashed into the bamboo, pushing and jostling to get in front of each other. As they could only pass between the clumps and they all chose the same two clumps, it was almost half a minute before the last of the herd had passed. The hind view of them charging and pushing each other, all trying to get the same path, reminded me more than anything of a scrum in a Rugby football match.

I saw my wounded bull again, reeling like a drunken man, but by the time I had picked myself up and got my rifle he had passed, and there were a number of small ones bringing up the rear who successfully blocked the view.

The sleeper with lion during these events had taken himself to the top of his tree, from which safe eminence he directed operations. The Kikuyu, however, had remained close by me during the first part of these proceedings and only made himself scarce when we found ourselves in the road of the herd. He shortly appeared, and we went back to the dead elephant, and the old man descended from his perch, but no sooner had he come down than a herd came rushing through the bamboos towards us and we ran again. They came up to the dead elephant and then returned.