African game trails

Front matter

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Foreword

"I SPEAK of Africa and golden joys"; the joy of wandering through lonely lands; the joy of hunting the mighty and terrible lords of the wilderness, the cunning, the wary, and the grim.

In these greatest of the world's great hunting-grounds there are mountain peaks whose snows are dazzling under the equatorial sun; swamps where the slime oozes and bubbles and festers in the steaming heat; lakes like seas; skies that burn above deserts where the iron desolation is shrouded from view by the wavering mockery of the mirage; vast grassy plains where palms and thorn-trees fringe the dwindling streams; mighty rivers rushing out of the heart of the continent through the sadness of endless marshes; forests of gorgeous beauty, where death broods in the dark and silent depths.

There are regions as healthy as the northland; and other regions, radiant with bright-hued flowers, birds and butterflies, odorous with sweet and heavy scents, but, treacherous in their beauty, and sinister to human life. On the land and in the water there are dread brutes that feed on the flesh of man; and among the lower things, that crawl, and fly, and sting, and bite, he finds swarming foes far more evil and deadly than any beast or reptile; foes that kill his crops and his cattle, foes before which he himself perishes in his hundreds of thousands.

X FOREWORD

The dark-skinned races that Hve in the land vary widely. Some are warlike, cattle-owning nomads; some till the soil and live in thatched huts shaped like beehives; some are fisherfolk; some are ape-like naked savages, who dwell in the woods and prey on creatures not much wilder or lower than themselves.

The land teems with 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 the 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. It is a never-ending pleasure to gaze at the great herds of buck as they move to and fro in their myriads; as they stand for their noontide rest in the quivering heat haze; as the long files come down to drink at the watering-places; as they feed and fight and rest and make love.

The hunter who wanders through these lands sees sights which ever afterward remain fixed in his mind. He sees the monstrous river-horse snorting and plunging beside the boat; the giraffe looking over the tree tops at the nearing horseman; the ostrich fleeing at a speed that none may rival; the snarling leopard and coiled python, with their

FOREWORD xi

lethal beauty; the zebras, barking in the moonlight, as the laden caravan passes on its night march through a thirsty land. In after years there shall come to him memories of the lion's charge; of the gray bulk of the elephant, close at hand in the sombre woodland; of the buffalo, his sullen eyes lowering from under his helmet of horn; of the rhinoceros, truculent and stupid, standing in the bright sunlight on the empty plain.

These things can be told. But there are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm. There is delight in the hardy life of the open, in long rides rifle in hand, in the thrill of the fight with dangerous game. Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.

Theodore Roosevelt.

Khartoum, March 15, 1910.

Long'itude

Eist

Map showing Mr. Roosevelt's route and hunting trips in Africa

Chapter I Page

A Railroad Through the Pleistocene , . , . i

CHAPTER n On an East African Ranch c . . 38

CHAPTER HI Lion Hunting on the Kapiti Plains 67

CHAPTER IV On Safari. Rhino and Giraffe 94

CHAPTER V Juja Farm; Hippo and Leopard 123

CHAPTER VI A Buffalo Hunt by the Kamiti 149

CHAPTER VII Trekking Through the Thirst to the Sotik 174

CHAPTER VIII Hunting in the Sotik 204

xiii xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

PAGE

CHAPTER X Elephant Hunting on Mount Kenia 271

CHAPTER XI

The Guaso Nyero ; A River of the Equatorial Desert . . 323

CHAPTER XII To THE Uasin Gishu 374

CHAPTER XIII Uganda, and the Great Nyanza Lakes 426

CHAPTER XIV The Great Rhinoceros of the Lado 454

CHAPTER XV Down the Nile ; The Giant Eland , 504

Appendix A [Personal Acknowledgments] 535

Appendix B [Lists of Mammals; Heller's Notes] .... 536

Appendix C [Loring's Notes] 545

Appendix D [Biological Survey of Mount Kenia] .... 550

Appendix E [Protective Coloration in Animals] 552

Appendix F [The Pigskin Library] 569

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mr. Roosevelt and one of his big lions Frontispiece

PAGE

Map showing Mr. Roosevelt's route and hunting trips in Africa . . . . xii

Map of the Uganda Railway, British East Africa. Total length from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to Port Florence on Lake Victoria Nyanza, 581

miles 3

We would gather on deck around Selous to listen to tales of strange adventures 5

A baobab-tree, Mombasa 6

Kermit Roosevelt and R. J. Cuninghame preparing to take pictures .... 7

F. C. Selous 8

R. J. Cuninghame, known to the Swahilis as "Bwana Medivu," the master

with the beard 9

Mr. Roosevelt saying good-by in the Mombasa station 11

Train on the Uganda Railway 13

Mr. Roosevelt, Governor Jackson, Mr. Selous, and Dr. Mearns, riding in front

of the engine on the way to Kapiti 15

Mr. Roosevelt and some members of his caravan 17

A large American flag was floating over my own tent 21

The askaris and porters drawn up in line to greet us 22

Our first camp, Kapiti Plains station, on a bare, dry plain covered with brown

and withered grass 24

Porters and their tents 27

My first "tommy" (Thomson's gazelle) 31

A herd of zebra and hartebeest .... 33

Head of the wildebeest bull shot by Mr. Roosevelt 34

Mi Roosevelt in Africa in his hunting costume 35

JCV xvi ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Sir Alfred, Lady, and Miss Pease, on ranch steps with rhino and lion skulls and

lion skins 39

Mr. Roosevelt and INIedlicott at the spot where we nooned on the first (unsuccessful) day of lion hunting in the Lucania Donga 43

Tree with Wakamba beenives, Kitanga 45

Percival and his oxen starting off for the giraffes 46

Sir Alfred with cheetah cub, Botha 47

Klopper and Prinsloo, the two Boers working on Sir Alfred's ranch ... 49

Heads of first two big lions shot by Mr. Roosevelt 51

Some of the naturalists' porters and skinners 53

Vulture raven or white-necked raven 61

Kermit Roosevelt, Sir Alfred Pease, and Mr. Roosevelt at the carcass of first

big lion 69

Clifford Hill's Kikuyu ostrich boys as they beat the tall grass for lion on the third day of lion hunting at Killima (Hill) Ugami, when we got two large

and one small one. The boys had their bows and arrows for protection . 73

Mr. Roosevelt weighing a lioness (shot by him) which the porters brought in

entire amid great rejoicings and chantings 75

One of the native beaters and gun-bearers 79

The start for the first day's lion hunting 81

View of rock where we lunched on the day we got the first four lions ... 82

Noon at Ugami. Sir Alfred Pease bending over behind Mr. Roosevelt ... 83

"Ben" worrying the second big lion before it died, and when we were afraid

it could yet charge 87

Kermit Roosevelt and cheetah shot by him 89

The third male lion shot by Mr. Roosevelt 91

The caravan on safari at Potha 95

The American flag was always at the head or near the head of the line of

march 9^

Stopping for luncheon at Bondoni rocks 97

Making camp at Bondoni 100

ILLUSTRATIONS xvii

PAGE

A tribe of the Wakamba with their chief (in khaki with a golf cap) that came

to present Mr. Roosevelt with a sheep near Kilimakiu 102

Skinning the eland 105

Before he could get quite all the way round in his headlong rush to reach us,

I struck him with my left-hand barrel 107

Percival on his way to Kapiti station with trophies iii

Masai Elmoran, Machakos road station 113

A young bull giraffe, shot by Mr. Roosevelt at Kilimakiu 115

Mr. Roosevelt, Captain Slatter, and rhino shot by Mr. Roosevelt at Kilimakiu 117

The Percival family iig

Group of skin-laden mules passing by the Bondoni waterhole on their way to

the railroad 121

The house at Juja Farm 125

Masai warriors near McMillan's ranch on the Mua hills 127

Head of a waterbuck bull shot by Kermit Roosevelt 129

The python 131

Kermit Roosevelt and the leopard 133

Native boy carrying in a leopard shot by Kermit Roosevelt near Juja Ranch . 134

Without any warning, out he came and charged straight at Kermit, who

stopped him when he was but six yards off 135

Judd permanganating the beater who was mauled by the leopard . . . . 137

The second rhino 139

Group — Towing the hippo shot by Mr. Roosevelt. Landing the hippo. . . 143

Mr. Roosevelt and Bwana Engozi (Judd) 145

Mrs. McMillan and cheetah 147

Heatley with two leopard cubs he caught 149

Falls on the Rewero River 151

Wildebeest bull shot by Kermit Roosevelt at Kamiti 153

• xviii ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Whydali birds' dancing-ring 155

Heatley and a buffalo path 157

Mr. Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt with the first buffalo 161

Cuninghame, Kermit, Mr. Roosevelt, Heller, and Heatley at buffalo camp . 163

It was not a nice country in which to be charged by the herd, and for a

moment things trembled in the balance 165

Third buffalo bull shot in the swamp 168

Porters dancing when breaking camp at Kamiti 171

Heller preparing to send off game heads of the first five weeks' shooting . . 172

Mr. Roosevelt after luncheon with the head missionary 175

Group — The safari on the march. Ulyate and eland calf brought in by Masai 176

An askari on duty 177

Group — The ox wagons trekking through the scrub. The porter-harper and

his native harp 180

A halt 183

Every one rested under the fly-tent at noon in the trek through the thirst . . 184

Watering the oxen. Taking their last drink for three days ...... 185

Group — Waxbills. Courser. Elephant shrev/. Springhaas. Dikdik Serval

kitten. Banded mongoose. Colobus monkey 187

A wounded wildebeest 188

A Colobus monkey 189

Group — A wounded tommy. Head of the old bull eland 191

Giant Masai warriors and an average-sized porter 193

Topi (shot by Kermit) 194

The big lion shot by Kermit 19S

Tarlton, and cheetah shot by Kermit Roosevelt . . 196

A wart-hog shot by Kermit Roosevelt 198

Extreme form of Roberts' gazelle .,.,.,,.,,..,.. 200

ILLUSTRATIONS xix

PAGE

Group — Masai with stretching-stone in ear. A Masai woman and to to . . 201

The safari fording a stream 207

Group — A rhino family. Rhino surveying the safari. "In the middle of the

African plain, deep in prehistoric thought" 209

Giraffe at home 211

Bluffs near one of our camping-places 212

Striped hyena trapped by Heller 213

Mr. Roosevelt, rhino, and bustard shot from rhino 216

Wildebeest at home 219

Rhino and young 221

A giant candelabra euphorbia by our camp 225

Group — The wounded lioness ready to charge. The wounded lioness . . 227

He came on steadily — ears laid back and uttering terrific coughing grunts . 229

Mr. Roosevelt, Tarlton, and the big lion shot by Mr. Roosevelt 233

A rhino "coming on" 235

Masai guides on Sotik trip 237

The rhino stood looking at us with his big ears cocked forward 240

Rhino shot from Salt-marsh camp, of the Keitloa type, with rear horn longer

than front horn 241

A sick Masai boy and his father 247

The waterhole we struck after having made a dry camp on our trek to Nai-

vasha 249

Camp at Lake Naivasha 250

Water-lilies, Lake Naivasha 251

Group — What one has to shoot at when after hippo on water. Mr. Roosevelt's

hippo charging open-mouthed 253

Charged straight for the boat, with open jaws, bent on mischief 255

Group — Black-backed jackal. Tree hyrax. Big gazelle buck. Pelican.

Spotted genet. White-tailed mongoose. Porcupine. Baboon .... 259

XX ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Mr. Roosevelt and Cuninghame discussing the next few days' march over a

wildebeest shot by Mr. Roosevelt 263

Bringing the big bull hippo to shore 265

Mr. Roosevelt's big bull hippo 268

Meru porters carrying trophy ivory . . . . • 271

A waterbuck 275

Creek on slopes of Kenia near first elephant camp 276

Kikuyu Ngama, Neri 279

Kikuyu village near first elephant camp 282

West side of Kenia's peak, taken at an altitude of 15,000 feet 285

Falls on slope of Kenia near first elephant camp 288

Elephant trail in bamboo 289

Group — Camping after death of the first bull. The porters exult over the

death of the bull 291

The 'Ndorobo who had hysterics on the elephant 293

The chief who acted as guide through shambas country near first elephant camp 296

Tree-ferns on slopes of Kenia near first elephant camp 299

Suliman Na Meru, one of the elephant guides 300

Trunk of giant fig-tree in Kenia forest 303

The charging bull elephant 305

The first bull elephant 309

Mr. Roosevelt's description of one of the elephant pictures — written on the

back of it 312

A herd of elephant in an open forest of high timber 313

Group — The herd getting uneasy. The same herd on the eve of charging . 315

A watch-tower in Meru shambas 319

Mr. Roosevelt's and Kermit's camp near which they got the rhino and elephant 320

A cow elephant 321

Kikuyu warrior 324

ILLUSTRATIONS xxi

PAGE

Two Kikuyu boys 327

My boma where I was camped alone 328

An oryx bull 330

Ivory-nut palms on the Guaso Nyero 334

A Boran camp 339

A domesticated young male eland at Meru 343

Helping a donkey across the stream 347

A mixed herd of Grevy's and Burchell's zebras 352

Group — The old bull Athi giraffe. The reticulated giraffe 355

Dressing the porter who was tossed by the rhino 363

Group — Black-and-white crow. Sparrow-lark. Ant wheatear. Ostrich nest.

Rusty rock-rat. Sand-rat. African hedgehbg. "Mole-rat." .... 371

Juma Yohari with the impalla killed by Kermit Roosevelt at Lake Hannington 377

Mr. Roosevelt in a bamboo forest 381

Kassitura with the roan antelope 384

A hyena by flashlight . . 387

Yohari with the waterbuck shot by Kermit Roosevelt 391

Tarlton and singsing shot by Mr. Roosevelt 394

Juma Yohari with Nilotic bushbuck 397

Round the elephant 402

The hyena, which was swollen with elephant meat, had gotten inside the huge

body 403

Mr. Roosevelt and some of the Nandi warriors 406

Rearing, the lion struck the man, bearing down the shield . . .... 411

The Nandi dance around the speared lion 413

Mr. Roosevelt photographing the speared lion 415

As he fell he gripped a spear -head in his jaws with such tremendous force that

he bent it double 416 xxii ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The spears that did the trick 417

Sailinye, the Dorobo, who was with Kermit Roosevelt when he shot the bongo,

holding up the bongo head 421

Dance of boys of the Nyika tribe in honor of the chief's son who had just died 424

Kavirondos returning from market 426

Group — Kavirondos going down to fill their water-jars. Kavirondo bullock

wagons 427

Entebbe, looking over lake 429

The Indian elephant at Entebbe 430

Colonel Roosevelt at Mother Paul's Mission 433

Mother Paul's band composed of mission boys 436

Colonel Roosevelt at the Mission of the White Fathers 437

The situtunga shot by Kermit Roosevelt at Kampalla 439

Road through banana shambas, Uganda 441

The dead tusker 446

Porters entering camp at Hoima 449

Cow-herons and Angola ox on the bank of Lake Victoria Nyanza .... 450

Fac-simile of half of the last page of Chapter XIII of Mr. Roosevelt's manuscript 452

The "white" rhino 455

Sail-boat at Wadelai Landing 458

Rhino camp, Lado Enclave 459

Group — Crocodile. Nile bushbuck. Cobus maria. Baker's roan. Ground

hornbill. Wagtail. Nightjar. Fish eagle 461

Camp in the Lado 463

Veldt pool, rhino camp 465

The papyrus afire 469

Group — Cow square-nosed rhino of the Lado, shot by Mr. Roosevelt. Rhino

of the usual type, with prehensile lip, shot on the Sotik by Mr. Roosevelt . 472

ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii

PAGE

We walked up to within about twenty yards 477

Marabous and vultures. The undertakers 479

Mr. Roosevelt and Quentin Grogan 481

Mr. Roosevelt with kob, shot at rhino camp 484

The cow and calf square-nosed rhino under the tree after being disturbed by

the click of the camera 487

The calf, which was old enough to shift for itself, refused to leave the body . . 488

When alarmed they failed to make out where the danger lay 494

One remained standing, but the other deliberately sat down upon its haunches

like a dog 495

The monitor lizard robbing a crocodile's nest 499

Arrival at Gondokoro 509

The return to Redjaf, Belgian askari in the rear 511

Giant bull eland 516

Bari at Mongalla 518

Troops at Mongalla 519

Mr. Roosevelt with the Belaeniceps rex, or whale-billed stork, at Lake No . . 526

American Mission, Sobat River 528

Slatin Pasha, from the roof of the Khalifa's palace, shows how he made his

escape from Omdurman 529

Mr. Roosevelt on his camel 531

He loved the great game as if he were their father.

— Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Tell me the course, the voyage, the ports and the new stars.

— Bliss Carman.

CHAPTER I A RAILROAD THROUGH THE PLEISTOCENE

The great world movement which began with the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, and which has gone on with ever-increasing rapidity and complexity until our own time, has developed along a myriad lines of interest. In no way has it been more interesting than in the way in which it has brought into sudden, violent, and intimate contact phases of the world's life history which would normally be separated by untold centuries of slow development. Again and again, in the continents new to peoples of European stock, we have seen the spectacle of a high civilization all at once thrust into and superimposed upon a wilderness of savage men and savage beasts. Nowhere, and at no time, has the contrast been more strange and more striking than in British East Africa during the last dozen years.

The country lies directly under the equator; and the hinterland, due west, contains the huge Nyanza lakes, vast inland seas which gather the head-waters of the White Nile. This hinterland, with its lakes and its marshes, its snow-capped mountains, its high, dry plateaus, and its forests of deadly luxuriance, was utterly unknown to white men half a century ago. The map of Ptolemy in the second century of our era gave a more accurate view of the lakes, mountains, and head-waters of the Nile than the maps published at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century, just before Speke, Grant, and Baker made their great trips of exploration and adventure. Behind these explorers came others; and then adventurous missionaries, traders, and elephant hunters; and many men, whom risk did not daunt, who feared neither danger nor hardship, traversed the country hither and thither, now for one reason, now for another, now as naturahsts, now as geographers, and again as government officials or as mere wanderers who loved the wild and strange life which had survived over from an elder age.

Most of the tribes were of pure savages; but here and there were intrusive races of higher type; and in Uganda, beyond the Victoria Nyanza, and on the head-waters of the Nile proper, lived a people which had advanced to the upper stages of barbarism, which might almost be said to have developed a very primitive kind of semi-civilization. Over this people — for its good fortune — Great Britain established a protectorate; and ultimately, in order to get easy access to this new outpost of civilization in the heart of the Dark Continent, the British Government built a railroad from the old Arab coast town of Mombasa westward to Victoria Nyanza.

This railroad, the embodiment of the eager, masterful, materialistic civilization of to-day, was pushed through a region in which nature, both as regards wild man and wild beast, did not and does not differ materially from what it was in Europe in the late Pleistocene. The comparison is not fanciful. The teeming multitudes of wild creatures, the stupendous size of some of them, the terrible nature of others, and the low culture of many of the savage tribes, especially of the hunting tribes, substantially reproduces the conditions of life in Europe as it was led by our ancestors ages before the dawn of anything that could be called civilization. The great beasts that now live in East Africa were in that by-gone age represented by close kinsfolk in Europe; and in many places, up to the present moment, African man, absolutely naked, and armed as our early paleolithic ancestors were armed, lives among, and on, and in constant dread of, these beasts, just as was true of the men to whom the cave lion was a nightmare of terror, and the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros possible but most formidable prey.

Map of the Uganda Railway, British East Africa. Total length from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to Port Florence on Lake Victoria Nyanza, 581 miles

This region, this great fragment out of the long-buried past of our race, is now accessible by railroad to all who care to go thither; and no field more inviting offers itself to hunter or naturalist, while even to the ordinary traveller it teems with interest. On March 23, 1909, I sailed thither from New York, in charge of a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian, to collect birds, mammals, reptiles, and plants, but especially specimens of big game, for the National Museum at Washington. In addition to myself and my son Kermit (who had entered Harvard a few months previously), the party consisted of three naturalists: Surgeon-Lieut. Col. Edgar A. Mearns, U.S.A., retired; Mr. Edmund Heller, of California, and Mr. J. Alden Loring, of Owego, N. Y. My arrangements for the trip had been chiefly made through two valued English friends, Mr. Frederick Courteney Selous, the greatest of the world's big-game hunters, and Mr. Edward North Buxton, also a mighty hunter. On landing we were to be met by Messrs. R. J. Cuninghame and Leslie Tarlton, both famous hunters; the latter an Australian, who served through the South African war; the former by birth a Scotchman, and a Cambridge man, but long a resident of Africa, and at one time a professional elephant hunter — in addition to having been a whaler in the Arctic Ocean, a hunter-naturalist in Lapland, a transport rider in South Africa, and a collector for the British Museum in various odd corners of the earth.

We sailed on the Hamburg from New York — what headway the Germans have made among those who go down to the sea in ships! — and at Naples trans-shipped to the Admiral, of another German line, the East African. On both ships we were as comfortable as possible, and the voyage was wholly devoid of incidents. Now and then, as at the Azores, at Suez, and at Aden, the three naturalists landed, and collected some dozens or scores of birds — which next day were skinned and prepared in my room, as the largest and best fitted for the purpose. After reaching Suez the ordinary tourist type of passenger ceased to be predominant; in his place there were Italian officers going out to a desolate coast town on the edge of Somaliland; missionaries, German, English, and American; Portuguese civil officials; traders of different nationalities; and planters and military and civil officers bound to German and British East Africa. The Englishmen included planters, magistrates, forest officials, army officers on leave from India, and other army officers going out to take command of black native levies in out-of-the-way regions where the English flag stands for all that makes life worth living. They were a fine set, these young Englishmen, whether dashing army officers or capable civilians; they reminded me of our own men who have reflected such honor on the American name, whether in civil and military positions in the Philippines and Porto Rico, working on the Canal Zone in Panama, taking care of the custom-houses in San Domingo, or serving in the army of occupation in Cuba. Moreover, I felt as if I knew most of them already, for they might have walked out of the pages of Kipling. But I was not as well prepared for the corresponding and equally interesting types among the Germans, the planters, the civil officials, the officers who had commanded, or were about to command, white or native troops; men of evident power and energy, seeing whom made it easy to understand why German East Africa has

We would gather on deck around Selous to listen to tales

of strange adventures thriven apace. They are first-class men, these English and Germans; both are doing in East Africa a work of worth to the whole world; there is ample room for both, and no possible cause for any but a thoroughly friendly rivalry; and it is earnestly to be wished, in the interest both of them and of outsiders, too, that their relations will grow, as they ought to grow, steadily better — and not only in East Africa but everywhere else.

On the ship, at Naples, we found Selous, also bound for East Africa on a hunting trip; but he, a veteran whose first hunting in Africa was nearly forty years ago, cared only for exceptional trophies of a very few animals, while we, on the other hand, desired specimens of both sexes of all the species of big game that Kermit and I could shoot, as well as complete series of all the smaller mammals. We believed that our best work of a purely scientific character would be done with the mammals, both large and small.

No other hunter alive has had the experience of Selous; and, so far as I now recall, no hunter of anything Hke his

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A baobab-tree, Mombasa F>-om a photograph by Kcruu't Roosevelt

experience has ever also possessed his gift of penetrating observation joined to his power of vivid and accurate narration. He has killed scores of lion and rhinoceros and hundreds of elephant and buffalo; and these four animals are the most dangerous of the world's big game, when hunted as they are hunted in Africa. To hear him tell of what he has seen and done is no less interesting to a naturalist than to a hunter. There were on the ship many men who loved wild nature, and who were keen hunters of big game; and almost every day, as we steamed over the hot, smooth waters of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, we would gather on deck around Selous to listen to tales of those strange adventures that only come to the man who has lived long the lonely life of the wilderness.

Kermit Roosevelt and R. J. Cuninghame preparing to take pictures

On April 21 we steamed into the beautiful and picturesque harbor of Mombasa. Many centuries before the Christian era, dhows from Arabia, carrying seafarers of Semitic races whose very names have perished, rounded the Lion's Head at Guardafui and crept slowly southward along the barren African coast. Such dhows exist to-day almost unchanged, and bold indeed were the men who first steered them across the unknown oceans. They were men of iron heart and supple conscience, who fronted inconceivable danger and hardship; they estabhshed trading stations for gold and ivory and slaves; they turned these trading stations into little cities and sultanates, half Arab, half negro. Mombasa was among them. In her time of brief splendor

Portugal seized the city; the Arabs won it back ; and now England holds it. It lies just south of the equator, and when we saw it the brilliant green of the tropic foliage showed the town at its best.

We were welcomed to Government House in most cordial fashion by the acting Governor, Lieutenant- Governor Jackson, who is not only a trained public official of long experience but a first-class field naturalist and a renowned big-game hunter; indeed I could not too warmly express my appreciation of the hearty and generous courtesy with which we were received and treated alike by the official and the unofficial world throughout East Africa. We landed in the kind of torrential downpour that only comes in the tropics; it reminded me of Panama at certain moments in the rainy season. That night we were given a dinner by the Mombasa Club; and it was interesting to meet the merchants and planters of the town and the neighborhood as well as the officials.