The adventure writer, half unconsciously perhaps, has
been too much occupied play-acting himself into half-forgotten
boyhood heroics. The more modest man, with even more
self-consciousness, has been thinking of how he is going to
appear in the eyes of the expert. Both have thought of themselves
before their work. This aspect of the matter would probably
vastly astonish the modest writer.
If, then, one is to formulate an ideal toward which to write, he
might express it exactly in terms of man and environment. Those
readers desiring sheer exploration can get it in any library:
those in search of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty
of it at any book-stall. But the majority want something
different from either of these. They want, first of all, to know
what the country is like-not in vague and grandiose "word
paintings," nor in strange and foreign sounding words and
phrases, but in comparison with something they know. What is it
nearest like-Arizona? Surrey? Upper New York? Canada? Mexico? Or
is it totally different from anything, as is the Grand Canyon?
When you look out from your camp-any one camp-how far do you
see, and what do you see?-mountains in the distance, or a screen
of vines or bamboo near hand, or what? When you get up in the
morning, what is the first thing to do? What does a rhino look
like, where he lives, and what did you do the first time one came
at you? I don't want you to tell me as though I were either an
old hunter or an admiring audience, or as though you were afraid
somebody might think you were making too much of the matter. I
want to know how you REALLY felt. Were you scared or nervous? or
did you become cool? Tell me frankly just how it was, so I can
see the thing as happening to a common everyday human being.
Then, even at second-hand and at ten thousand miles distance, I
can enjoy it actually, humanly, even though vicariously,
speculating a bit over my pipe as to how I would have liked it
myself.
Obviously, to write such a book the author must at the same time
sink his ego and exhibit frankly his personality. The paradox in
this is only apparent. He must forget either to strut or to blush
with diffidence. Neither audience should be forgotten, and neither
should be exclusively addressed. Never should he lose sight of
the wholesome fact that old hunters are to read and to weigh;
never should he for a moment slip into the belief that he is
justified in addressing the expert alone. His attitude should be
that many men know more and have done more than he, but that for
one reason or another these men are not ready to transmit their
knowledge and experience.
To set down the formulation of an ideal is one thing: to fulfil
it is another. In the following pages I cannot claim a
fulfilment, but only an attempt. The foregoing dissertation must
be considered not as a promise, but as an explanation. No one
knows better than I how limited my African experience is, both in
time and extent, bounded as it is by East Equatorial Africa and a
year. Hundreds of men are better qualified than myself to write
just this book; but unfortunately they will not do it.
II. AFRICA
In looking back on the multitudinous pictures that the word
Africa bids rise in my memory, four stand out more distinctly
than the others. Strangely enough, these are by no means all
pictures of average country-the sort of thing one would describe
as typical. Perhaps, in a way, they symbolize more the spirit of
the country to me, for certainly they represent but a small
minority of its infinitely varied aspects. But since we must make
a start somewhere, and since for some reason these four crowd
most insistently in the recollection it might be well to begin
with them.
Our camp was pitched under a single large mimosa tree near the
edge of a deep and narrow ravine down which a stream flowed. A
semicircle of low mountains hemmed us in at the distance of
several miles. The other side of the semicircle was occupied by
the upthrow of a low rise blocking off an horizon at its nearest
point but a few hundred yards away. Trees marked the course of the
stream; low scattered bushes alternated with open plain. The
grass grew high. We had to cut it out to make camp.
Nothing indicated that we were otherwise situated than in a very
pleasant, rather wide grass valley in the embrace of the
mountains. Only a walk of a few hundred yards atop the upthrow of
the low rise revealed the fact that it was in reality the lip of
a bench, and that beyond it the country fell away in sheer cliffs
whose ultimate drop was some fifteen hundred feet. One could sit
atop and dangle his feet over unguessed abysses.
For a week we had been hunting for greater kudu. Each day Memba
Sasa and I went in one direction, while Mavrouki and Kongoni took
another line. We looked carefully for signs, but found none
fresher than the month before. Plenty of other game made the
country interesting; but we were after a shy and valuable prize,
so dared not shoot lesser things. At last, at the end of the
week, Mavrouki came in with a tale of eight lions seen in the low
scrub across the stream. The kudu business was about finished, as
far as this place went, so we decided to take a look for the
lions.
