Part 19 (1/2)
When he reached Cairo, he had an interview with Sir F. Wingate, to whom he had letters of introduction from Sir E. Grey. He then went on to Khartoum, where he met Mr. Butler, who was then in charge of big game matters connected with the Lower Sudan. Mr. Butler advised him to go to Mongalla, as the best and most accessible place at which to find the Giant Eland, since Wau had been much hunted, but Selous thought that the Tembera country would be the best, because few travellers had ever been there, and it could only be reached by a toilsome journey from the river with pack-donkeys. Accordingly he took the steamer going south. At Rejaf the vessel stopped to take in wood, and there met another steamer whose occupants informed him of the death of poor Phil Oberlander, who had just been killed by a buffalo near the village of Sheikh Lowala. It appears that this unfortunate fellow, who had just killed a fine Giant Eland at Mongalla, and was on his way home up the river, had stopped at a village near Mongalla for a day or two, to try to get a buffalo, of which there were some herds in the neighbourhood. He had landed and very soon found a good herd. His shots wounded a big bull, which left the herd and retreated into the thick bush. Oberlander at once followed, but unfortunately forgot to reload his heavy rifle. The usual thing happened, and the wounded bull charged suddenly from one flank, and instead of reports two clicks ensued. The bull rushed at Oberlander, knocked him to the ground and literally beat his body to a pulp. Later in the day the bull was found lying dead. Its head was recovered by Mr.
Butler, who sent it to the Vienna Museum, for which Oberlander had collected industriously for several years.
I first met Oberlander on the steamer going to Alaska, in September, 1908. He then called himself Count Oberlander, a t.i.tle which I believe he had no claim to. He was a strange creature, full of a.s.surance, and with a very complete contempt for British and American game-laws, and apparently oblivious of the fact that without their inst.i.tution he would not have been able to obtain the specimens he so earnestly desired to capture. His one idea seemed to be to get specimens anyhow, and that a letter from the authorities of the Vienna Museum and an unlimited expenditure of cash would overcome all difficulties. In this he was partly right and partly wrong, for when he shot numerous female sheep and kids in the mountains of Ca.s.siar he reckoned without the long arm of the law and the vigilance of the hawk-eyed Bryan Williams, our game warden in Vancouver, who promptly had him arrested and heavily fined.
As an example of his impudence he told us the following story, which I afterwards found was true in all details. One day in August, 1908, he went to the National Park at Yellowstone, and coolly informed two of the game wardens that he had come there to shoot a buffalo. At first the latter regarded the matter as a joke, but, finding he was in earnest, they told him that if he did not clear out they would confiscate his guns and arrest him. Unabashed, Oberlander said:
”Well, you need not get huffy. I will give you 250 for that old bull,”
pointing to an old patriarch within a wooden enclosure. The shaft, however, went home, for the game wardens at once reported the matter to their chief.
Now, 250 was a very nice sum, and it was quite within the realms of possibility that the old bull would die a natural death within the next year or two and that the dead carcase might be worth perhaps 50. Facts, therefore, were facts, which seemed to appeal to the business instincts of the park authorities, so next day Oberlander was informed that he might shoot the buffalo as soon as his cheque was forthcoming.
Oberlander at once handed over the money and killed the bull, shooting him through the bars of the cage, and he showed us an excellent photograph of this doughty deed with no little satisfaction.
Oberlander afterwards hunted in Ca.s.siar, Mexico, East Africa, and the Arctic regions, before going on the expedition up the Nile that was to prove fatal to him. In him the Vienna Museum lost a good friend, but he could scarcely be considered a good type of sportsman.
We need not follow Selous' wanderings in the parched uninteresting forest country about Tembera, where for nine weeks, in company with a native chief named Yei, he hunted the small herd of Giant Elands somewhat unsuccessfully. At last he killed a good female, but had no luck in securing a big male. On March 7th he went north to Rumbek, and on March 28th he and Captain Tweedie went north to a small river and shot nine Kobs. On April 4th he again left Rumbek and returned south for another hunt for the Elands, which was again unsuccessful. On April 29th he arrived at the Nile and turned homewards.[61]
”I cannot pretend,” writes Selous, ”I enjoyed my excursion in the Bahr-el-Ghazal Province. In the first place, I was unsuccessful in the main object of my journey. Then the deadly monotony of the landscape, the extraordinary scarcity of game, and the excessive heat of the climate, all combined to make my trip very wearisome and uninteresting.”
He came away, however, with a very deep admiration for the gallant band of young Britons who were doing the work of the Empire in the wilds of Africa.
At the end of this trying hunt he was far from well, and was unable to ride, so he had to tramp the whole way to the Nile on foot. Arrived at Rumbek the medical officer there discovered the cause of his ill-health, so, as soon as he arrived in England he saw Mr. Freyer, who recommended an operation. ”I got over the operation,” he writes to Abel Chapman, ”wonderfully well, and simply healed up like a dog. In fact, I was the record case for healing up in ten years amongst Freyer's patients.” I went to see him in a nursing home in London, and heard all about his Lado trip, which was rather a sore subject with him, but, with his usual determination, he was only full of ideas to go back again and make a success the next time. In August we both went again to Swythamley, as the guests of young Sir Philip Brocklehurst, and had a very pleasant time amongst the grouse on the Derbys.h.i.+re hills. Afterwards Selous stayed for a time in the Isle of Wight, with his wife and boys, and later in the autumn he travelled to Turin Exhibition of hunting and shooting, as one of the British jurors.
Later in 1911 Selous again left for British East Africa, to go on another hunt to the Gwas N'yiro river, with his friend MacMillan. Before leaving he wrote to President Roosevelt, intimating that he feared he was now too old for the hard work entailed by African hunting, which called forth the following comfortable advice (Sept. 11th, 1911).
”MacMillan lunches here Thursday. I am very glad you are going out with him to Africa. He is a trump! I am rather amused at your saying that you will not take any risks with lion now, and that you do not think your eyes are very good. I would not trust you!--seriously. I always wished to speak to you about the time that you followed the lioness which crouched in a bush, and then so nearly got Judd, who was riding after you. I think you were taking more of a chance on that occasion than you ought to have taken. It is not as if you had never killed a lion, and were willing to take any chance to get your first specimen. That I could quite understand. But you have killed a great many, and you ought not to do as poor George Grey did last year, and get caught through acting with needless recklessness.[62] I know you will not pay any heed to this advice, and, doubtless, you regard me as over-cautious with wild beasts, but, my dear fellow, at your age and with your past, and with your chance of doing good work in the present and future, I honestly do not think you ought to take these risks unless there is some point in doing so.
”You say you are too old for such a trip as that with MacMillan.
Nonsense! It is precisely the kind of trip which you ought to take. Why, I, who am far less hardy and fit, would like nothing better than to be along with you and MacMillan on that trip. But you ought not to take such a trip as that you took on the Bahr-el-Ghazal. It would have meant nothing to you thirty years ago; it would mean nothing to Kermit now; but you are nearly sixty years old, and though I suppose there is no other man of sixty who is physically as fit as you, still it is idle to suppose that you can now do what you did when you were in the twenties. Of course I never was physically fit in the sense that you were, but still I was a man of fair hardihood, and able to hold my own reasonably well in my younger days; but when I went to Africa I realized perfectly well, although I was only fifty, that I was no longer fit to do the things I had done, and I deliberately set myself to the work of supplying the place of the prowess I had lost by making use of all that the years had brought in the way of gain to offset it. That is, I exercised what I think I can truthfully say was much intelligence and foresight in planning the trip. I made it for a great scientific National museum (which was itself backed by private capital), and made it at the time when the fact that I had been President gave me such prestige that the things were done for me which ought to have been done, but were not done, for you last spring. Then I took along Kermit, who, in the case of the bongo and koodoo and Northern Sable, was able to supply the qualities that I once had had and now lacked. In consequence, while everything was done to make my trip successful and comparatively easy, I am yet ent.i.tled to claim the modest credit that is implied in saying that I took advantage of the opportunities thus generously given me, and that I planned the trip carefully, and used the resources that my past had given me, in the way of notoriety or reputation, to add somewhat to my sum of achievement. On your trip you also had genuine bad luck, and the trip was not long enough, and the opportunities were not sufficiently numerous, to allow the good and bad luck to even up, as they will on such a long trip as mine. For instance, it was simply luck in my case that got me some of my game; but then it was simply luck, also, that I did not get some other things; and so it about evened up.
”My own physical limitations at the moment come chiefly from a perfectly commonplace but exasperating ailment--rheumatism. It not only cripples me a good deal, so that I am unable to climb on or off a horse with any speed, but it also prevents my keeping in condition. I cannot take any long walks, and therefore cannot keep in shape; but I am sufficiently fortunate to have a great many interests, and I am afraid, sufficiently lazy also thoroughly to enjoy being at home; and I shall be entirely happy if I never leave Sagamore again for any length of time. I have work which is congenial and honourable, although not of any special importance, and if I can keep it for the next seven or eight years, my youngest son will have graduated from college, so that all the children will be swimming for themselves, and then I am content not to try to earn any more money.
”Fond though I am of hunting and of the wilderness and of natural history, it has not been to me quite the pa.s.sion that it has been to you, and though I would give a great deal to repeat in some way or some fas.h.i.+on, say in Central Asia or in Farther India, or in another part of Africa, the trip I made last year, I know perfectly well that I cannot do it; and I do not particularly care for smaller trips. If it were not for our infernal newspaper-men, I should go off for a week or two this fall bear-hunting in the Louisiana cane-brakes; but I know I should be pestered out of my life by the newspaper-men, who would really destroy all my pleasure in what I was doing. I have found that I have to get really far off in the wilderness in order to get rid of them, even now, when I am no longer a person of public prominence. I never cared for the fis.h.i.+ng-rod or the shot-gun, and I cannot afford to keep hunters. But you, my dear fellow, are still hardy, and you can still do much. I have never understood why your 'African Nature Notes' did not have a greater financial success. It is a book which will last permanently, and will, I am sure, have an ever-increasing meed of appreciation. I re-read it all last winter, and Sheldon, as I think I told you, mentioned to me the other day that he regarded it as the best book of the kind that had ever been written.
”Kermit is, at the moment, in New Brunswick getting moose, caribou, and beaver for the National Museum. I think I told you that he got four sheep, three of them for the Museum, on his recent trip into the Mexican desert. He made it just as you have made so many of your trips, that is, he got two Mexicans and two small pack-mules, and travelled without a tent, and with one spare pair of shoes and one spare pair of socks as his sole luggage. Once they nearly got into an ugly sc.r.a.pe through failure to find a water-hole, for it is a dangerous country.
Kermit found that he could outlast in walking and in enduring thirst, not only the Mexicans but the American prospectors whom he once or twice met.”
The reference in his letter to the lioness ”which crouched in a bush, and then so nearly got Judd,” refers to an incident that happened in the Gwas N'yiro bush in Selous' former hunt with MacMillan (1909), and this little adventure was related to me by William Judd himself. It appears that Selous and Judd were out together one day and disturbed two lionesses, which disappeared in thick forest. Selous at once galloped after them and outdistanced Judd, who came somewhat slowly cantering behind, as he did not wish to interfere with Selous. All at once, from the side of the path, Judd saw a great yellow body come high in the air from the side of the game-trail. He had no time even to raise his rifle from the position across the saddle-pommel, but just c.o.c.ked it up across and pulled the trigger. One of the lionesses, for such it was, had apparently crouched and allowed Selous to pa.s.s, and had then hurled herself upon the second hunter. By a fine piece of judgment, or a happy fluke, Judd's bullet went through the lioness's eye and landed her dead at his feet. His horse swerved. He fell off, and found himself standing beside the dead body of his adversary. Selous then returned, and was astonished to find Judd standing over the dead animal in the path he had so lately pa.s.sed. I saw the skin of this lioness in Judd's house, near Nairobi, in 1913, and noticed the little bullet hole over the eye. If the missile had gone an inch higher it is doubtful if the hunter would have escaped with his life, or at any rate without a severe mauling.
After the trip with MacMillan, 1911-1912, Selous writes (June 23rd, 1913):--
”My dear Johnny,--I wonder where you are and what you are doing.
Some one told me the other day that you were going to Africa on a shooting-trip this year. I had quite an interesting time with MacMillan, and got a few nice things to add to my collection. I got three nice Lesser Koodoos on the lower Gwas N'yiro river as well as Gerenuks, good Beisa, and Impala--though nothing exceptional--very good specimens of the small races of Grant's Gazelle--_notata_ and _Brighti_--Grevy's zebra, the reticulated giraffe, a good bushbuck, a striped hyena, two buffalo bulls, and a lot of Dik-diks (of two distinct species and, I think, possibly three). I don't know whether you have seen two letters of mine in the 'Field'[63] for June 8th and 15th, but if you have, you will have read my account of a rather interesting experience I had with a lion. This was the only lion I actually fired at, though I saw four lionesses one day, and tracked a lion and lioness on another occasion for a long distance and got close to them, but, owing to the thickness of the bush, could not see them. That was the trouble on the lower Gwas N'yiro river. The bush was so frightfully thick along the river, and outside, too, very often, that it required great luck to get a lion in the daytime, and they would not come to baits at night.
The bush was simply awful for buffaloes. Let me know what you are doing and I will try and come over to see you one of these days.”
Selous seems to have been unusually unlucky on the few occasions he met with lions in the Gwas N'yiro bush. On March 2nd, 1912, he suddenly came face to face with a big lion, but as soon as it saw him, it dived into the forest and was immediately lost to view. On another occasion he wounded a pallah buck, which a lion then killed, and death was so recent that Selous sat over ”the kill” and waited. The lion came and stood within twenty-five yards of the hunter, who fired two shots at it, and although a.s.sured that it was severely wounded he never recovered the body.[64]
The most exciting incident, however, of this trip was the killing of what he calls ”My Last Buffalo.” Near the river he found the tracks of two old buffalo bulls, which he followed industriously for six miles. At last he obtained a snap shot and hit one of the bulls badly through the lungs. After following the wounded animal a short distance, he suddenly heard the unmistakable grunts which always precede a charge. ”The next instant the buffalo was on us, coming over the edge of the gully with nose outstretched, half a ton of bone and muscle driven at tremendous speed by the very excusable rage and fury of a brave and determined animal.... When I fired, the muzzle of my rifle must have been within three yards of the buffalo.” The buffalo fell to the shot, the vertebrae of the neck being struck, and as he fell struck Elani the Somali.
”He only received this one terrific blow, though he was pushed to the bottom of the gully--only a few yards--in front of the buffalo's knees and right under its nose, but my bullet had for a moment partially paralysed it. I got another cartridge into the chamber of my rifle as quickly as possible, and, turning to the buffalo, somehow got a second bullet into its hind-quarters, which brought it down altogether. When I was again ready to fire, the buffalo was on its knees, with its hind-legs doubled in under it, in the bed of the gully a few yards below me, and Elani was under its great neck between its nose and its chest, with one arm outstretched and his right hand on the buffalo's shoulder, so that I had to shoot carefully for fear of hitting it.
”Elani then pushed himself with his feet free of the buffalo, whilst I stood where I was, ready to put in another shot if necessary, and it was, for the brave and determined bull partially recovered from the shocks its nervous system had received, though the mists of death were already in its eyes.”
Another bullet finished this gallant old bull. Elani the Somali was little the worse for his severe handling.