The Land of Footprints

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Land of Footprints

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Billy had never before wanted to shoot anything except a python.
Why a python we could not quite fathom. Personally, I think she
had some vague idea of getting even for that Garden of Eden
affair. But lately, pythons proving scarcer than in that favoured
locality, she had switched to a lion. She wanted, she said, to
give the skin to her sister. In vain we pointed out that a zebra
hide was very decorative, that lions go to absurd lengths in
retaining possession of their own skins, and other equally
convincing facts. It must be a lion or nothing; so naturally we
had to make a try.

There are several ways of getting lions, only one of which is at
all likely to afford a steady pot shot to a very small person
trying to manipulate an over-size gun. That is to lay out a kill.
The idea is to catch the lion at it in the early morning before
he has departed for home. The best kill is a zebra: first,
because lions like zebra; second, because zebra are fairly large;
third, because zebra are very numerous.

Accordingly, after we had pitched camp just within a fringe of
mimosa trees and of red-flowering aloes near the river; had eaten
lunch, smoked a pipe and issued necessary orders to the men, C.
and I set about the serious work of getting an appropriate bait
in an appropriate place.

The plains stretched straight away from the river bank to some
indefinite and unknown distance to the south. A low range of
mountains lay blue to the left; and a mantle of scrub thornbush
closed the view to the right. This did not imply that we could
see far straight ahead, for the surface of the plain rose slowly
to the top of a swell about two miles away. Beyond it reared a
single butte peak at four or five times that distance.

We stepped from the fringe of red aloes and squinted through the
dancing heat shimmer. Near the limit of vision showed a very
faint glimmering whitish streak. A newcomer to Africa would not
have looked at it twice: nevertheless, it could be nothing but
zebra. These gaudily marked beasts take queer aspects even on an
open plain. Most often they show pure white; sometimes a jet
black; only when within a few hundred yards does one distinguish
the stripes. Almost always they are very easily made out. Only
when very distant and in heat shimmer, or in certain half lights
of evening, does their so-called "protective colouration" seem to
be in working order, and even then they are always quite visible
to the least expert hunter's scrutiny.

It is not difficult to kill a zebra, though sometimes it has to
be done at a fairly long range. If all you want is meat for the
porters, the matter is simple enough. But when you require bait
for a lion, that; is another affair entirely. In the first place,
you must be able to stalk within a hundred yards of your kill
without being seen; in the second place, you must provide two or
three good lying-down places for your prospective trophy within
fifteen yards of the carcass-and no more than two or three; in
the third place, you must judge the direction of the probable
morning wind, and must be able to approach from leeward. It is
evidently pretty good luck to find an accommodating zebra in just
such a spot. It is a matter of still greater nicety to drop him
absolutely in his tracks. In a case of porters' meat it does not
make any particular difference if he runs a hundred yards before
he dies. With lion bait even fifty yards makes all the difference
in the world.

C. and I talked it over and resolved to press Scallywattamus into
service. Scallywattamus is a small white mule who is firmly
convinced that each and every bush in Africa conceals a
mule-eating rhinoceros, and who does not intend to be one of the
number so eaten. But we had noticed that at times zebra would be
so struck with the strange sight of Scallywattamus carrying a
man, that they would let us get quite close. C. was to ride
Scallywattamus while I trudged along under his lee ready to
shoot.

We set out through the heat shimmer, gradually rising as the
plain slanted. Imperceptibly the camp and the trees marking the
river's course fell below us and into the heat haze. In the
distance, close to the stream, we made out a blurred, brown-red
solid mass which we knew for Masai cattle. Various little
Thompson's gazelles skipped away to the left waggling their tails
vigorously and continuously as Nature long since commanded
"Tommies" to do. The heat haze steadied around the dim white
line, so we could make out the individual animals. There were
plenty of them, dozing in the sun. A single tiny treelet broke
the plain just at the skyline of the rise. C. and I talked
low-voiced as we went along. We agreed that the tree was an
excellent landmark to come to, that the little rise afforded
proper cover, and that in the morning the wind would in all
likelihood blow toward the river. There were perhaps twenty zebra
near enough to the chosen spot. Any of them would do.

But the zebra did not give a hoot for Scallywattamus. At five
hundred yards three or four of them awoke with a start, stared at
us a minute, and moved slowly away. They told all the zebra they
happened upon that the three idiots approaching were at once
uninteresting and dangerous. At four hundred and fifty yards a
half dozen more made off at a trot. At three hundred and fifty
yards the rest plunged away at a canter-all but one. He remained
to stare, but his tail was up, and we knew he only stayed because
he knew he could easily catch up in the next twenty seconds.

The chance was very slim of delivering a knockout at that
distance, but we badly needed meat, anyway, after our march
through the Thirst, so I tried him. We heard the well-known plunk
of the bullet, but down went his head, up went his heels, and
away went he. We watched him in vast disgust. He cavorted out
into a bare open space without cover of any sort, and then
flopped over. I thought I caught a fleeting grin of delight on
Mavrouki's face; but he knew enough instantly to conceal his
satisfaction over sure meat.

There were now no zebra anywhere near; but since nobody ever
thinks of omitting any chances in Africa, I sneaked up to the
tree and took a perfunctory look. There stood another,
providentially absent-minded, zebra!

We got that one. Everybody was now happy. The boys raced over to
the first kill, which soon took its dismembered way toward camp.
C. and I carefully organized our plan of campaign. We fixed in
our memories the exact location of each and every bush; we
determined compass direction from camp, and any other bearings
likely to prove useful in finding so small a spot in the dark.
Then we left a boy to keep carrion birds off until sunset; and
returned home.

We were out in the morning before even the first sign of dawn.
Billy rode her little mule, C. and I went afoot, Memba Sasa
accompanied us because he could see whole lions where even C.'s
trained eye could not make out an ear, and the syce went along to
take care of the mule. The heavens were ablaze with the thronging
stars of the tropics, so we found we could make out the skyline
of the distant butte over the rise of the plains. The earth
itself was a pool of absolute blackness. We could not see where
we were placing our feet, and we were continually bringing up
suddenly to walk around an unexpected aloe or thornbush. The
night was quite still, but every once in a while from the
blackness came rustlings, scamperings, low calls, and once or
twice the startled barking of zebra very near at hand. The latter
sounded as ridiculous as ever. It is one of the many
incongruities of African life that Nature should have given so
large and so impressive a creature the petulant yapping of an
exasperated Pomeranian lap dog. At the end of three quarters of
an hour of more or less stumbling progress, we made out against
the sky the twisted treelet that served as our landmark. Billy
dismounted, turned the mule over to the syce, and we crept slowly
forward until within a guessed two or three hundred yards of our
kill.

Nothing remained now but to wait for the daylight. It had already
begun to show. Over behind the distant mountains some one was
kindling the fires, and the stars were flickering out. The
splendid ferocity of the African sunrise was at hand. Long bands
of slate dark clouds lay close along the horizon, and behind them
glowed a heart of fire, as on a small scale the lamplight glows
through a metal-worked shade. On either side the sky was pale
green-blue, translucent and pure, deep as infinity itself. The
earth was still black, and the top of the rise near at hand was
clear edged. On that edge, and by a strange chance accurately in
the centre of illumination, stood the uncouth massive form of a
shaggy wildebeeste, his head raised, staring to the east. He did
not move; nothing of that fire and black world moved; only
instant by instant it changed, swelling in glory toward some
climax until one expected at any moment a fanfare of trumpets,
the burst of triumphant culmination.

Then very far down in the distance a lion roared. The
wildebeeste, without moving, bellowed back an answer or a
defiance. Down in the hollow an ostrich boomed. Zebra barked, and
several birds chirped strongly. The tension was breaking not in
the expected fanfare and burst of triumphal music, but in a
manner instantly felt to be more fitting to what was indeed a
wonder, but a daily wonder for all that. At one and the same
instant the rim of the sun appeared and the wildebeeste, after
the sudden habit of his kind, made up his mind to go. He dropped
his head and came thundering down past us at full speed. Straight
to the west he headed, and so disappeared. We could hear the beat
of his hoofs dying into the distance. He had gone like a Warder
of the Morning whose task was finished. On the knife-edged
skyline appeared the silhouette of slim-legged little Tommies,
flirting their rails, sniffing at the dewy grass, dainty,
slender, confiding, the open-day antithesis of the tremendous and
awesome lord of the darkness that had roared its way to its lair,
and to the massive shaggy herald of morning that had thundered
down to the west.

III. THE CENTRAL PLATEAU

Now is required a special quality of the imagination, not in
myself, but in my readers, for it becomes necessary for them to
grasp the logic of a whole country in one mental effort. The
difficulties to me are very real. If I am to tell you it all in
detail, your mind becomes confused to the point of mingling the
ingredients of the description. The resultant mental picture is a
composite; it mixes localities wide apart; it comes out, like the
snake-creeper-swamp-forest thing of grammar-school South America,
an unreal and deceitful impression. If, on the other hand, I try
to give you a bird's-eye view-saying, here is plain, and there
follows upland, and yonder succeed mountains and hills-you lose
the sense of breadth and space and the toil of many days. The
feeling of onward outward extending distance is gone; and that
impression so indispensable to finite understanding-"here am I,
and what is beyond is to be measured by the length of my legs and
the toil of my days." You will not stop long enough on my plains
to realize their physical extent nor their influence on the human
soul. If I mention them in a sentence, you dismiss them in a
thought. And that is something the plains themselves refuse to
permit you to do. Yet sometimes one must become a guide-book, and
bespeak his reader's imagination.

The country, then, wherein we travelled begins at the sea. Along
the coast stretches a low rolling country of steaming tropics,
grown with cocoanuts, bananas, mangoes, and populated by a happy,
half-naked race of the Swahilis. Leaving the coast, the country
rises through hills. These hills are at first fertile and green
and wooded. Later they turn into an almost unbroken plateau of
thorn scrub, cruel, monotonous, almost impenetrable. Fix thorn
scrub in your mind, with rhino trails, and occasional openings
for game, and a few rivers flowing through palms and narrow
jungle strips; fix it in your mind until your mind is filled with
it, until you are convinced that nothing else can exist in the
world but more and more of the monotonous, terrible, dry,
onstretching desert of thorn.

Then pass through this to the top of the hills inland, and
journey over these hills to the highland plains.

Now sense and appreciate these wide seas of and the hills and
ranges of mountains rising from them, and their infinite
diversity of country-their rivers marked by ribbons of jungle,
their scattered-bush and their thick-bush areas, their grass
expanses, and their great distances extending far over
exceedingly wide horizons. Realize how many weary hours you must
travel to gain the nearest butte, what days of toil the view from
its top will disclose. Savour the fact that you can spend months
in its veriest corner without exhausting its possibilities. Then,
and not until then, raise your eyes to the low rising transverse
range that bands it to the west as the thorn desert bands it to
the east.

And on these ranges are the forests, the great bewildering
forests. In what looks like a grove lying athwart a little hill
you can lose yourself for days. Here dwell millions of savages in
an apparently untouched wilderness. Here rises a snow mountain on
the equator. Here are tangles and labyrinths, great bamboo
forests lost in folds of the mightiest hills. Here are the
elephants. Here are the swinging vines, the jungle itself.

Yet finally it breaks. We come out on the edge of things and look
down on a great gash in the earth. It is like a sunken kingdom in
itself, miles wide, with its own mountain ranges, its own rivers,
its own landscape features. Only on either side of it rise the
escarpments which are the true level of the plateau. One can
spend two months in this valley, too, and in the countries south
to which it leads. And on its farther side are the high plateau
plains again, or the forests, or the desert, or the great lakes
that lie at the source of the Nile.

So now, perhaps, we are a little prepared to go ahead. The
guide-book work is finished for good and all. There is the
steaming hot low coast belt, and the hot dry thorn desert belt,
and the varied immense plains, and the high mountain belt of the
forests, and again the variegated wide country of the Rift Valley
and the high plateau. To attempt to tell you seriatim and in
detail just what they are like is the task of an encyclopaedist.
Perhaps more indirectly you may be able to fill in the picture of
the country, the people, and the beasts.

IV. THE FIRST CAMP

Our very first start into the new country was made when we piled
out from the little train standing patiently awaiting the good
pleasure of our descent. That feature strikes me with ever new
wonder-the accommodating way trains of the Uganda Railway have
of waiting for you. One day, at a little wayside station, C. and
I were idly exchanging remarks with the only white man in sight,
killing time until the engine should whistle to a resumption of
the journey. The guard lingered about just out of earshot. At the
end of five minutes C. happened to catch his eye, whereupon he
ventured to approach.

"When you have finished your conversation," said he politely, "we
are all ready to go on."

On the morning in question there were a lot of us to
disembark-one hundred and twenty-two, to be exact-of which four
were white. We were not yet acquainted with our men, nor yet with
our stores, nor with the methods of our travel. The train went
off and left us in the middle of a high plateau, with low ridges
running across it, and mountains in the distance. Men were
squabbling earnestly for the most convenient loads to carry, and
as fast as they had gained undisputed possession, they marked the
loads with some private sign of their own. M'ganga, the headman,
tall, fierce, big-framed and bony, clad in fez, a long black
overcoat, blue puttees and boots, stood stiff as a ramrod,
extended a rigid right arm and rattled off orders in a high
dynamic voice. In his left hand he clasped a bulgy umbrella, the
badge of his dignity and the symbol of his authority. The four
askaris, big men too, with masterful high-cheekboned
countenances, rushed here and there seeing that the orders were
carried out. Expostulations, laughter, the sound of quarrelling
rose and fell. Never could the combined volume of it all override
the firecracker stream of M'ganga's eloquence.

We had nothing to do with it all, but stood a little dazed,
staring at the novel scene. Our men were of many tribes, each
with its own cast of features, its own notions of what befitted
man's performance of his duties here below. They stuck together
each in its clan. A fine free individualism of personal adornment
characterized them. Every man dressed for his own satisfaction
solely. They hung all sorts of things in the distended lobes of
their ears. One had succeeded in inserting a fine big glittering
tobacco tin. Others had invented elaborate topiary designs in
their hair, shaving their heads so as to leave strange tufts,
patches, crescents on the most unexpected places. Of the
intricacy of these designs they seemed absurdly proud. Various
sorts of treasure trove hung from them-a bunch of keys to which
there were no locks, discarded hunting knives, tips of antelope
horns, discharged brass cartridges, a hundred and one valueless
trifles plucked proudly from the rubbish heap. They were all
clothed. We had supplied each with a red blanket, a blue jersey,
and a water bottle. The blankets they were twisting most
ingeniously into turbans. Beside these they sported a great
variety of garments. Shooting coats that had seen better days, a
dozen shabby overcoats-worn proudly through the hottest
noons-raggety breeches and trousers made by some London tailor,
queer baggy homemades of the same persuasion, or quite simply the
square of cotton cloth arranged somewhat like a short tight
skirt, or nothing at all as the man's taste ran. They were many
of them amusing enough; but somehow they did not look entirely
farcical and ridiculous, like our negroes putting on airs. All
these things were worn with a simplicity of quiet confidence in
their entire fitness. And beneath the red blanket turbans the
half-wild savage faces peered out.

Now Mahomet approached. Mahomet was my personal boy. He was a
Somali from the Northwest coast, dusky brown, with the regular
clear-cut features of a Greek marble god. His dress was of neat
khaki, and he looked down on savages; but, also, as with all the
dark-skinned races, up to his white master. Mahomet was with me
during all my African stay, and tested out nobly. As yet, of
course, I did not know him.

"Chakula taiari," said he.

That is Swahili. It means literally "food is ready." After one
has hunted in Africa for a few months, it means also "paradise is
opened," "grief is at an end," "joy and thanksgiving are now in
order," and similar affairs. Those two words are never forgotten,
and the veriest beginner in Swahili can recognize them without
the slightest effort.

We followed Mahomet. Somehow, without orders, in all this
confusion, the personal staff had been quietly and efficiently
busy. Drawn a little to one side stood a table with four chairs.
The table was covered with a white cloth, and was set with a
beautiful white enamel service. We took our places. Behind each
chair straight as a ramrod stood a neat khaki-clad boy. They
brought us food, and presented it properly on the left side,
waiting like well-trained butlers. We might have been in a London
restaurant. As three of us were Americans, we felt a trifle
dazed. The porters, having finished the distribution of their
loads, squatted on their heels and watched us respectfully.

And then, not two hundred yards away, four ostriches paced slowly
across the track, paying not the slightest attention to us-our
first real wild ostriches, scornful of oranges, careless of
tourists, and rightful guardians of their own snowy plumes. The
passage of these four solemn birds seemed somehow to lend this
strange open-air meal an exotic flavour. We were indeed in
Africa; and the ostriches helped us to realize it.

We finished breakfast and arose from our chairs. Instantly a half
dozen men sprang forward. Before our amazed eyes the table
service, the chairs and the table itself disappeared into neat
packages. M'ganga arose to his feet.

"Bandika!" he cried.

The askaris rushed here and there actively.

"Bandika! bandika! bandika!" they cried repeatedly.

The men sprang into activity. A struggle heaved the varicoloured
multitude-and, lo! each man stood upright, his load balanced on
his head. At the same moment the syces led up our horses, mounted
and headed across the little plain whence had come the four
ostriches. Our African journey had definitely begun.

Behind us, all abreast marched the four gunbearers; then the four
syces; then the safari single file, an askari at the head bearing
proudly his ancient musket and our banner, other askaris
flanking, M'ganga bringing up the rear with his mighty umbrella
and an unsuspected rhinoceros-hide whip. The tent boys and the
cook scattered along the flank anywhere, as befitted the free and
independent who had nothing to do with the serious business of
marching. A measured sound of drumming followed the beating of
loads with a hundred sticks; a wild, weird chanting burst from
the ranks and died down again as one or another individual or
group felt moved to song. One lot had a formal chant and response.
Their leader, in a high falsetto, said something like

"Kuna koma kuno,"

and all his tribesmen would follow with a single word in a deep
gruff tone

"Za-la-nee!"

All of which undoubtedly helped immensely.

The country was a bully country, but somehow it did not look like
Africa. That is to say, it looked altogether too much like any
amount of country at home. There was nothing strange and exotic
about it. We crossed a little plain, and up over a small hill,
down into a shallow canyon that seemed to be wooded with live
oaks, across a grass valley or so, and around a grass hill. Then
we went into camp at the edge of another grass valley, by a
stream across which rose some ordinary low cliffs.

That is the disconcerting thing about a whole lot of this
country-it is so much like home. Of course, there are many wide
districts exotic enough in all conscience-the jungle beds of the
rivers, the bamboo forests, the great tangled forests themselves,
the banana groves down the aisles of which dance savages with
shields-but so very much of it is familiar. One needs only
church spires and a red-roofed village or so to imagine one's
self in Surrey. There is any amount of country like Arizona, and
more like the uplands of Wyoming, and a lot of it resembling the
smaller landscapes of New England. The prospects of the whole
world are there, so that somewhere every wanderer can find the
countryside of his own home repeated. And, by the same token,
that is exactly what makes a good deal of it so startling. When a
man sees a file of spear-armed savages, or a pair of snorty old
rhinos, step out into what has seemed practically his own back
yard home, he is even more startled than if he had encountered
them in quite strange surroundings.

We rode into the grass meadow and picked camp site. The men
trailed in and dumped down their loads in a row.

At a signal they set to work. A dozen to each tent got them up in
a jiffy. A long file brought firewood from the stream bed. Others
carried water, stones for the cook, a dozen other matters. The
tent boys rescued our boxes; they put together the cots and made
the beds, even before the tents were raised from the ground.
Within an incredibly short space of time the three green tents
were up and arranged, each with its bed made, its mosquito bar
hung, its personal box open, its folding washstand ready with
towels and soap, the table and chairs unlimbered. At a discreet
distance flickered the cook campfire, and at a still discreeter
distance the little tents of the men gleamed pure white against
the green of the high grass.

V. MEMBA SASA

I wish I could plunge you at once into the excitements of big
game in Africa, but I cannot truthfully do so. To be sure, we
went hunting that afternoon, up over the low cliffs, and we saw
several of a very lively little animal known as the Chandler's
reedbuck. This was not supposed to be a game country, and that
was all we did see. At these we shot several
times-disgracefully. In fact, for several days we could not
shoot at all, at any range, nor at anything. It was very sad, and
very aggravating. Afterward we found that this is an invariable
experience to the newcomer. The light is new, the air is
different, the sizes of the game are deceiving. Nobody can at
first hit anything. At the end of five days we suddenly began to
shoot our normal gait. Why, I do not know.

But in this afternoon tramp around the low cliffs after the
elusive reedbuck, I for the first time became acquainted with a
man who developed into a real friend.

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