In Africa Part 16

The cob is a curiously reliable animal. He likes one certain place that he is accustomed to, and nothing can drive him away. If you see him there one afternoon, you are reasonably certain of coming back the next afternoon and seeing him there again. Usually they graze in some sheltered meadow along the river's edge, and for recreation, so far as I could see, amuse themselves by seeing how many can get on top of one ant-hill at one time. Some of those ant-hills were literally bristling with cobs, one male to each five females, and in herds of from thirty to fifty.

In architecture, the cob is nearly three feet high at the shoulder, has beautiful, sweeping horns of a lyrate shape, has a white patch around each eye, a white belly, and a coat of yellow with black on the forelegs. There is no handsomer antelope in Africa than the Uganda cob, and because it is found in such a restricted and remote district is accountable for the fact that one seldom sees a cob head in a collection of horns. Comparatively few sportsmen have killed them, although they are not hard to kill if one reaches a district where they are found. The extreme beauty of this antelope led us to secure a group of them for the Field Museum.

The reedbuck is another of the smaller antelopes that carries a beautiful head, and, like nearly all of the antelopes, comes in many varieties, or subspecies.

[Photograph: A Wounded Wart Hog]

[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce A Gra.s.s Fire]

[Photograph: A Maribou Stork]

Our own relations with the reedbuck were limited to the high alt.i.tudes near the Mau escarpment and the broad, rolling, gra.s.sy downs along the numerous streams of the Guas Ngishu Plateau. This subspecies is called the Uganda race of the bohor reedbuck--sometimes abbreviated to "bohor."

If you say you've shot a "bohor" you will be understood to mean a bohor reedbuck.

[Drawing: _Reedbuck_]

You will find the reedbuck in the tall reeds and bulrushes of the swamps and low places, where he finds good cover and good feeding; and also you will find him along the low, undulating, gra.s.s-covered hills near his water supply. In the heat of the day they are up in the tall gra.s.s, where they remain until along in the afternoon. They lie close, and, if discovered, will dart off with neck outstretched in such a way as to make it difficult to tell which is male and which female.

I have also seen the females use every means for protecting their lords and masters, standing up before them as they lie secreted in the gra.s.s and seeking to divert the attention of the hunter from the bucks to themselves. This desire to protect the male is common to many of the antelope family, and numberless times I have seen a band of does attempt to screen the male and shield him from harm.

The reedbuck never travels in large numbers, seldom more than two or three, or at most, five or six, being bunched together.

[Drawing: _They Watched While the Buck Ran Away_]

We had most of our reedbuck experiences while driving swamps for lions.

On these occasions many reedbuck would be driven out of the cover of the reeds and rushes, and go crashing up the slopes leading away from the swamp. On one occasion a reedbuck lay so close that it did not stir until one of the beaters was almost upon it, when it sprang up, nearly knocking him over, and escaped behind the skirmish line of beaters. At other times, after the skirmish line apparently had traversed every foot of a swamp, reedbuck would spring up after the line had pa.s.sed, thus ill.u.s.trating how close they can lie and how effectually they can escape detection.

The reedbuck has short horns, usually between seven and ten inches in length, but one of our party secured one set of horns ten and a quarter inches long--an exceptionally fine head. The reedbuck's distinguishing characteristic is a sharp whistle, which he sounds shrilly when alarmed.

Another beautiful antelope that we met in small numbers on the Tana River and on the Guas Ngihsu Plateau was the bushbuck, found in thick scrub along rivers and also in the swamps and wet places. This animal belongs to a select little coterie of highly prized and rare antelopes, all of which have the distinguishing feature of a spiral horn.

The bushbuck is the smallest, and is found over nearly all of East Africa except upon the open plains and deserts. The females are of a dark chestnut color, and the males dark, almost black, with white markings on the neck and forelegs. A bushbuck with fifteen-inch horns is considered a fine prize, although horns of nineteen inches are on record.

The other members of the same family of spiral-horned antelopes are the kudu, the lesser kudu, the situtunga, the nyala, the bongo, and the lordly eland, king of all antelopes in size. The kudu is largely protected in East Africa, and in my shooting experience I was not in a district where he was to be found. The same was true with respect to the lesser kudu. The nyala is a South African species and is not to be found in British East Africa. The situtunga is a swamp dweller and is found chiefly in Uganda and, to my knowledge, infrequently in the East African protectorate.

The bongo is to the white sportsman what the north pole has been to explorers for centuries. In all records of game shooting there has been, until recently, only one white man who has killed a bongo, although the Wanderobo dwellers of the deep forests have killed many.

The bongo lives in the densest part of dense forests, can drive his way through the worst tangle of vegetation, and has a hearing and eyesight so keen that usually he sees the hunter long before the latter sees him.

A hunt after bongo means long hours or even days of hunting the forests, with hardships of travel so disheartening that comparatively few white sportsmen attempt to go in after the elusive antelope. Kermit Roosevelt, however, with the good fortune that has followed his hunting adventures, succeeded in killing a cow and calf bongo after only a few hours of hunting with a Wanderobo.

A few days after I heard of this piece of good luck I was traveling across Victoria Nyanza on one of the little steamers that ply the lake.

My cabin mate was a stoical Englishman who told me quite calmly that he had just killed a large bull bongo a few days before. He had been visiting Lord Delamere, and after a few hours in the forest had succeeded in doing what only two white men had done before.

The Englishman who had this good luck was George Grey, a brother of Sir Edward Grey, one of the present cabinet ministers of England.

[Drawing: _Eland_]

The eland is the largest of all antelopes, and we ran across a few on the Tana River and a few on the Guas Ngishu Plateau. Under the old game ordinance the sportsman was allowed to kill one bull eland; under the new ordinance he is allowed to kill none except in certain restricted districts and by special license. The eland is as big as a bull, with spiral horns and beautifully marked skin, and both the male and female carry horns. Those of the latter are usually larger and slenderer, but the skin of the female is not so handsomely marked as that of the male.

It is hard to get near an eland, but as the bull is nearly six feet high at the shoulders it is not especially difficult to hit him at three hundred yards or more. The one I shot was three hundred and sixty-five yards away and carried beautiful horns, twenty-four and one-quarter inches in length. The head of the great bull eland makes a wonderfully imposing trophy when placed in your baronial halls.

In the foregoing list of antelopes I have tried to tell a little about the types of that cla.s.s of animal that I met in my African travels--in all, sixteen species of antelope. My chief excuse for doing it is to enable people at home to know the difference between a topi and a sun hat and between a sing-sing and a cob. The names of many of the African antelope family are strange and confusing, so that it is little wonder that they mystify people in America. There are a hundred or more kinds, and no one can hope to know them unless he makes a business of it.

I have not seen the grysbok, or the suni, or the dibitag, or the lechwi, or the aoul, or the gerenuk, or the blaauwbok, or the chevrotain, or lots of others, but who in the world could guess what they were or what they looked like, judging only from the names?

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE TALL GRa.s.s OF THE MOUNT ELGON COUNTRY. A NARROW ESCAPE FROM A LONG-HORNED RHINO. A THANKSGIVING DINNER AND A VISIT TO A NATIVE VILLAGE

Mount Elgon is one of the four great mountains of Africa. You can find it on the map of the dark continent, standing all alone, just a little bit north of Victoria Nyanza, and surrounded by names that one has never heard of before.

The mountain is distinctly out of the picture-post-card belt--in fact, the only belt that one will find around Elgon is the timber belt that encircles the mountain, and perhaps also a few that the local residents wear on Sundays and national holidays.

The function of the latter cla.s.s of belt is to keep up a gay appearance.

It is worn for looks, not warmth.

The traveler who goes to Mount Elgon will not be distracted by sounds of civilization, except such as he takes with him. He will travel for days without seeing a sign of human life beyond his own following. The country west of the Nzoia River is uninhabited and is abandoned to the elephant and the giraffe and other animals that care not for the madding crowd. Thomas Cook and Son have not yet penetrated that district with schedules and time cards and luggage labels; so if your purpose in traveling is to get a grand a.s.sortment of stickers on your trunks and hand-bags, it is useless to include Mount Elgon in your itinerary.

There will be days of marching through high gra.s.s, often so deep as almost to bury yourself and your horse; hours of delay at marshy rivers densely choked with a tangle of riotous vegetation, and much groping about in a trackless waste for a suitable course to follow.

Owing to intertribal warfare the Elgon district has been closed for some time and it has only been during the last year or so that hunting parties have again been allowed to enter. Since that time a number of parties have been in, the Duke of Alba among the first, and later Doctor Rainsford, Frederick Selous and, Mr. McMillan, Captain Ashton, the Duke of Penaranda, Mr. Roosevelt, and a few others. Colonel Roosevelt went only as far as the Nzoia River, but most of the others crossed and swung up along the northeastern slopes of the mountain where elephants are most frequently found.

Our party decided to take the southern slope, notwithstanding we were warned that we might find the natives troublesome and treacherous. We were also warned that we should be going through an untraveled district where there were no trails and where native guides could not be secured.

[Photograph: A Native Granary]

[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce. A Chair Is a Sure Sign of Rank]

Nevertheless we started and brilliantly blundered into some most diverting adventures.

The first day's march after crossing the Nzoia River was through scrub country and what we considered high gra.s.s. The next day we struck _real_ high gra.s.s! It was so deep that we had to burrow through it. Only the helmets of those on horseback marked where the caravan was pa.s.sing. The long line of porters carrying their burdens were buried from view. It was a terrible place to meet a rhino and perhaps for that very reason we promptly proceeded to meet one.

We were riding ahead, followed by the cook and the tent boys, and behind them was the long string of a hundred or more porters, askaris, _totos_, and so forth. The end of the line was some hundred yards behind the head. Suddenly there was a wild cry of "_faru!_" (rhino).

It was disconcerting, but after one or two hurried and flurried moments we got our heavy batteries in readiness and prepared to sell his life as cheaply as possible. But no rhino came. The gra.s.s was too deep to have seen him if he had come, but we thought it was well to have a reception committee ready just the same.

Then the rear ranks began to telescope into the front ranks. They came forward two or three jumps at a time. They were visibly perturbed, but presently they recovered enough to give expert testimony.

A huge rhino had been in the gra.s.s by the trail as we came along and had waited until the whole line had pa.s.sed. Then he jumped into the trail and charged furiously after the porters. The latter, severally, collectively, and frantically, leaped for their lives, dropping packs and uttering hurried appeals to Allah.

[Drawing: _He Estimated the Length at Four Feet_]

After scattering a few dozen of the rank and file from his line of march the rhino veered off and plunged out of sight in the tall gra.s.s. One of the porters whose veracity is unquestioned by those who don't know him estimated the forward horn to be four feet long. He said the rhino charged earnestly and with hostile intent.

A rhino charging a _safari_ is always a pleasing diversion--pleasing after it's all over and diverting while it lasts. The cry of "_faru_" is a good deal like "car coming" at an automobile race. Instantly everybody is all attention, with the attention equally divided between the rhino and the nearest tree. If there is no tree the interest in the rhino becomes more acute.