Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous, D.S.O Part 15

The following is written by a lady now resident as a farmer's wife in South Rhodesia, and gives accurately the various pros and cons and the prospect of success to-day in that colony.

"Do not resign your position as any kind of bra.s.s hat to come out here, if making money is your aim and object. Even our wealthiest farmers are not on the way to being plutocrats. After all, we are 6000 miles from our best market. But should fate or fortune land you here, you who love the sky and the open road, and the starry solitudes of an African night, the clear-cut outline of granite hills against a sapphire sky and the fragrance of a flower-jewelled veld, the whirr of startled birds and the crash of game as it bounds through the bush, I think you would find it difficult to return to the troglodyte life of London.--ETHEL COLQUHOUN JOLLIE." ("The Field," April 6th, 1918.)

When the boom in "Things Rhodesian" was at its height, some truth of the real state of affairs seemed to have reached British investors. Henry Labouchere doubtless got hold of a good deal of perfectly correct information and much that was decidedly otherwise. With his characteristic audacity in exposing all shams he, in a series of articles in "Truth," ruthlessly attacked the Chartered Company and all exploiters and "boomers" of the new territory. Much of what he wrote was the truth, but with it all, most of his criticisms were too scathing and hopelessly inaccurate. Amongst those cla.s.sed as rascals who came under the lash of his pen was Fred Selous, a man who knew no more about business than a child, and who was not a.s.sociated in the smallest degree with any financier, and who had never written one word about the country he was not prepared to substantiate. To those who knew Selous and his perfect immunity from all stock-dealing transactions the whole thing was simply ridiculous, but the Great Public, after all, is too often p.r.o.ne to believe any libel if it is constantly repeated. In consequence Selous was much depressed by these attacks and resented them bitterly, for he knew he was wholly innocent, yet being advised that he would not advance his position by replying in the newspapers he resolved to bide his time and reply to them _in toto_ in a work he had under preparation ("Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia").

Mr. Burlace (of Rowland Ward, Ltd., who had bought the rights of his new book) met Selous at Plymouth on his arrival in 1896, and fortunately persuaded him not to mention controversial matters to the numerous pressmen who were there and wished to hear what he had to say concerning Mr. Labouchere's articles. Selous was, however, still anxious to thresh out the whole matter in his book, but Mr. Burlace, who has very considerable business knowledge and a firm conviction that the public do not care two straws about controversial matters after the subject is, so to speak, "dead," gave him good advice to avoid the discussion as far as possible and to let the public learn by a man's own character, past and future, who speaks the truth. That was sound logic, and Selous profited thereby, although he did answer many of Labouchere's gross libels on the Bulawayo Field Force.

In many ways Rowland Ward and the members of his staff were good friends to Selous for a considerable part of his life. They bought his specimens at a good price, looked after his affairs at home before he married, and helped him in a hundred ways. Rowland Ward purchased the rights of Selous' new book, "Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa," and gave the author a good sum of money for his work. If "A Hunter's Wanderings"

made Selous known to the public, "Travel and Adventures in South-East Africa" a.s.sured his reputation, made money for him when he badly wanted it, and fixed a definite value to his future books and the numerous contributions he made to scientific and sporting literature. "Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia," published by Rowland Ward and Co., was also a success and gave the public a clear and truthful account of the second Matabele war and did much to enhance the author's reputation. This book he dedicated to his wife "who, during the last few months, has at once been my greatest anxiety and my greatest comfort."

It had long been one of Selous' ambitions to add to his collection the heads of that rare and beautiful antelope, the Nyala, or Angas's bushbuck, _Tragelaphus angasi_, whose habitat was the dense bush stretching along the coast from St. Lucia Bay, Zululand, to the Sabi river in Portuguese territory, east of Mashunaland. It has also more recently been found in Nya.s.saland. Wherefore, as soon as he left Matabeleland and reached Kimberley, he left his wife and went to Delagoa Bay, intending to hunt this animal for a short time in the dense thickets which border the Pongolo and Usutu rivers in Amatongaland. Only three Englishmen previously had had personal acquaintance with this somewhat rare antelope, namely, Angas who discovered it, Baldwin in 1854, and Drummond, 1867-1872, all of whom wrote of its great beauty, cunning nature, and the pestilential climate in which it lived.

In Delagoa Bay Selous was fortunate enough to meet a certain colonist named Wissels, who owned a small trading station near the junction of the Pongolo and Usutu rivers, right in the heart of the habitat of the Nyala. Wissels was returning home next day in his sea-going boat and Selous made some swift preparations and accompanied him. In two days he reached the Maputa and proceeded overland, with three women carriers, to Wissels' station, where he found numerous freshly captured skins and horns of the animal he had come to hunt. For the next few days, in pouring rain, he crept through the bush with native hunters, and was fortunate enough to bag three fine male and two female Nyala, a pair of which are now in the Natural History Museum in London; the heads of the two other males are in the collection at Worplesdon. He was somewhat disappointed not to shoot the rare little Livingstone's Suni, one of which he saw, as it was one of the few rare antelopes he did not possess. After a long tramp of eighty miles through deep sand he reached Delagoa Bay on October 7th, and then returned to Kimberley, and so to England, not, however, completely escaping the inevitable attacks of fever which are the lot of all who hunt the Nyala in the feverish swamps and thickets of the East Coast.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] This unfortunate gentleman went to hunt hippopotami at the mouth of the Limpopo. Neither he nor any members of his outfit were ever heard of again and they may have been wiped out by the Matabele.

[47] Lobengula's native name.

[48] Col. Johan Colenbrander, as his name implies, was of Dutch origin.

He was born at Pinetown, Natal, in 1859. At the age of twenty he was a skilled shot and hunter, and kept a general store in Swaziland close to the King's kraal. His first wife Maria was then the only white woman in Swaziland. She was a beautiful woman, one of the daughters of Mr. John Mullins, of Natal, and was an expert rider and rifle-shot. Colenbrander was a born hunter and fighter and took part in all the recent wars in South Africa. He was also an excellent linguist, speaking fluently several native dialects. He served with distinction in the Zulu War, and in 1889 and again in 1890 accompanied the Matabele envoys to England as guide and interpreter. From 1895 he held several positions under the Chartered Company. In 1893 he remained with Lobengula as peace envoy when the Pioneers entered Mashunaland. In 1896 he organized and officered "Colenbrander's Boys," and in the second Boer War in 1901 he took command of Kitchener's Fighting Scouts and rendered good service, being mentioned in despatches and receiving the C.B. His second wife was Yvonne, daughter of Captain Loftus Nunn, and she died after two years of marriage, whilst his third wife Kathleen, daughter of Mr. James Gloster, survives him. Colenbrander all his life liked to go where sport, life, war and adventure called, and was ever a loyal friend to Britain. As a hunter Selous reckoned him as one of the most experienced in South Africa. He was unfortunately drowned in Feb., 1918, whilst taking part in a cinema performance representing the Zulu War. As he was crossing the Klip river his horse became restive, and he threw himself off and tried to swim to the bank; when on the point of being rescued he threw up his arms and sank.

[49] "Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia," pp. 161-163, published by Rowland Ward and Co.

[50] Lobengula's Prime Minister, whom I met in 1893 and whose portrait I executed for the "Daily Graphic" in that year.

[51] "Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia."

CHAPTER X 1896-1907

AS soon as Selous and his wife returned home at the end of 1896 he finished off the notes he had made concerning the second Matabele War, and delivered them to Rowland Ward & Co., who published his book, "Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia," shortly afterwards. From this time forward he did a considerable amount of literary work, which, being in demand, gave him sufficient money to satisfy many of his more pressing wants at home, as well as supplying funds for the numerous short trips he now made every year. Owing in a large measure to the kindly help and advice given to him by a South African friend, his finances were now put on a sound basis, and he was able to look forward to being able to live at home in comfort without being denied those short periods of wandering which to him were part of his existence. Of course there were always ups and downs due to market fluctuations, and when things went wrong for a while he would have fits of depression that he would be unable to hunt any more; but these always pa.s.sed away sooner or later when the clouds lifted and some new piece of work commanded a good price. There is little doubt that a man enjoys best that for which he has worked. All Selous' later hunts were the outcome of his industry with the pen, and in some measure from lectures, so he experienced some joy in the working, for it meant to him the camp fire and the open road.

In reading of his almost continuous wanderings after this date it must not be supposed that he was not happy in his home life. As a matter of fact no man considered himself more blessed by fortune in the possession of wife and children, and every fresh expedition, when he felt impelled as it were to go to the wilds, was fraught with misgivings and anxieties for his loved ones at home. It was always a wrench when the time came.

He wrote once to Roosevelt on this point, and received the following sympathetic answer:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIONS CHASING A KOODOO BULL.]

"... After all, there is nothing that in any way comes up to home and wife and children, in spite of the penalty one has to pay for having given hostages to fortune. I know just exactly how you feel about the 'two hearts.' Having a wife and six children, of whom I am very fond, I have found it more and more difficult to get away; for the last eight years, indeed, my hunting trips have merely been short outings. I am of course very much interested in my work here; but I cannot say how I long at times for the great rolling prairies of sun-dried yellow gra.s.s, where the antelopes stand at gaze, or wheel and circle; for the splintered cottonwoods on the bank of some shrunken river, with the wagon drawn up under them, and the ponies feeding round about; for the great pine forests, where the bull elk challenge, and the pack-train threads its way through the fallen timber. I long also for the other wilderness which I have never seen, and never shall see, excepting through your books, and the books of two or three men like you who are now dead. It may be that some time I can break away from this sedentary life for a hunt somewhere; and of all things possible to me, I should like to take this hunt among the big bears of Alaska, and try to work out their specific relationship. But I don't know whether I shall ever get the chance; and of course this sedentary life gradually does away with one's powers; though I can walk and shoot a little yet. Politics is a rather engrossing pursuit, and, unfortunately, with us it is acute in the Fall, at the very time of the best hunting; and as my children grow older I am more and more concerned with giving them a proper training for their life-work, whatever it may be. I don't yet accept the fact that I shall never get the chance to take some big hunt again, and perhaps it may come so I shall be able to; and meanwhile I do revel in all the books about big game, and when I can get out to my ranch even for ten days, I enjoy it to the last point, taking an old cow-pony and shambling off across the gra.s.sy flats for a few days' camping, and the chance of an occasional p.r.o.ng-buck.

"I am glad you like to chat with me even by letter. Ever since reading your first book I have always wanted to meet you. I hope I may have better luck next year than I had this. You will of course let me know if you think I can be of any help to you in your Canadian trip.

"The Colonel X. whom I wrote to you about is, I am quite sure, what we should term a fake, although I also have no doubt that he has actually done a good deal of big game hunting; but I am certain that, together with his real experiences, he puts in some that are all nonsense. Did you ever read the writings of a man named Leveson, who called himself 'the Old Shikari'? He was undoubtedly a great hunter; yet when he wrote about American big game, I know that he stretched the long bow, and I am very sure he did the same about African big game. He everywhere encountered precisely those adventures which boys' books teach us to expect. Thus as soon as he got to Africa, he witnessed a vicious encounter between black rhinoceroses and elephants, which would have done credit to Mayne Reid; exactly as Colonel X. relates the story of a fearful prize-fight, in which a captive English Major slays a gorilla, against which he is pitted by a cannibal king--dates, names and places being left vacant.

"What do you know of that South African hunter and writer named Drummond? He wrote very interestingly, and gave most vivid descriptions of hunting-camps, of the African scenery, and of adventures with Hons and buffaloes; but his remarks about rhinoceroses made me think he was not always an exact observer, especially after I had read what you said.

"By the way, did I ever mention to you that Willie Chanler's party was continually charged by black rhinoceroses, and his companion, an Austrian named Von Hohnel, who stayed with me once, was badly mauled by one."

Like most schoolboys with a taste for natural history and an adventurous disposition Selous had, as we have seen, been an industrious bird-nester. In his youth he had commenced to make a collection of European birds' eggs, and this taste, usually abandoned by most boys in after-life, was in him only dormant. When he set out to do anything he generally carried it through to the end; and so when opportunity came again, as it did after his wanderings in South Africa were finished, he seized it with avidity. He was much too good a naturalist to collect eggs wholesale, as some collectors unfortunately do, but contented himself with one or two clutches taken by himself. His contention was, I think, a correct one, that if only one clutch of eggs of a bird is taken, the same bird either sits again and lays a fresh set of eggs or makes a new nest. So little or no harm is done.

Being a member of the British Ornithologists' Union he knew all the regular egg-collectors, and soon obtained the best information where various species were to be found. Each year as April came round he packed his bag and, occasionally accompanied by some local enthusiast, he went to all the best resorts of rare birds in England, Scotland, the Orkneys, Asia Minor, Spain, Hungary, Holland, and Iceland.

Thus in 1897 he commenced the egg-hunting season by going to Smyrna in February with the intention of taking the nests of the large raptorial birds which there breed very early in the year. The point he made for was the Murad Dagh, a range of mountains in the interior of Asia Minor, where he knew the short-toed, golden and imperial eagles, and the black and griffon vultures nested. He also had some hopes that he might secure one of the big stags before they dropped their horns. On his journey he suffered much from the cold in the mountains, and was also at first unsuccessful in finding any of the big stags, who seemed to have been hunted out of the range. He saw three fine stags but did not succeed in finding one of those which he had wounded. He then returned to Smyrna and went into the Maimun Dagh again. Here he took the eggs of black vulture, griffon vulture, short-toed eagle and lammergeier. Getting tired of this range he went on to the Ak Dagh, where he took one golden eagle's nest, three griffon vultures' eggs, and two of black vultures.

He also shot a young red deer, with which was a fine old stag that had just dropped its horns. He returned to England in March.

In England he commenced his nesting operations in April by hunting Thatcham Marsh (near Reading) for water-rails' nests, and took two. Then he went on to the Scilly Isles for sea-birds.

He says, in a letter to me: "I am going to Brabant if I can obtain a permit from the Dutch Government to collect a few eggs, and after that to Scotland, where I shall remain until it is time to leave for America." In Scilly, he says: "I got eggs of the Greater and Lesser Black-backed Gulls, Herring Gull, Manx Shearwater, Oyster-catcher, and Ringed Plover, but found no Terns breeding." On June 8th he decided to put off his trip to Holland, as it was too late. I then gave him particulars where he could get Arctic, Lesser and Sandwich terns in Scotland, and also obtained permission for him to take two Capercaillie nests. All of these he obtained.

In any collection of hunting trophies, the gems of all collections (with perhaps the exception of the red deer of Europe and the great sheep and goats of Central Asia) are the great deer of North America, and Selous had for long envied the possessors of such fine specimens of moose, wapiti and caribou as had been obtained in the seventies and eighties of the last century. It is true that as good moose and caribou can be killed to-day as ever; but the great wapiti, owing to their curtailed range, are gone for ever, so a hunter to-day must be content with inferior specimens. In 1897 three or four specimens of wapiti were allowed to be killed in the restricted area south of the Yellowstone Park, and it was with the intention of killing these as well as other North American game that Selous turned to the West in August, 1897.

In his youth Selous, like other boys of similar tastes, had devoured the works of Ballantyne, Mayne Reid, Catlin, and Kingston, relating to fact and fiction, and had always desired to visit America as one of his lands of dreams. But it was not civilized America that appealed to him.

Cities are the same all the world over. It was the land of vast plains and trackless forests swarming with game that appealed to him; and if he could not, alas, now find such a hunter's paradise, he could at least see something of the little that was truly wild which was left and perhaps obtain a few fair specimens for his collection. Once, it is true, he had actually taken his pa.s.sage to America. That happened in 1893, but the outbreak of the Matabele war in that year had caused him to alter his plans and he went back to South Africa instead.

Selous had a good friend, W. Moncrieff, who owned a small cattle ranch in the heart of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. Here in the adjoining forests and mountains still lived a remnant of the bears, wapiti, mule-deer and sheep that had formerly been so abundant, and the local knowledge enjoyed by Moncrieff enabled him to furnish Selous with the best information. Accordingly he left England accompanied by his wife, and, pa.s.sing through Canada, reached the ranch on the last day of August. Next day the party on horses, accompanied by a waggon with one Bob Graham as a guide, struck into the mountains and, after pa.s.sing over the main range of the Big Horns, descended into the Big Horn basin. This is covered with sage brush, and is still the home of a few p.r.o.ng-horned antelopes, two of which, one a good male, Selous succeeded in shooting.

The hunters then proceeded up the south fork of Stinking Water, and established a main camp in the forests, where a few very shy wapiti males were still to be found. For twenty days Selous toiled in a ma.s.s of dense and fallen timber before he carried his first wapiti head back to camp. Wapiti are in fact now both shy and scarce, and a man must persevere and work continuously, at least early in the season, before even one fair specimen can be found, but Selous greatly enjoyed the grandeur and wildness of the scenery, and being still in the prime of life the exertion of daily toil did not in any way affect his energy. On September 29th he shot his first mule-deer buck. A little snow came and helped to make tracking easier. Then Selous had some luck, and he killed four wapiti, two in one day, and a fifth near Davies' ranch on October 28th. Near the same place too he killed one of the few remaining white-tailed deer-bucks in Wyoming, but its head was rather a poor one, that of an old male "going-back." Selous wrote an account of this trip to Roosevelt, then a.s.sistant Secretary to the American Navy, and received (November 30th, 1897) the following reply:--

"Your letter made me quite melancholy--first, to think I wasn't to see you after all; and next, to realize so vividly how almost the last real hunting-grounds in America have gone. Thirteen years ago I had splendid sport on the Big Horn Mountains which you crossed. Six years ago I saw elk in bands of one and two hundred on Buffalo Fork; and met but one hunting expedition while I was out. A very few more years will do away with all the really wild hunting, at least so far as bear and elk are concerned, in the Rocky Mountains and the West generally; one of the last places will be the Olympic Peninsula of Oregon, where there is a very peculiar elk, a different species, quite as big in body but with smaller horns, which are more like those of the European red deer, and with a black head. Goat, sheep, and bear will for a long time abound in British Columbia and Alaska.

"Well, I am glad you enjoyed yourself, anyhow, and that you did get a sufficient number of fair heads--wapiti, p.r.o.ng-buck, black-tail, and white-tail. Of course I am very sorry that you did not get a good sheep and a bear or two. In the north-eastern part of the Park there is some wintering ground for the elk; and I doubt if they will ever be entirely killed out in the Park; but in a very short while shooting in the West, where it exists, will simply be the kind that can now be obtained in Maine and New York; that is, the game will be scarce, and the game-laws fairly observed in consequence of the existence of a cla.s.s of professional guides; and a hunter who gets one good head for a trip will feel he has done pretty well. You were in luck to get so fine a p.r.o.ng-buck head.

"Do tell Mrs. Selous how sorry I am to miss her, as well as you. I feel rather melancholy to think that my own four small boys will practically see no hunting on this side at all, and indeed no hunting anywhere unless they have the adventurous temper that will make them start out into wild regions to find their fortunes. I was just in time to see the last of the real wilderness life and real wilderness hunting. How I wish I could have been with you this year! But, as I wrote you before, during the last three seasons I have been able to get out West but once, and then only for a fortnight on my ranch, where I shot a few antelope for meat.

"You ought to have Hough's 'Story of the Cowboy' and Van d.y.k.e's 'Still Hunter.' Also I think you might possibly enjoy small portions of the three volumes of the Boone and Crockett Club's publications. They could be obtained from the 'Forest and Stream' people at 346 Broadway, New York, by writing. Have you ever seen Washington Irving's 'Trip on the Prairie,' and Lewis and Clarke's Expedition? And there are two very good volumes, about fifty years old, now out of print, by a lieutenant in the British Army named Ruxton, the t.i.tles of which for the moment I can't think of; but I will look them up and send them to you. He describes the game less than the trappers and hunters of the period; men who must have been somewhat like your elephant-hunters. When I was first on the plains there were a few of them left; and the best hunting-trip I ever made was in the company of one of them, though he was not a particularly pleasant old fellow to work with.

"Now, to answer your question about ranching; and of course you are at liberty to quote me.

"I know a good deal of ranching in western North Dakota, eastern Montana and north-eastern Wyoming. My ranch is in the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri, a good cattle-country, with shelter, traversed by a river, into which run here and there perennial streams. It is a dry country, but not in any sense a desert.

Year in and year out we found that it took about twenty-five acres to support a steer or cow. When less than that was allowed the ranch became overstocked, and loss was certain to follow. Of course where hay is put up, and cultivation with irrigation attempted, the amount of land can be reduced; but any country in that part of the West which could support a steer or cow on five acres would be country which it would pay to attempt to cultivate, and it would, therefore, cease to be merely pastoral country.

"Is this about what you wish? I have made but a short trip to Texas. There are parts of it near the coast which are well-watered, and support a large number of cattle. Elsewhere I do not believe that it supports more cattle to the square mile than the north-western country, and where there are more they get terribly thinned out by occasional droughts. In Hough's book you will see some description of this very ranching in Texas and elsewhere. I really grudge the fact that you and Mrs. Selous got away from this side without my even getting a glimpse of you."

As he had only shot two wapiti with fair heads and one mule-deer with average horns, Selous decided to have a second hunt in the Rockies, with the object of obtaining better specimens. In November, as a rule, there is heavy snow in the mountains, and this has the effect of driving the game down out of the heavy timber into more open ground where "heads"

can more easily be seen and judged. Accordingly in October, 1898, Selous went to Red Lodge in Montana and there met the hunter Graham. This time he went up the north fork of Stinking Water to the forest and about twelve miles east of the Yellowstone Park. Mild weather, however, throughout November was all against seeing any quant.i.ty of game, so Selous was again somewhat disappointed with the results of this hunt.

After this trip, in 1898, he wrote to me:--

"Come here yourself as soon as you can. _Vous serez toujours le bienvenu._ A d.a.m.ned newspaper reporter (an American, who came here whilst I was in London, and would not go away until he had seen me) said I have got some good wapiti heads, but I only got one _fair_ one. I got four wapiti bulls altogether, but two had very small heads--not worth taking. I got four mule-deer stags, one with a very nice head and a second not at all bad. I also shot another lynx; but I had very unfortunate weather, hardly any snow, and when I left the Mountains the wapiti were still up in their early autumn range."

Selous was rather disappointed in not obtaining better wapiti heads, and wrote in his book ("Travels East and West") that bigger heads of deer could now be killed in Hungary than in the Rockies. Commenting on this, Roosevelt, in a letter to him at a later date, says:--

"By the way, I was in the winter range of the deer (Colorado), and I have never seen them so numerous. They were all black-tail (mule-deer). Every day I saw scores, and some days hundreds.

There were also elk (wapiti). I did not shoot either deer or elk, of course; but I saw elk-antlers shot last fall, ranging from 52 to 56 inches in length. I think you were a few years ahead of time (although only a few years) when you stated that already bigger antlers could be secured in Hungary than in the Rockies."