Nine Faces Of Kenya by Elspeth Huxley
The Spotted Lion Kenneth Gandar Dower.
Game rangers and wardens were charged with the contradictory tasks of protecting both the wild animals and the crops these animals frequently destroyed. George Adamson queries the necessity.
Other elephants brought themselves into disrepute by indulging in mud baths in the Isiolo water supply and interfering with horticulture. Game Scouts shot five close to the scenes of their crimes, including a fine old bull which was well known to Isiolo residents and over the past ten years was often to be seen at all hours of the day peacefully feeding in the prison gardens oblivious of passing traffic and village urchins who came to throw stones at him.
I often wonder what future generations will think of us for destroying noble and rare living animals in order to preserve a few square yards of indifferent vegetables and flowers. But such is progress. Mankind, the least attractive and most expendable of nature’s creatures, is ever the most destructive of life.
The current District Commissioner of Isiolo, reading my report, sent the following comment to the last paragraph: “… in order to restore the dignity of the species homo sapiens I should like to draw your attention to the last seven verses of the first chapter of the first book of Moses called Genesis.”
As I am not a scholar of the Bible, I cannot think of an apt quotation in response but I believe the Koran says: “There is no kind of beast on earth, nor fowl which flieth with its wings, but the same is a people like unto you … unto their Lord shall they return. All God’s creatures are His family and he is the most beloved of God who trieth to do the most good to God’s creatures.”
Bwana Game George Adamson.
The advance of photography and the shrinkage of prey led to the substitution of a telling picture for a dead animal as the sportsman’s aim. Treetops in the Aberdare National Park became a favourite venue for watching and photographing game. In February 1952 Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh spent a memorable night in the house in the tree.
Next in the programme of the Royal Tour, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh went to stay at the Royal Lodge on the slopes of Mount Kenya, the lodge which was Kenya’s wedding present to our princess and her husband. One of the nights during their stay was allocated for a visit to Treetops in the Aberdare National Park, some thirty miles from the Lodge.
Many years ago David Sheldrick’s father found a pool in the Aberdare forest much used by big game. Next to the pool was a very large fig tree which offered an excellent opportunity of watching elephants, rhinos, buffaloes, and other animals coming in at night to drink. Sheldrick built a platform in the tree and took his friends there to watch the pageant of forest dwellers when the moon was bright. Some of his first guests were Major Eric Sherbroke-Walker and Lady Bettie Walker, who, as pioneers and owners of the Outspan Hotel at Nyeri, saw at once the possibility of using this attractive forest pool and glade as a very exciting adjunct of the Outspan. A charming wendy-house was built in the branches of the big fig tree, and thousands of people from all parts of the world enjoyed the thrills of watching exciting events round the forest pool. It was therefore to be a highlight of the royal visit, but for me not without some trouble.
The trouble concerned protection of the royal couple alike from angry elephants and from Mau Mau gangs already forming in the surrounding forest. Mervyn Cowie and John Hayward, warden of the Aberdare National Park, reconnoitred the path leading to the tree.
Hayward took the first two hundred yards of the path, and I took the latter portion up to the tree-house. All was quiet as I stealthily moved along listening and watching until I reached the top of the rise. Then came a burst of squeals and trumpeting. Elephants were obviously in possession of the pool. I crept up to within range of the platform and spied Jim Corbett standing there watching. I caught his eye by flicking a white handkerchief, and he gave me a reassuring wave. Never had I known of so many elephants at Treetops at this early hour of the day. There seemed to be at least fifty. Some bulls were very cantankerous and kept lunging at each other and rushing off into the forest. It was superb, I thought, that the Princess would be greeted by so many elephants, but it was also very dangerous. The fighting bulls were in a bad mood.
Hearing a twig crack in the surrounding forest, Mervyn Cowie crawled through the undergrowth to see a bull elephant bleeding from a tusk-wound in the shoulder and standing within ten yards of the path. Somehow the angry elephant had to be moved away without stampeding the whole herd. Cowie formed a plan.
The plan was to give him my scent and trust that he would either charge upwind or downwind, but not sideways. Sideways would mean straight along the path. I searched for a pebble, not an easy thing to find in a forest, but where the pathway had been levelled, there were some small stones. I picked up a round one about the size of a small plum and rubbed it well into my armpit. Disgusting on a hot day, I thought, but I knew it to be the most effective way of obtaining some powerful human scent. It had been successful on other occasions. I took my unsavoury pebble and threw it just beyond the elephant and to windward of him. The noise of it falling through the branches alerted him, and out went his huge ears. The wind remained steady and the plan worked.
Suddenly his trunk went forward to sniff the air, and then down into a tight curl, and he took off as if he had been pricked in the backside, straight towards the scent and on through the forest…. All was well, and I retreated down the path to the first bend. After a few moments and before I really had time to get my breath I heard the party approaching. Very quietly I pushed into the undergrowth and watched the Princess and the Duke go past within a few feet….
The next morning we went up to Treetops to meet and escort the Royal Party down. This time there was no anxiety…. No need to be secretive. The Princess was overjoyed and proclaimed the experience. She looked so youthful and happy. She had no idea that within a few hours of leaving Treetops she was to receive the sad news which cast a gloom across the world that her father, King George VI, had died….
The Royal Lodge at Sagana was closed and has not been used since, and within eight months a state of emergency was declared in Kenya. Two years later Treetops was utterly destroyed by Mau Mau terrorists, leaving only a charred stump as a memorial to the famous house in the tree. It was not until 1957 that the security situation improved sufficiently to permit the building of a new and bigger Treetops overlooking the same forest pool.
Fly, Vulture Mervyn Cowie.
The death of Elsa’s mother.
One dark night five men were asleep in their boma together with their flock of goats and sheep. One of the sleepers was wakened by a slight noise and discovered that the man next to him was missing. He roused the others and they soon realized that a lion had taken their comrade. At first light, the four remaining men and others from a neighbouring boma followed up the well-defined trail which led into the dense riverine jungle bounding the river’s banks. A short way on, they came to the pitiful remains and heard the deep warning growl of the lion. The Boran are courageous hunters but the almost impenetrable vegetation, where visibility was reduced to a few feet, daunted them and they gave up.
Accompanied by three Boran and Game Scouts Godana Dima, and Kikango, we went by Land Rover to a range of low rocky hills reputed to be the favourite haunt of the man-eater. Lions in this hot arid region often lie up on hill tops for the sake of the coolness during the heat of the day. We walked along the foot of the hills hoping to come on fresh spoor leading up. After about an hour we came on fresh tracks of a lioness. We followed thinking she might lead us to the lion. The going was difficult, over and between great granite boulders. We had just crawled through a passage between two giant rocks when there was a furious growl and the lioness appeared on a rock above us, looking extremely truculent. We had no wish to shoot a lioness but she was much too close and looked as if she might charge at any moment. I signalled Ken to fire. At the shot, the lioness disappeared. We advanced cautiously and found a heavy blood trail, leadin
Back at camp Joy was waiting for us and the first question she asked was – “Did you get him?” I pointed into the back of the car and said: “Look what we have brought you!”
At once Joy took absolute possession of the cubs. Ibrahim was sent fifty miles in the Land Rover to Garbatula, the nearest trading centre, to purchase a case of evaporated milk and a feeding bottle. In the meantime, I devised a teat out of a piece of sparking plug lead with the wire core removed.
How little did Joy or I imagine that the story of the smallest of the three cubs, and the cubs she herself would have one day, would be translated into thirty-three languages, sell several million copies, be made into a film and, as we hope and believe, make a lasting impact on the way in which human beings regard and treat wild animals.
Bwana Game George Adamson.
So plentiful were black rhinos that, in 1902, Richard Meinertzhagen saw twenty-one in a single day.
I took a stroll round camp this evening after work and coming round a corner met a rhinoceros face to face walking in my direction. There was no cover, so I fired point blank at his chest at but twenty yards. He staggered and nearly fell, but recovering himself made off. I gave him another shot as he ran but failed to stop him. He bolted towards the camp, when all my men and about 100 Masai spearmen gave chase. I yelled to them to let him be, but it had no effect and the hunt continued. The rhino could neither go fast nor far with his wounds, and was soon brought to bay and charged the whole crowd of us. We scattered and he stood. I fired again and the Masai encircled him and tried to spear him, which prevented me firing again for fear of hitting a man. He soon charged again, and singling out a Masai hunted him as a terrier does a rat. Nobody could fire for fear of hitting a man, so we yelled and tried to divert his attention. But he stuck to his victim, caught him up and tossed him some ten feet into the air. The man fell clear of the rhino, who did not turn but went a short distance and stood. I quickly got the men out of the way and dropped the rhino dead with a shot in the neck. The Masai who had been tossed suffered a bad rip up the right thigh, but no artery or bone has been damaged. Dr Mann has him in hand and thinks he should be about again in a month or so.
On cutting up the rhino we found fifteen Martini bullets in him which had been fired by my men, three Mannlicher bullets of mine and two .303 bullets. These latter rather puzzled me, as none of us had been using such a rifle. There were also 37 Masai spears sticking in his hide when he fell dead. He looked like a Christmas tree.
Kenya Diary 1902–1906 Richard Meinertzhagen.
Winston Churchill gets his rhino in 1907.
Our oryx led us a mile or more over rocky slopes, always promising and never giving a good chance for a shot, until at last he drew us round the shoulder of a hill – and there, abruptly, was the rhinoceros. The impression was extraordinary. A wide plain of white, withered grass stretched away to low hills broken with rocks. The rhinoceros stood in the middle of this plain, about five hundred yards away, in jet-black silhouette; not a twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the Stone Age. He was grazing placidly, and above him the vast snow dome of Kilimanjaro towered up in the clear air of morning to complete a scene unaltered since the dawn of the world.
The manner of killing a rhinoceros in the open is crudely simple. It is thought well usually to select the neighbourhood of a good tree, where one can be found, as the centre of the encounter. If no tree is available, you walk up as near as possible to him from any side except the windward, and then shoot him in the head or the heart. If you hit a vital spot, as sometimes happens, he falls. If you hit him anywhere else, he charges blindly and furiously in your direction, and you shoot him again, or not, as the case may be.
Bearing all this carefully in mind, we started out to do battle with Behemoth. We had advanced perhaps two hundred yards towards him, when a cry from one of the natives arrested us. We looked sharply to the right. There, not a hundred and fifty paces distant, under the shade of a few small trees, stood two other monsters. In a few more steps we should have tainted their wind and brought them up with a rush; and suppose this had happened, when perhaps we were already compromised with our first friend, and had him wounded and furious on our hands! Luckily warned in time, to creep back to the shoulder of the hill, to skirt its crest, and to emerge a hundred and twenty yards from this new objective was the work of a few minutes. We hurriedly agree to kill one first before touching the other. At such a range it is easy to hit so great a target; but the bull’s-eye is small. I fired. The thud of a bullet which strikes with an impact of a ton and a quarter, tearing through hide and muscle and bone with the hideous energy of cordite, came back distinctly. The large rhinoceros started, stumbled, turned directly towards the sound and the blow, and then bore straight down upon us in a peculiar trot, nearly as fast as a horse’s gallop, with an activity surprising in so huge a beast, and instinct with unmistakable purpose.
Great is the moral effect of a foe who advances. Everybody fired. Still the ponderous brute came on, as if he were invulnerable; as if he were an engine, or some great steam barge impervious to bullets, insensible to pain or fear. Thirty seconds more, and he will close. An impalpable curtain seems to roll itself up in the mind, revealing a mental picture, strangely lighted, yet very still, where objects have new values, and where a patch of white grass in the foreground, four or five yards away, seems to possess astonishing significance. It is there that the last two shots that yet remain before the resources of civilization are exhausted must be fired. There is time to reflect with some detachment that, after all, we were the aggressors; we it is who have forced the conflict by an unprovoked assault with murderous intent upon a peaceful herbivore; that if there is such a thing as right and wrong between man and beast – and who shall say there is not? – right is plainly on his side; there is time for this before I perceive that, stunned and dazed by the frightful concussions of modern firearms, he has swerved sharp to the right, and is now moving across our front, broadside on, at the same swift trot. More firing, and as I reload some one says he is down, and I fire instead at his smaller companion, already some distance off upon the plain. But one rhinoceros hunt is like another, except in its details, and I will not occupy the reader with the account of this new pursuit and death. Suffice it to say that, in all the elements of neurotic experience, such an encounter seems to me fully equal to half an hour’s brisk skirmish at six or seven hundred yards – and with an important addition. In war there is a cause, there is duty, there is the hope of glory, for who can tell what may not be won before night? But here at the end is only a hide, a horn, and a carcase, over which the vultures have already begun to wheel.
My African Jou
The distinguished Oxford academic Dame Margery Perham, lecturer and historian, nourished an uncharacteristic ambition: to shoot a buffalo. With Merikabor, an African tracker, and a young South African policeman, she set out along a track through tangled forest undergrowth.
Suddenly Merikabor stopped. With a gesture he threw us all noiselessly to our knees. There followed an interval which seemed endless: in the silence I seemed to hear as well as feel the beating of my heart. It banged against my ribs until I felt something must burst with the strain. I gazed into the green-black gloom searching for the darker, bluer shadows I might see. I marvelled that a few hours before I had left the security of a house and set out to bring myself into this forest and its inhuman company. I was afraid. Then Merikabor pointed and I saw the angle of a creature’s quarters deep in the green, the flick of a tail, surely very small and thin with a tassel on top. I looked at Merikabor. He was laughing – but silently. A guttural Swahili word reached me in a whisper, nguruwe, “pig”. True, there were wart-hogs. But not only wart-hogs. We had hardly resumed our silent struggle through the trees when we were upon them. The branches began to thresh about in the innermost cave of the green, and dark forms, half-seen, plunged and vanished. In a few minutes there was silence again. We had missed our first chance. The tension broke. We stood up straight and I grounded my gun. With the first contact, and especially with the beasts’ escape, fear suddenly left me. I only wanted to be near them and the nearer the better.