THOMAS ALVA EDISON.
AGE 3. 1850.
AGE 13. 1860.
AGE 31. 1878. EDISON AND THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH.
AGE 44. 1891. EDISON AND THE IMPROVED PHONOGRAPH.
EDISON AT THE PRESENT DAY.
WILD BEASTS.
HOW THEY ARE TRANSPORTED AND TRAINED.
Few of those people who go to a menagerie realize what an immense undertaking it is to transport wild beasts from the land of their birth and of their freedom to the land of their imprisonment, and, too frequently, of their death. I will ask my readers to picture for themselves an African desert blazing beneath a burning sun. Across the weary waste of sand a long column of men and animals is wending its slow way. As it draws nearer we see that it is a caravan of wild animals on their way from the interior to the seaboard. And as it passes us, the vast mass of living creatures, as in a chemical process, slowly dissolves itself into distinct particles and individualities. Let us regard them carefully. In the first place we notice a procession of fourteen stately giraffes, then come five elephants, a huge rhinoceros, four wild buffaloes bellowing sadly after the mates they have forever left behind. Then there go lumbering by a number of enormous carts or wagons, in which are safely confined thirty hyenas, five leopards, six lions, two chetahs, sixteen antelopes, two lynxes, one serval, one wardbob, twenty smaller carnivorous animals, four African ant-eaters, and forty-five monkeys. And then there come slowly prancing by, wary, restless, cunning, twenty-six ostriches. There are twenty boxes of birds, from which sounds of shrill screaming are constantly proceeding. There are upwards of a hundred Abyssinian goats scattered here and there in the procession. These are to give milk for the young animals, and to serve as food and meat for the old. The caravan is on its way through the desert to Suakim, which is the first shipping place for Europe. There are no less than a hundred and twenty 127 camels in it, which are required to carry the food for this caravan, and there are upwards of a hundred and sixty drivers in the procession. It takes the caravans upwards of thirty-six days to cover the distance which lies between Cassala in the interior of Nubia and the port of Suakim, for which they are bound. The same journey is usually performed by quick post camels in twelve days.
This is the exact account of a caravan which Karl Hagenbeck told me he brought across the desert in the year 1870. “It is tremendously anxious work,” said he, “the transportation of these animals across sea and land. The amount of water which we have to carry with us in goats’ hides upon camels’ backs is prodigious, for nothing would be more awful than to run short of water in the middle of the desert, and to be surrounded by a number of wild beasts, maddened with heat and unquenchable thirst. The principal food for the young elephants and rhinoceroses on the way home is a fruit called nabeck, that is, a kind of cherry of which they are very fond. Giraffes and antelopes and ostriches are provided with the doura corn that grows in the interior. All these bigger animals walk, and as they jog along my people feed them occasionally with hard ship biscuit, which appears to sustain them well through the journey. At four o’clock every morning the caravan strikes its tents and begins its march. They go plodding along till ten o’clock, when the day becomes too hot for further progress.”
KARL HAGENBECK.
“But do the animals never attempt to escape?” said I.
“Well, not often,” replied Karl Hagenbeck; “but,” he added, with a hearty laugh of recollection, “I remember that once, in that very year 1870, of which I have just been telling you, the whole of the ostriches, twenty-six in number, ran away just as we were getting them into the railway station at Suakim. Away they went, heading straight for the desert. I never was in such a dreadful fix in my life. At last it struck me that it would be a good plan to drive all the goats and camels towards them; we did so, and, when the ostriches saw them advancing, they formed themselves into a flock, and we drove the whole lot into the station. The birds were caught one by one and put into the cars. That was the last transport, by-the-by, that poor Casanova ever brought over. Indeed, he died at Alexandria in the very midst of the whole business, and we buried him on the evening of his death. It was a dreadful time, and everything appeared to be against us, for at the very moment of his death, just as we were getting the animals on board ship, a fearful earthquake shook the whole land. I thought there was something about to happen, for the animals were very uneasy, the birds were twittering, the monkeys were chattering and trembling, the lions were roaring constantly, the elephants were deafening with their long trumpetings. Suddenly I felt the steamer quivering from stem to stern. The sea was tossing, the sun was hidden behind a thick yellow mist. I looked toward the land where the minarets were toppling down, and where the greatest horror and confusion appeared to prevail, and all the while poor Casanova lay dead or dying below. I shall never forget that awful morning.
“We had had the greatest possible difficulty just before, too, for at Suakim the railway people had told us that we had too many wagons, and that they would not transport us any 128 farther. However, I soon settled that by going up to the directors of the railway and demanding from them an express train immediately; ‘for,’ said I, ‘these animals are for the Emperor of Austria,’ and to prove this I showed them a great document sealed by the emperor himself.”