In Wildest Africa, Vol. 1

by C. G. Schillings

To-day no birds of prey breed any longer on this estate; the primeval village of badgers is in ruins, and irreverent hands have cut down the “King’s Oak.” But the old man, now that his time of service has expired, never sets foot on the estate, though he is passing the evening of his life in the neighbourhood.

That was a man who had innate in him a just and reverent feeling for the preservation of the beauties and glories handed down to us from the far past, and who loved, and, so far as it was possible, guarded these wonders of nature.

Let us once for all throw overboard the sharp distinction between “noxious” and “useful” animals, and within certain limits let us protect the whole world of animal and plant life. This would be the noblest form of game preservation, in the widest sense of the word.

I venture to dwell upon these ideas here, knowing that they are shared by a large number of men and women. Amongst our German game-preserving associations we have societies that have rendered great services to the protection of our native wild animals. An extension of these useful efforts to the protection of all our native fauna and flora in general is most certainly called for by the greatly altered conditions of our time. We are gradually coming to a period when every individual wild animal will be registered by specialists and indicated in a list! And we are also gradually approaching in our sporting estates the ideal of extensive, well-kept gardens, in which no touch of wild nature will any longer be left.

I appeal once more to the authority of President Roosevelt. He expresses the opinion that it is now not so much the question of preserving great supplies of any one species as of maintaining the primitive beauty of the forest in its wild life.

I think with pleasure of my youth, when, at a time when my father, in union with other game-preservers, founded the Jagdschutzverein (“Association for the Protection of Game”) of the Rhine Province, I had the opportunity of making myself acquainted with the old state of things in this department. My native district, the Eifel, still sheltered boars, eagle-owls, wild cats, and many other rare animals living in wild freedom. The ear of the boy learned to know and to love every cry of our native fauna. Roosevelt rightly remarks that many of the cries of American animals, such as the hoot of the owl, are falsely described as unpleasant. He who knows them well comes to love them, and would not like to miss them from the general concert of animal sounds. Here in Germany, too, we have evidence of this to a gradually increasing extent.

The German sportsman ought to give a shining example to those of other lands in this matter of the protection of all the dwellers in his hunting grounds. To his care is entrusted the whole German fauna in its widest extent. To secure the preservation of this splendid work of nature here in Germany is an enterprise that will earn the gratitude of every lover of nature, the thanks of millions of men. The German sportsman, as the chosen guardian and keeper of the wild life of his native land, must also become the protecting lord of all its animal and plant life; he should maintain his own estate in its primitive condition to the fullest possible extent. But to his estate, in a wider sense, also belongs the velt of German Africa, still so rich in wild life. Here, too, the German sportsman should take up the position of guardian and protector.

The well-known English writer Clive Philips-Wolley says that happily the old English sporting spirit is not dead; that the farthest and wildest hunting grounds of the world, a visit to which demands the greatest energy and courage, are still sought out by men of the English race, as in earlier days. England owes a great part of her colonies to men, eager for enterprise, who as hunters penetrated into unknown wildernesses; and the English hunter has, thanks to his courage and determination, always played a great part among strange peoples. The reckless conduct of travellers in far-off countries and among strange tribes is often sufficient to give a whole nation a bad character in the eyes of these people, while a right bearing may make it appear worthy of their admiration. Philips-Wolley further points out that the taking of “big bags” of game in far-off hunting grounds[30] should not be considered merely from the point of view of stay-at-home people, but from the point of view of those who have special knowledge of the districts in question.

The time has passed when far-off lands were secured in this way. But I would wish for the German sportsman that he may, so far as is possible, visit the splendid hunting grounds that he can now find in the German colonies, and there become familiar with the chase in forms that our homeland can no longer offer to him. The more brethren of the green-coated guild go abroad nowadays, and bring us tidings of the fauna and of the hunting grounds of the German colonies, the more will our knowledge of this difficult subject be enlarged, and we shall be in a better position for working out practical protective regulations for the preservation of these splendid hunting grounds.

And what a deep charm for the hunter there is in pursuing the chase in such regions! It is true that circumstances have so greatly changed in a few decades of years that the old hunters—say those of fifty years ago—would probably not be able to take the same deep delight in the sport of to-day that they felt in their own time. It was quite a different matter to go out to meet the dangerous wild beasts of Africa with the simple weapons, the muzzle-loaders, of that time. True, the African hunters, whom Professor Fritsch made acquaintance with in Cape Colony about the time of the ‘sixties, already possessed long-range weapons. They used “small-bore rifles” firing an elongated bullet that carried up to 1,500 yards. These rifles were fitted with ivory sights and silver sighting-lines, for shooting at night. A hunter named Layard was at that time famous in Cape Colony for having brought down an ostrich at 1,750 yards!