MOONLIGHT ON THE VELT.
A FOWL OF THE VELT (PTEROCLES GUTTURALIS SATURATIOR, Hart). XV
Night Photography under Difficulties
There is a notion prevalent, due to superficial observers, that there are certain drinking-places to which the wild animals are bound to come to quench their thirst, in all circumstances, during the hot season. Were this so the animals would have ceased ere now to exist. The poisoned arrow of the native, or the rifle of the white man, would long since have exterminated them. It is the case, however, that you can count upon finding game at specific drinking-places in the hot weather under certain circumstances, though much depends upon the direction of the wind and other things. The appearance of the larger beasts of prey by the waterside is enough, for instance, to make the others keep their distance for a considerable time.
When I have encamped in such localities it has generally been with a view to securing specimens of rare birds, and apart from this I have confined myself to making observations of the life of the animals. Very large bull-elephants were the only kind of big game that I had any mind to shoot, for I was never at a loss for other kinds. Elephants roam about in the hot season from one watering-place to another, sometimes covering great distances. They know the danger they run in frequenting any one particular watering-place too regularly. This is true of herds of other animals as well.
These watering-places are, of course, very productive to the natives, who make no account of time and who spread themselves out over a number of them during the hot weather, thus multiplying their chances. But the havoc worked among the wild animals by their poisoned arrows or the other methods of hunting which they practise, when they have not taken to powder and shot, is not serious. They have been hunting in this way since prehistoric ages, and yet have been able to hand over the animal kingdom to us Europeans in all the fulness and abundance that have aroused our wonder and admiration wherever we have set foot for the first time.
In the course of my last journey I encamped for the second time at the foot of the Donje-Erok mountain (the circuit of which is a two-days’ march), to the north-west of Kilimanjaro. The region had been well known to me since 1899. Previously to then it had been traversed only by Count Teleki’s expedition. His comrade, the well-known geographer Ritter von Höhnel, had marked its outlines on the map. No one, however, had penetrated into the interior, and here a wonderful field offered itself to the sportsman and explorer. A number of small streams take their rise on the Donje-Erok. In the dry weather these are speedily absorbed by the sun-dried soil of the velt, but in the wet season they have quite a long course, and combine to form a series of small swamps. When these have gradually begun to dry and have come to be mere stretches of blackish mud, they reveal the tracks of the herds of animals that have waded through them, elephants and rhinoceroses especially—mighty autographs imprinted like Runic letters upon wax.
A RIVER-HORSE RESORT.