In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

Many of the undertakings that were making long strides toward completion in 1914, to-day stand arrested due to conditions following the war. Only one by one can they fall back to their natural places in the march of progress, and the most urgent must be given place first. African Hall is one of those projects which cannot be delayed. Now or never must it become a reality. Twenty-five years ago, with innumerable specimens at hand, its development would have been an impossibility. Even if a man had had all the animals he wanted from Africa, he could not have made an exhibit of them that would have been either scientific, natural, artistic, or satisfying, for twenty-five years ago the art of taxidermy and of museum exposition of animal life hardly existed. Likewise, in those days much of the information that we had about animals through the tales of explorers, collectors, and other would-be heroes was ninety-five per cent. inaccurate.

Twenty-five years hence the development of such a hall will be equally impossible for the African animals are so rapidly becoming extinct that the proper specimens will not then be available. Even to-day the heads that are reaching London from British East Africa are not up to the old standards. If an African Hall is to be done at all, it must be done now. And even if it is done now, we must have men to do it who have known Africa for at least a quarter of a century. Africa to-day is a modern Africa, the Africa of the Age of Man. Africa then was still the Africa of the Age of Mammals, a country sufficiently untouched by civilization to give a vivid impression of Africa a hundred years ago. By the time the groups are in place in African Hall, some of the species represented will have disappeared. Naturalists and scientists two hundred years from now will find there the only existent record of some of the animals which to-day we are able to photograph and to study in the forest environment. African Hall will tell the story of jungle peace, a story that is sincere and faithful to the African beasts as I have known them, and it will, I hope, tell that story so convincingly that the traditions of jungle horrors and impenetrable forests may be obliterated.

With all haste, when the war was over, I turned again to African Hall—to Roosevelt African Hall, for naturally after the death of that great American who so deeply desired to bring to the world a knowledge of beautiful Africa and who had himself shot the old cow for the elephant group, we gave the proposed hall his name. The thought that my greatest undertaking was to stand as a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt doubled my incentive. I am giving the best there is in me to make Roosevelt African Hall worthy of the name it bears.

Plan of the main floor and gallery of Roosevelt African Hall

The structure itself will be of imposing dimensions. A spacious open hall will occupy the central portion of the building. As I have planned it, the floor measurement of this great open space is sixty by one hundred and fifty-two feet; the height to the gallery at the sides is seventeen feet and that over the centre to the ceiling, thirty feet. Its floor space will be encroached upon only at the corners by the elevators; that is, the actual open floor space without columns or any obstruction whatever will be sixty by one hundred and sixteen feet. In the centre of this large hall will stand the group of four African elephants treated in statuesque fashion, mounted on a four-foot base with no covering of glass. At one end of the elephants, the group of black rhinoceros will be placed; at the other end, the white rhinoceros. As a result of late developments in the technique of taxidermy, we are able to treat these pachyderms so that they will not suffer because of lack of protection under glass. Changing atmospheric conditions will have no effect upon them and they can receive essentially the care given to bronzes.

Since the elephant is the largest land mammal in the world to-day and one of the most splendid of all animals of the past or present, and especially since it is typical of Africa, it is fitting that the elephant should dominate this hall. Except for bronzes at either end facing the main entrances, there will be nothing in the central open space to detract from the majesty of the elephants and the lumbering bulk of the rhinos. Visitors, pausing to study the elephants, may look out on either side as though through open windows into an African out-of-doors, for the other great animals of the continent in their natural environment of forest, plain, river, or mountain, will surround the central hall. The position of these habitat groups in a kind of annex has a double advantage: it permits them to be carefully protected against atmospheric conditions and prevents any infringement upon the measurements of the hall proper. There will be forty of these realistic groups—twenty viewed from the main floor and twenty more, similarly executed, but displaying the smaller animals, viewed from the gallery.

The forty canvases used as backgrounds will be painted by the best artists available. Each will be an accurate portrayal of a definite type of African scenery, usually showing some feature of importance—Mt. Kenia on the equator, the waterless plains of Somaliland, or the gorilla forests of the Kivu country. Together they will give a comprehensive idea of the geographical aspect of Africa from the Mediterranean on the north to Table Mountain at Cape Town, and from the east coast to the west coast.