We landed at a port in South Africa in the night, and before morning we had all our stuff on a special train and about daylight we pulled out for a place about three hundred miles from the coast, and the next day we were in camp with the tents all up and the cages in place, and had engaged two hundred negroes with no clothes on to help us.
When they saw the airship spread out ready to be filled with gas when we got ready to use it, some of them deserted, but we got others to take their places.
I suppose when we fill that gas bag with chemical gas and it begins to flop around, there won’t be a negro left in Africa.
We were in wild animal country all right. The first night the lions in the jungle kept us awake, and Carrie Nation answered every time the wild lions bellowed, until Pa had to go and maul her with a bamboo club.
The next morning there were lion tracks all around camp, and Pa says the trouble is going to be that the lions will hunt us instead of our having to go after them.
A drove of zebras stampeded by our camp the first morning, a couple of giraffes were looking us over from a hill top, and a rhinoceros went through the camp and stole a smoked ham.
Pa is so scared he stays in his tent most of the time and shivers. He says he has got chills and fever, but I can tell when a man’s heart comes up in his mouth, and chokes him.
I told him this morning that if he showed the white feather now it was all off with him, and the Hagenbach’s would leave him in Africa to be adopted by a tribe. Pa said, “You watch me when we get to catching animals. I will make any animal that crosses my path think he has run into a live wire.”
Well, I hope Pa will not be a coward.