In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country

by John T. McCutcheon

Chalking the Pig's Eye

We landed at Mombasa September sixteenth, seventeen days out from Naples.

Mombasa is a little island about two by three miles in extent. It is riotous with brilliant vegetation, and, as seen after a long sea voyage through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, it looks heavenly except for the heat. Hundreds of great baobab trees with huge, bottle-like trunks and hundreds of broad spreading mango trees give an effect of tropical luxuriance that is hardly to be excelled in beauty anywhere in the East. Large ships that stop at the island usually wind their course through a narrow channel and land their passengers and freight at the dock at Kilindini, a mile and a half from the old Portuguese town of Mombasa, where all the life of the island is centered. There are many relics of the old days around the town of Mombasa and the port of Kilindini, but since the British have been in possession a brisk air of progress and enterprise is evident everywhere. Young men and young women in tennis flannels, and other typical symptoms of British occupation are constantly seen, and one entirely forgets that one is several thousand miles from home and only a few blocks from the jungles of equatorial Africa. We dreaded Mombasa before we arrived, but were soon agreeably disappointed to find it not only beautiful and interesting, but also pleasantly cool and full of most hospitable social life.

When our ship anchored off Kilindini there was a great crowd assembled on the pier. There were many smart looking boats, manned with uniformed natives, that at once came out to the ship, and we knew that the town was en fête to welcome the newly appointed governor, Sir Percy Girouard.

He and his staff landed in full uniform. There were addresses of welcome at the pier, a great deal of cheering and considerable photographing. Then the rest of the passengers went ashore and spent several hours at the custom house. All personal luggage was passed through, and we embarked on a little train for Mombasa. The next day we registered our firearms and had Smith, Mackenzie and Company do the rest. This firm is ubiquitous in Mombasa and Zanzibar. They attend to everything for you, and relieve you from much worry, vexation and rupees. They pay your customs duties, get your mountains of stuff on the train for Nairobi, and all you have to do is to pay them a commission and look pleasant. The customs duty is ten per cent. on everything you have, and the commission is five per cent. But in a hot climate, where one is apt to feel lazy, the price is cheap.

Thanks to the governor, our party of four was invited to go to Nairobi on his special train. It left Mombasa on the morning of the nineteenth of September, and at once began to climb toward the plateau on which Nairobi is situated, three hundred and twenty-seven miles away. We had dreaded the railway ride through the lowlands along the coast, for that district has a bad reputation for fever and all such ills. But again we were pleasantly disappointed. The country was beautiful and interesting, and at four o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at Voi, a spot that is synonymous with human ailments. It is one of the famous ill health resorts of Africa, but on this occasion it was on its good behavior. We stopped four hours, inspected everything in sight, and at eight o'clock the special began to climb toward the plateau of East Africa. At nine o'clock we stopped at Tsavo, a place made famous by the two man-eating lions whose terrible depredations have been so vividly described by Colonel Patterson in his book, The Man Eaters of Tsavo. These two lions absolutely stopped all work on the railroad for a period of several weeks. They were daring beyond belief, and seemed to have no fear of human beings. For a time all efforts to kill them were in vain. Twenty-eight native workmen were eaten by them, and doubtless many more were unrecorded victims of their activity. The whole country was terrorized until finally, after many futile attempts, they were at last killed.

No book on Africa seems complete unless this incident is mentioned somewhere within its pages.

We looked out at Tsavo with devouring interest. All was still, with the dead silence of a tropical night. Then the train steamed on and we had several hours in a berth to think the matter over. In the early hours of morning, we stopped at Simba, the "Place of Lions," where the station-master has many lion scares even now. In the cold darkness of the night we bundled up in thick clothes and went forward to sit on the observation seat of the engine. Slowly the eastern skies became gray, then pink, and finally day broke through heavy masses of clouds. It was intensely cold. In the faint light we could see shadowy figures of animals creeping home after their night's hunting. A huge cheetah bounded along the track in front of us. A troop of giraffes slowly ambled away from the track. A gaunt hyena loped off into the scrub near the side of the railroad and then, as daylight became brighter, we found ourselves in the midst of thousands of wild animals. Zebras, hartebeests, Grant's gazelles, Thompson's gazelles, impalla, giraffes, wildebeests, and many other antelope species cantered off and stood to watch the train as it swept past them. It was a wonderful ride, perhaps the most novel railway ride to be found any place in the world. On each side of the Uganda Railroad there is a strip of land, narrow on the north and wide on the south, in which game is protected from the sportsman, and consequently the animals have learned to regard these strips as sanctuary. There were many tales of lions as we rode along, and the imagination pictured a slinking lion in every patch of reeds along the way. I heard one lion story that makes the man-eaters of Tsavo seem like vegetarians. It was told to me by a gentleman high in the government service—a man of unimpeachable veracity. He says the story is absolutely true, but refused to swear to it.

Once upon a time, so the story goes, there was a caravan of slaves moving through the jungles of Africa. The slave-drivers were cruel and they chained the poor savages together in bunches of ten. Each slave wore an iron ring around his neck and the chain passed through this ring and on to the rest of the ten. For days and weeks and months they marched along, their chains clanking and their shoulders bending beneath the heavy weight. From time to time the slave-drivers would jog them along with a few lashes from a four-cornered "hippo" hide kiboko, or whip. Quite naturally the life was far from pleasant to the chain-gang and they watched eagerly for a chance to escape. Finally one dark night, when the sentinels were asleep, a bunch of ten succeeded in creeping away into the darkness. They were unarmed and chained from neck to neck, one to another. For several days they made their way steadily toward the coast. All seemed well. They ate fruit and nuts and herbs and began to see visions of a pleasant arrival at the coast.