A few days later came another reference to the Holland & Holland: “The double-barrelled four-fifty shot beautifully, but I was paralyzed at the directions which accompanied it to the effect that two shots must always be fired in the morning before starting, as otherwise from the freshly oiled barrels the first shot would go high. This is all nonsense and I shall simply have to see that the barrels are clean of the oil.” The recoil of the big gun was so severe that it became a standing joke as to whether we did not fear it more than a charging elephant!
Father gave the closest attention to every detail of the equipment. The first provision lists prepared by his friends in England were drawn up on a presidential scale with champagne and pâté de foies gras and all sorts of luxuries. These were blue-pencilled and two American staples substituted—baked beans and canned tomatoes. Father always retained the appreciation of canned tomatoes gained in the early ranching days in the West. He would explain how delicious he had found it in the Bad Lands after eating the tomatoes to drink the juice from the can. In hunting in a temperate climate such as our West, a man can get along with but very little, and it is difficult to realize that a certain amount of luxury is necessary in the tropics to maintain oneself fit. Then, too, in Africa the question of transportation was fairly simple—and almost everywhere we were able to keep ourselves and the porters amply supplied with fresh meat. Four years later during the descent of the Dúvida—the “River of Doubt”—we learned to our bitter cost what it meant to travel in the tropics as lightly equipped as one could, with but little hardship, in the north. It was not, however, through our own lack of forethought, but due rather to the necessities and shifting chances of a difficult and dangerous exploring expedition.
Even if it is true as Napoleon said, that an army marches on its belly, still, it won’t go far unless its feet are properly shod, and since my father had a skin as tender as a baby’s, he took every precaution that his boots should fit him properly and not rub. “The modified duffle-bags came all right. I suppose we will get the cotton-soled shoes, but I do not know. How do you like the rubber-soled shoes? Don’t you think before ordering other pairs it would be as well to wait until you see the army shoes here, which are light and somehow look as if they were more the kind you ordinarily use? How many pairs have you now for the African trip, and how many more do you think you want?”
Father was fifty years old in the October before we left for Africa, and the varied experiences of his vigorous life had, as he used to say, battered and chipped him. One eye was to all intents useless from the effects of a boxing-match, and from birth he had been so astigmatic as to be absolutely unable to use a rifle and almost unable to find his way in the woods without his glasses. He never went off without eight or ten pairs so distributed throughout his kit as to minimize the possibility of being crippled through any ordinary accident. Even so, any one who has worn glasses in the tropics knows how easily they fog over, and how hopeless they are in the rains. It was a continual source of amazement to see how skilfully father had discounted this handicap in advance and appeared to be unhampered by it.
Another serious threat lay in the leg that had been injured when the carriage in which he was driving was run down by a trolley-car, and the secret service man with him was killed. In September, 1908, he wrote me from Washington: “I have never gotten over the effects of the trolley-car accident six years ago, when, as you will remember, they had to cut down to the shin bone. The shock permanently damaged the bone, and if anything happens there is always a chance of trouble which would be serious. Before I left Oyster Bay, while riding, I got a rap on the shin bone from a branch. This was either the cause or the occasion of an inflammation, which had grown so serious when I got back here that Doctor Rixey had to hastily take it in hand. For a couple of days it was uncertain whether we would not have to have another operation and remove some of the bones of the leg, but fortunately the doctor got it in hand all right, and moreover it has enabled me to learn just what I ought to do if I am threatened with similar trouble in Africa.”
His activity, however, was little hampered by his leg, for a few weeks later he wrote: “I have done very little jumping myself, and that only of the small jumps up to four feet, because it is evident that I have got to be pretty careful of my leg, and that an accident of at all a serious character might throw me out of gear for the African trip. This afternoon by the way, Archie Butt and I took a scramble down Rock Creek. It was raining and the rocks were slippery, and at one point I slipped off into the creek, but merely bruised myself in entirely safe places, not hurting my leg at all. When we came to the final and stiffest cliff climb, it was so dark that Archie couldn’t get up.” From which it may be seen that neither endurance nor skill suffered as a result of the accident to the leg. Still, as Bret Harte says, “We always wink with the weaker eye,” and when anything went wrong, the leg was sure to be implicated. Father suffered fearfully with it during the descent of the River of Doubt. One of the most constant pictures of father that I retain is at Sagamore after dinner on the piazza. He would draw his chair out from the roofed-over part to where he could see the moon and the stars. When things were black he would often quote Jasper Petulengro in Borrow’s Lavengro: “Life is sweet, brother.... There’s day and night, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, all sweet things; ... and likewise there’s a wind on the heath,” and would add: “Yes, there’s always the wind on the heath.” From where he sat he looked across the fields to the dark woods, and over the tree-tops to the bay with the changing twinkling lights of the small craft; across the bay to the string of lamps along the causeway leading to Centre Island, and beyond that again Long Island Sound with occasionally a “tall Fall Steamer light.” For a while father would drink his coffee in silence, and then his rocking-chair would start creaking and he would say: “Do you remember that night in the Sotik when the gun-bearers were skinning the big lion?” or “What a lovely camp that was under the big tree in the Lado when we were hunting the giant eland?”
We get three sorts and periods of enjoyment out of a hunting trip. The first is when the plans are being discussed and the outfit assembled; this is the pleasure of anticipation. The second is the enjoyment of the actual trip itself; and the third is the pleasure of retrospection when we sit round a blazing wood-fire and talk over the incidents and adventures of the trip. There is no general rule to know which of the three gives the keenest joy. I can think of a different expedition in which each sort stands out in pre-eminence. Even if the trip has been exceptionally hard and the luck unusually bad, the pleasures of anticipation and preparation cannot be taken away, and frequently the retrospect is the more satisfactory because of the difficulties and discomforts surmounted.
I think we enjoyed the African trip most in the actuality, and that is saying a great deal. It was a wonderful “adventure” and all the world seemed young. Father has quoted in the foreword to African Game Trails: “I speak of Africa and golden joys.” It was a line that I have heard him repeat to himself many times. In Africa everything was new. He revelled in the vast plains blackened with herds of grazing antelope. From his exhaustive reading and retentive memory he knew already the history and the habits of the different species of game. When we left camp in the early morning we never could foretell what we would run into by nightfall—we were prepared for anything from an elephant to a dik-dik—the graceful diminutive antelope no larger than a hare. In the evening, after we had eaten we would gather round the camp-fire—for in the highlands the evenings were chilly—and each would tell the adventures of his day, and discuss plans for the morrow. Then we would start paralleling and comparing. Father would illustrate with adventures of the old days in our West; Cuninghame from the lore gathered during his twenty years in Africa would relate some anecdote, and Mearns would talk of life among the wild tribes in the Philippines.
Sir Alfred Pease’s sketch of our first giraffe hunt