We found in his effects a program of the lectures he gave, its cover decorated with a small round photograph of Colonel Roosevelt in hunting costume and a large studio photograph of Duquesne in khaki, wearing boots and a revolver, and looking sternly out of the picture as tradition says a lion-hunter should look. Page two carried a synopsis of his lecture, of which one topic was “Hunting with Roosevelt,” and a reproduction of a number of newspapers which were then publishing his “Hunting Ahead of Roosevelt,” an article written for Hampton’s Magazine. On page three Captain Duquesne figured again in effigy, this time standing beside the prostrate form of “A Rare Specimen—the ‘White Rhinoceros,’” and we are to believe that he killed the beast. Page four (and last), reproduced a cartoon from the Washington Star of January 26, 1909, which portrayed President Roosevelt pointing to a picture of an elephant, and enthusiastically inquiring of a hairy hunter labelled “Duquesne”: “I want to know his vital spot!”
Fritz Duquesne prepared for a Lecture Tour as Captain Claude Stoughton
A quotation from Hampton’s Magazine, also printed in this program, gives a new vision of the man’s life from 1900 to 1909. It is probably as truthful as any—here it is:
“When the British succeeded in cutting cable communications between the Boer Republic and the rest of the world, Duquesne carried the news of the Boer victories over the Mozambique border, and from there he wrote his despatches to the Petit Bleu, the official European organ of the Boer Government. He was once captured by the Portuguese and thrown into prison at Lorenzo Marques. Later he was taken a prisoner to Europe at the request of the British Government. When the ship that conveyed him and his guard touched at Naples, he was suffering from a fever and in consequence was placed in an Italian hospital. On his recovery he was allowed to go free. He went to Brussels and was sent back to the front by Doctor Leyds, with plans for the seizure of Cape Town by the Boer commandos then mobilized in Cape Colony.
“Everything was ready for the taking of the city when, a traitor having revealed the plot, Duquesne and a number of others were captured in Cape Town inside the British defenses. This was the climax of what has come to be known as the ‘Cape Town Plot.’ Some of the prisoners were shot and some sentenced to death who later had their sentences changed to life imprisonment. Captain Duquesne was among the latter. Ten months later he escaped from the Bermuda prisons, got aboard the American yacht Margaret of New York while she was coaling at the dock, and was conveyed to Baltimore.
“Back to Europe he went again, as war correspondent and military writer on the Petit Bleu; thence to Africa, where he took a commission on the Congo. In East Africa he hunted big game for sport and profit, and finally he came to New York to do newspaper and magazine work.”
He cut a figure in America as a hunter. Back in 1910, when Congress amused itself with light diversions, when President Taft was in the White House and when President Roosevelt was in Africa, the eyes of the nation were turned perforce toward that great preserve of wild game. On March 24, 1910, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Agriculture went into session with the Honorable Charles F. Scott in the chair. Late March in Washington has a hint of spring, and that Thursday was probably an off-day, with nothing much to do, for the committee’s business was the consideration of H. R. 23261—a bill “to import into the United States wild and domestic animals whose habitat is similar to government reservations and lands at present unoccupied and unused.... Provided, that such animals will thrive and propagate and prove useful either as food or as beasts of burden, and that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars ... be appropriated for this purpose.” The bill was Representative Broussard’s, of Louisiana; he had in mind the re-population of the unyielding backwaters of his constituency with happy families of—what? Foreign sheep, or parrots, or egrets, or fish? Not at all. Families of hippopotamuses.
The Gentleman from Louisiana addressed the meeting briefly, saying that he had brought to the hearing three distinguished specialists in the matter of wild beasts, Dr. Irwin of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Major Frederic Russell Burnham, a fine old pioneer whom Richard Harding Davis did describe in his “Real Soldiers of Fortune,” and “Captain Fritz Duquesne, formerly in the Boer army, who is lecturing and writing on this subject....” Dr. Irwin spoke earnestly for the introduction of the hippo, Major Burnham made an absorbing address on the habits of wild animals he had known—and a herd of camels he once pursued in Texas—and our bright and voluble Captain Fritz then told the committee extraordinary things of the home of the hippopotamus, the delicacy of its flesh, the amiability of its temperament, and the carelessness of its appetite. “During my boyhood,” he said at one stage of the proceedings, “the French soap manufacturers used to come down there and pay us all sorts of prices, competing with one another, to get the fat of the hippopotamus; and we made a considerable amount of money from saving the fat when we killed a hippo. The Boers were in the habit of going down to the river and killing a hippo and bringing it in and dividing it among the different families in the district. It is pretty hard to get rid of four and a half tons of meat. In the case of the bones of the animal, we would take an ordinary wood saw and saw them in halves, and make a great big pot of soup for a large number of the people, including the Kaffir servants on the ranch, or the farm, as we call it.” Again: “My father was instrumental in sending the camel to Australia from Africa, and also in introducing it into the Kalahari desert. The German Government now uses the camel exclusively for its cavalry in the Kalahari desert, which is practically the counterpart of the deserts in this country. My father had the contract to take them over to Australia for the West Australian Government and I took them over there. To-day camels and ostriches from Africa are being raised in Australia.”
Mr. Chapman asked: “Do you think animals such as you have mentioned would become acclimated here without difficulty?” Duquesne replied: “Yes, I was over there recently in one place where Colonel Roosevelt passed through, and the frost was that thick (indicating about one inch). That is where he went to get some of his best animals....” In discussing the zebra he said: “There is nothing wrong with the animal. The English in Africa want to get percentage, you know. They put an animal out and they want to break it in right away, and they want to get some money for it right on the spot. That is what they are in Africa for. They want to take on the animals and break them in at once. The Germans are more scientific than the English. In German East Africa they are making a great success of domesticating these animals I have spoken of, and crossing the zebra.... The Germans in Germany, France, and Belgium, not to mention those in the United States, tried scientifically to make the leopard change his spots, too.”