The albatross that swarm in the vicinity of Table Bay, and which are caught in large numbers by the Malay fishermen, enabled me to create a new industry. Finding that the flesh only was used by the Malays, I offered the handsome price of one penny for every pair of pinion bones duly delivered at the barracks; these I forthwith filed off at each end, and tying them into bundles, stuffed them into ants’ nests. Within a week they were as clear as whistles, and within a month I possessed a fagot of some hundreds. The recital of an absurd sequel may not be amiss. Albatross quills of twelve and fifteen inches are a popular species of pipe stem, which, when encircled with a threepenny silver band attached to a shilling amber mouthpiece, may be seen in leading tobacconists’ labelled twenty shillings. Entering a palatial establishment in Regent Street on my return home, I got the proprietor into conversation, and was assured that they were very difficult things to procure, and that he would gladly “pay anything” if only he could get some more. Having thoroughly compromised him, I returned next day with a cab full, and although exceptionally long and perfect, I was surprised to hear they were by no means up to the mark, and in my desperation accepted a box of cigars in exchange for what he probably cleared £50 on.
Yet another experience—not strictly of a sporting character—was connected with sticks. On my return home I brought with me some hundreds of the rarest specimens from Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape. Conceive my disappointment, after an animated barter with Briggs, of St. James’s Street, to be grateful to accept any three of my own sticks mounted to order in exchange for what must have supplied half the golden calves of the West End with sticks varying from two to three guineas a-piece.
The above two incidents exemplify what is described as the encouragement of British industries.
At the risk of wearying the reader I will give an absurd incident that once occurred in India. We had organised a party to hunt up a tiger that had been seen near the village of Dharwar, not far from Belgaum. On our way to the rendezvous—where the serious search was to commence—one of our party who had wandered a little out of his course rushed frantically up to us, exclaiming: “I came suddenly within thirty yards of the brute fast asleep at the foot of the nullah.”
“Well,” we all asked, “why didn’t you shoot him?”
“’Pon my word, I had half a mind to,” was the heartfelt reply—“but, so help me bob, I funked it.”
Touching the fringe of these vast hunting grounds will, I hope, be forgiven me, for although six thousand miles from London, they nevertheless bring up very happy memories of the long-ago sixties.
Sir John Bissett, afterwards commanding the Infantry Brigade at Gibraltar, but at the time a resident at Grahamstown, was the Great Nimrod of the Cape.
It was he that organised the elephant hunts for the Duke of Edinburgh, at one of which the Prince shot the immense beast whose head confronted one on entering Clarence House. Although I did not actually see it shot, I was not far distant at the time.
It was weeks after our party’s return to Cape Town that Colonel Zebulon Pike brought me two splendid stuffed specimens of the boatswain bird, the rarest of the gull tribe.