Books of travelers all wrong.
When that campaign was over, and I thought my traveling days were past, the call came to East Africa, and 1916 was spent in traveling over the vast tropical expanses of that fascinating country. I need scarcely say that a military commander has often very special opportunities of learning geography. He has to study the country with the eyes not of the scientist or the traveler or the hunter, but of the soldier responsible for the lives and the movements and supplies of large masses of men. It is one thing to follow the track of the elephant or to stalk the lion or antelope or to collect butterflies or other gorgeous things; it is quite a different and, from the point of view of learning geography, certainly a far more enlightening, task to lead a large army over those virgin solitudes, where your problem involves the careful study not only of topographical features, but of all the numerous natural conditions which affect your progress. To provide for the needs of a small safari may be a light or delightful task; but the difficulties and requirements of a large force, moving forward against an alert, ubiquitous foe, compel you to probe into everything: the nature of the country, with its mountains and rivers, forests and deserts, for scores of miles around; its animal and human diseases; its capacity for supplies and transport; its climate and soil and rainfall. And one of your first discoveries is that the books of the travelers are mostly wrong. What to them was perhaps a paradise of plant or animal life is to you, moving with your vast impedimenta, a veritable purgatory. You soon come to agree with Scripture that all men are liars, and from this rule you do not even except the missionaries who write with their heads in the clouds; nor do you except the writers of intelligence books compiled in Whitehall from the hunting tales of the travelers or the fairy-tales of the missionaries, and marked "very secret." But these secrets are like most secrets of the African continent, very disconcerting to the simple, trustful soul.
The silence of the forest is broken by the tramp of armed men.
Horses virtually unknown.
These campaigning experiences were unique. Probably never before in the history of the world had such things been seen: the stillness, the brooding silence of the vast primeval forest where no, or few, white men have ever been before, and the only path is the track of the elephant; the silence of the forest, stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions, broken by the tramp of tens of thousands of armed men, followed by the guns and heavy transport of a modern army, with its hundreds of motor-lorries, its miles of wagons, its vast concourse of black porters; while overhead the aëroplane, or, as the natives call it, the "bird," more dreaded and more feared than even the crocodile in the river, passes on swiftly with its bombs for the foe retreating ahead. And what an effect this movement, continued for many months over many thousands of miles, produced on the minds of the native population, looking on in speechless awe and amazement at the mystery of the white man's doings! I have often stopped to wonder at the natives' state of mind. It must have been not unlike what is told of one of my simple countrymen, on whose farm an aviator descended with an aëroplane, never seen or heard of before, and who calmly walked forward to shake hands with the heavenly visitant, whom he believed none other than the Lord! And since horses, because of the fly, are virtually unknown in most parts of the country, the natives were dumfounded by our mounted men, strange centaur-like animals that they called "Kabure," after my mounted Boer forces, of whom at first they were mortally afraid. Even bodies of well-trained armed native soldiers have been seen to throw away their rifles and run for dear life into the bush at the first sight of mounted men.
Parallel mountain ranges rise in tiers.
The second belt or veldt.
Changes in rainfall.
The whole east of the African continent from the cape in the south up to Abyssinia in the north, and, I believe, farther, is marked by one persistent feature, the existence of several more or less parallel mountain-ranges rising in tiers from the coast. At the top of the last and highest mountain-range lies the great elevated inland plateau, stretching like a broad back along the continent. The first line of hills or low mountains runs at a distance of from ten to fifty miles from the coast of the Indian Ocean, and all the country between it and the sea forms a low coastal belt, which seldom rises more than a few hundred feet above sea-level, with a distinct coastal climate and vegetation. Between these coastal hills and the next range lies the second belt, called in South Africa the low veldt, again with a climate and rainfall and vegetation of its own. Next and last, at a distance of from a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles from the Indian Ocean, runs a mountain system, often rising to great altitudes, on which rests the great elevated inland plateau from four thousand to six thousand feet above the level of the sea. This plateau continues for hundreds of miles westward, and then begins to slope toward the Atlantic Ocean in the far distance. Sometimes, as in Central Africa, the slope to the west is very sudden, and another range of mountains forms the western buttress of the great central plateau. All the great rivers of Africa, with the exception of the Niger, rise on this plateau or on its mountain-flanks, which have a very high rainfall. The bush, or great forest, which is almost impenetrable in the coastal belt, becomes somewhat more open in patches in the middle belt, while on the plateau open, park-like country alternates with treeless, grassy plains, and the forest is confined to the deep valleys or the mountain-slopes. The rainfall, which is fair on the coast, becomes very light in the middle belt, which in consequence tends to have an arid character; on the plateau it is high or very high. Because of these marked differences the economic character of the three regions varies considerably. Semi-tropical products, such as maize, coffee, cotton, and millet, can be raised on an almost unlimited scale on the plateau; while rice, rubber, sisal, and copra are raised in the two lower belts.
The chain of large lakes.