THE CAMP CHRONICLER.
ABYSSINIAN SLAVERS.
After consulting the donkey-headman it was decided that we had almost as much ivory as we could carry. Many of the tusks were too long for donkeys and should have been taken by porters. It was decided to return to our base through untouched country. The news was received with shouts of joy. It is wonderful how one comes to regard the base camp as home. Whereas, on our way up, the camps had been rather gloomy—disasters having been prophesied for this expedition—now all was joy. The safari chronicler became once more his joyous self and his impromptu verse became longer and longer each night. The chronicler’s job is to render into readily chanted metre all the important doings of the safari and its members. It is a kind of diary and although not written down is almost as permanent, when committed to the tenacious memories of natives. Each night, in the hour between supper and bedtime, the chronicler gets up and blows a vibrating blast on his waterbuck horn. This is the signal for silence. All is still. Then begins the chant of the safari’s doings, verse by verse, with chorus between. It is extraordinarily interesting but very difficult to understand. The arts of allusion and suggestion are used most cleverly. In fact, the whole thing is wonderful. Verse by verse the history rolls out on the night, no one forgetting a single word. When the well-known part is finished, bringing the narrative complete up to and including yesterday, there is a pause of expectation—the new verse is about to be launched. Out it comes without hesitation or fault, all to-day’s events compressed into four lines of clever metric précis. If humorous its completion is greeted with a terrific outburst of laughter and then it is sung by the whole lot in chorus, followed by a flare-up of indescribable noises; drums, pipes, horns and human voices. And then to bed, while those keen-eyed camp askaris mount guard; although they cannot hit a mountain by daylight they fire and kill by night with a regularity that always leaves me dumb with astonishment. Remember they are using ·450 bore bullets in ·577 bore barrels, and explain it who can. They call it “medicine.”
We traversed some queer country on our return to Dodose. All kinds were met with. We went thirty days on end without seeing an elephant, and in the succeeding four days I killed forty-four bulls. A lioness came within a foot of catching a boy and was shot. The dried skins of elephant were found occupying much the same position as when filled with flesh. Now they contained nothing but the loose bones, all the meat having been eaten away by maggots and ants, which had entered through nature’s ports. Why the skin had not rotted as in other parts I could but ascribe to the dryness of the atmosphere. Finally, we staggered home, heavily laden with ivory, to our base camp.
That safari was one of my most successful. We “shuka’d,” or went down country, with over 14,000 lbs. of ivory—all excellent stuff.
VII
THROUGH THE SUDD OF THE GELO RIVER
At the time of which I write, about 1908, the wild countries lying around the western and south-western base of the Abyssinian plateau seemed to us to present the most favourable field of operations. And as the boundaries had not yet been delimited between Abyssinia and the Sudan on the one hand and Abyssinia and Uganda on the other, we felt that there would be more scope for our activities in that region than elsewhere. The object was elephant hunting.
In order to reach this country we were obliged to cross Abyssinia. We took steamer to Djibuti on the Red Sea, ascending thence by railway to the then railhead, Dirré Doua, and then by horse, camel and mule to Addis Abeba, the capital. Here, the only trouble we had was from our own legation. Our representative regarded every English traveller in the light of being a potential source of trouble to him personally, and was at little pains to conceal his thoughts. Luckily, we had been recommended financially to the bank, and this fact smoothed our path. Apparently, in these matters the main question is whether one is the possessor of a few hundred pounds or not. If so, zeal in helping the traveller on is forthcoming; but if not, every obstacle is put in the way of his ever making any progress. In one of our colonies I was once asked bluntly by the Government representative if I had any money. Of course, the poor man was merely trying to do his duty; but before I could think of this I had replied, “Precious little.” Throughout my stay in his province he regarded me with the gravest suspicion.