African Nature Notes and Reminiscences 1

African Nature Notes and Reminiscences 1

African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

 

Author: Frederick Courteney Selous

 

PREFACE

 

 

The chapters comprised in the present volume were written at various

times during the last ten years. Some of them have already appeared in

print in the pages of the _Field, Land and Water_, and other papers,

but the majority have remained in manuscript until now. The greatest

part of the matter in the chapters on the "Lion" was written some

years ago, and was intended to be the commencement of a book dealing

entirely with the life-history of South African mammals. When, however,

I was asked by Mr. Rowland Ward to contribute to a book he was about

to publish on the _Great and Small Game of Africa_, all the articles

in which would be written by men who had personally studied the habits

of the animals they described, I gave up the idea of myself writing a

less comprehensive work on similar lines, and became one of the chief

contributors to Mr. Ward's large and valuable publication.

 

My manuscript notes on the lion and some other animals were then

consigned to the seclusion of a drawer in my study, from which they

would probably never again have emerged had it not been for the fact

that during the autumn of 1905 I had the honour to be the guest of

President Roosevelt at the White House in Washington.

 

I found that President Roosevelt's knowledge of wild animals was not

confined to the big game of North America, with which he has made

himself so intimately acquainted by long personal experience, but that

he also possessed a most comprehensive acquaintance with the habits

of the fauna of the whole world, derived from the careful study of

practically every book that has been written on the subject.

 

In the course of conversation, President Roosevelt remarked that he

wished I would bring out another book, adding to the natural history

notes which I had already written on the big game of South Africa;

and on my telling him that I had some manuscript notes on the lion

and other animals which I had once intended to publish, but had

subsequently put on one side, he requested me to let him see them.

On my return to England I at once posted these articles to President

Roosevelt, who was kind enough to say that he had found them so

interesting that he earnestly hoped I would add to them and bring

out another book. Thus encouraged, I set about the revision of all

my recent writings dealing with the natural history of South African

animals which had not been published in book form, and after arranging

them in chapters, sent the whole of the manuscript to President

Roosevelt, at the same time asking him to be good enough to look

through them, if he could find the time to do so, and telling him that

if he thought them of sufficient interest to publish in the form of a

book, how much I should appreciate it, if he were able to write me a

few lines by way of introduction, since the publication of the book

would be entirely due to the kind encouragement and inspiration I had

received from himself. This request met with a most kind and generous

response, for which I shall ever feel most grateful, for, in the

midst of all his multifarious and harassing public duties, President

Roosevelt contrived to find the time to write an introduction to my

book, which adds to it a most interesting and valuable chapter.

 

The title I have given to my book, _African Nature Notes and

Reminiscences_, though it perhaps lacks terseness, nevertheless

exactly describes its scope, and although the chapters dealing with

the "Tse-tse" Fly and the subject of Protective Coloration and the

Influence of Environment on large mammals may have no interest except

for a small number of naturalists, I trust that much of the matter

contained in the remaining seventeen articles will appeal to a much

wider public.

 

I must once more acknowledge my indebtedness to President Roosevelt,

not only for the very interesting "Foreword" he has contributed to this

book, but also for the constant encouragement he has given me during

its preparation.

 

My best thanks are also due to Mr. Max C. Fleischmann of Cincinnati for

the very remarkable account which will be found at the end of Chapter

X. of the struggle between a crocodile and a rhinoceros, of which he

was an eye-witness; as well as to my friend Mr. E. Caldwell for the

great pains he has taken to render the ten illustrations emanating from

his able pencil as lifelike as possible.

 

As it is possible that some of those who may glance through this book

may be versed in South African languages, and may remark that I have

sometimes represented the Masarwa Bushmen as speaking in the Sechwana

language, and at others in the dialect spoken by the Matabele, it may

perhaps be as well to explain that whilst the greater part of the

Bushmen living between the Limpopo and the Zambesi were the serfs of

Bechwana masters, a few of those living near the western border of

Matabeleland had become the vassals of certain Matabele headmen, by

whom they were employed as hunters and trappers. Besides their own

language--which is almost impossible of acquirement by a European--all

the Bushmen I ever met spoke that of their masters as well. This was

usually Sechwana, but sometimes Sintabele--the language of the Matabele

people.

 

F. C. SELOUS.

 

WORPLESDON, SURREY,

_Dec. 31, 1907_.

 

 

 

 

FOREWORD

 

 

Mr. Selous is the last of the big-game hunters of South Africa; the

last of the mighty hunters whose experiences lay in the greatest

hunting ground which this world has seen since civilized man has

appeared therein. There are still many happy hunting grounds to be

found by adventure-loving wilderness wanderers of sufficient hardihood

and prowess; and in Central Africa the hunting grounds are of a

character to satisfy the most exacting hunter of to-day. Nevertheless,

they none of them quite equal South Africa as it once was, whether

as regards the extraordinary multitude of big-game animals, the

extraordinary variety of the species, or the bold attraction of the

conditions under which the hunting was carried on.

 

Mr. Selous is much more than a mere big-game hunter, however; he is by

instinct a keen field naturalist, an observer with a power of seeing,

and of remembering what he has seen; and finally he is a writer who

possesses to a very marked and unusual degree the power vividly and

accurately to put on paper his observations. Such a combination of

qualities is rare indeed, and the lack of any one of them effectually

prevents any man from doing work as valuable as Mr. Selous has done.

No ordinary naturalist fills the place at all. Big game exists only in

the remote wilderness. Throughout historic time it has receded steadily

before the advance of civilized man, and now the retrogression--or,

to be more accurate, the extermination--is going on with appalling

rapidity. The ordinary naturalist, if he goes into the haunts of

big game, is apt to find numerous small animals of interest, and he

naturally devotes an altogether disproportionate share of his time to

these. Yet such time is almost wasted; for the little animals, and

especially the insects and small birds, remain in the land long after

the big game has vanished, and can then be studied at leisure by hosts

of observers. The observation of the great beasts of the marsh and

the mountain, the desert and the forest, must be made by those hardy

adventurers who, unless explorers by profession, are almost certainly

men to whom the chase itself is a dominant attraction. But the great

majority of these hunters have no power whatever of seeing accurately.

There is no fonder delusion than the belief that the average old hunter

knows all about the animals of the wilderness. The Bushman may; but,

as Mr. Selous has shown, neither the average English, Boer, nor Kafir

hunter in South Africa does; and neither does the white or Indian

hunter in North America. Any one who doubts this can be referred to

what Mr. Selous has elsewhere said concerning the rhinoceroses of South

Africa and the astounding misinformation about them which the average

South African hunter of every type believed and perpetuated; and in my

own experience I have found that most white and Indian hunters in the

Rocky Mountains are just as little to be trusted when, for instance,

they speak of the grizzly bear and the cougar--two animals which always

tend to excite their imaginations. Finally, the few accurate observers

among the men who have seen much of big game are apt wholly to lack the

power of __EXPRESSION__, and this means that their knowledge can benefit

no one. The love of nature, the love of outdoor life, is growing in

our race, and it is well that it should grow. Therefore we should prize

exceedingly all contributions of worth to the life-histories of the

great, splendid, terrible beasts whose lives add an immense majesty

to the far-off wilds, and who inevitably pass away before the onrush

of the greedy, energetic, forceful men, usually both unscrupulous and

short-sighted, who make up the vanguard of civilization.

 

Mr. Selous has hunted in many parts of the world, but his most

noteworthy experiences were in Africa, south of the Zambezi, when the

dry uplands, and the valleys of the dwindling rivers, and the thick

coast jungle belt, still held a fauna as vast and varied as that of

the Pleistocene. Mighty hunters, Dutch and English, roamed hither and

thither across the land on foot and on horseback, alone, or guiding

the huge white-topped ox-wagons; several among their number wrote with

power and charm of their adventures; and at the very last the man arose

who could tell us more of value than any of his predecessors.

 

Mr. Selous by his observations illustrates the great desirability of

having the views of the closet naturalist tested by competent field

observers. In a previous volume he has effectively answered those

amiable closet theorists who once advanced the Rousseau-like belief

that in the state of nature hunted creatures suffered but little from

either pain or terror; the truth being that, in the easy conditions

of civilized life, we hardly even conceive of pain and horror as they

were in times primeval; while it is only in nightmares that we now

realize the maddened, hideous terror which our remote ancestors so

often underwent, and which is a common incident in the lives of all

harmless wild creatures. In the first two chapters of the present

volume, Mr. Selous' remarks on the fallacy of much of the theory of

protective coloration are excellent. The whole subject is one fraught

with difficulty and deserving of far more careful study than has ever

yet been given it. That the general pattern of coloration, so to speak,

of birds and mammals of the snowy North as compared to the South, of

a dry desert as compared to a wet forest region, is due to the effect

of the environment I have no question; and Mr. Selous' observations

and arguments show that the protective theory has been ridiculously

overworked in trying to account for coloration like that of the

zebra and giraffe, for instance; but there is much that as yet it is difficult to explain.