XIX 



SNAKES AND BLOODSUCKERS 



X o the traveller who is bound for the tropics the astonished ques- 

 tion is still often put, whether he is not afraid of "the wild beasts." 



Those who know the tropics will smile at this question, and the 

 matter-of-fact traveller, if he is asked to relate the dangers he has 

 passed through, will think of illnesses and accidents, and difficulties 

 caused by human beings, but not of the so-called "wild beasts." 

 Neither the elephants, leopards and bears of Ceylon, nor the jaguars 

 and pumas of Brazil prevented me from wandering all day long, 

 and even by night, through forest and jungle and plain, often alone, 

 and almost always unarmed. I never had the slightest fear of being 

 eaten, and as the reader sees, I was not eaten. In the virgin forest 

 of the highlands of Ceylon I often heard the leopard growling from 

 the thicket, and the dogs, if any were with me, squeezed themselves 

 between my legs, for they knew perfectly well that if they swerved 

 a few paces aside they would find themselves in the fangs of the 

 great cat, which has a particular liking for dogs' flesh. Only once 

 was I possibly in danger. I was driving along a road that ran through 

 extensive woods, when an elephant was reported; he had taken up 

 his position a little way along the road, and it was said that more 

 than once he had simply made mincemeat of anyone or anything 

 that came in his way. For this elephant was a so-called "rogue"; 

 that is, an old male who had been turned out of his herd, and was 

 therefore, as an animal to whom society means more than anything 

 else, quite justly infuriated. But on this occasion the elephant did 

 not appear. 



But I will not speak of my own unpretending travels; I will 

 rather appeal to an African explorer who has travelled in absolutely 

 unexplored and quite uncivilized regions. I mean the late Professor 

 Georg Schweinfurth, who spent a great proportion of his eighty-nine 

 years in Africa. Looking back over his life, he declared that the only 

 occasion on which he could remember to have been in deadly peril 

 was during the bombardment of Alexandria by the British fleet in 

 1882, when he was living in the heart of the revolted city. The other 

 great African explorers have expressed themselves in similar terms, 

 and Gerhard Rohlfs, the most successful explorer of the Sahara, 

 stated that he had never so much as caught sight of a lion. 



Y 337 



