WILD MAN AND WILD BEAST IN AFRICA 



5 



Photo by J. Alden L,oring. Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons 

 BULL, HIPPO HAULED ASHORE) AND RE)ADY FOR SKINNING : LAKE NAVAISHA 



ness and kill an elephant, or a white 

 rhino, or a reticulated giraffe, or giant 

 eland ; but it is a very hard thing to get 

 good photographs of them, and a still 

 harder thing to cure and transport the 

 skins and skulls of a number of such 

 specimens. I can give you, perhaps, an 

 idea of the amount of work clone when I 

 mention that we used on the trip ten 

 tons of salt (all at times carried by 

 native porters) in order to cure the 

 skins ; that when we killed elephants, for 

 instance, we would have to use 20 men 

 to carry each elephant's skull. 



In going down the While Nile, for in- 

 stance, the river is so broken by rapids 

 that we could not use a boat from 

 Nimule to Gondokoro, and for the ten 

 days' march between those two places 

 our expedition included 450 men, for all 

 the skins and skeletons had to be trans- 

 ported on porters' backs. There were 

 no camels or other beasts of burden ; 

 men live with difficulty there, and beasts 

 of burden not at all, so everything had 

 to be carried on the backs of porters. It 

 was no small task providing for the feed- 



ing of the porters throughout the jour- 

 ney. 



The work was throughout most inter- 

 esting; but it represents much genuine 

 toil and many difficulties overcome, and 

 we could not have done it at all if it had 

 not been for the hearty way in which the 

 representatives of the Smithsonian and 

 their friends backed us up, financially 

 and otherwise. A hunting trip by itself 

 is simple enough, but a trip of the kind 

 we took is one that entails much fore- 

 thought, a great deal of expense, and a 

 literally incredible quantity of labor. So 

 much by way of introduction. 



I wish that I had a map of Africa 

 here. You are all familiar with the 

 shape of the continent, the northern part 

 being a broad expanse practically filled 

 with one vast desert stretching from the 

 Atlantic across the whole continent to 

 the Red Sea. This desert is broken at 

 only one point, where the Nile runs from 

 the south northward, making a little 

 strip from a quarter of a mile to a couple 

 of miles broad, on which there is culti- 

 vation, and where there can be an abun- 



