398 
African Game Trails 
among the trees as the train passed. In the 
dusk we nearly ran over a hyena; a year or 
two previously the train actually did run 
over a lioness one night, and the conductor 
brought in her head in triumph. In fact, 
there have been continually mishaps such 
as could only happen to a railroad in the 
Pleistocene! The very night we went up 
there was an interruption in the telegraph 
service due to giraffes having knocked 
down some of the wires, and a pole, in 
crossing the track; and elephants have 
more than once performed the same feat. 
Two or three times, at night, giraffes have 
been run into and killed; once a rhinoceros 
was killed, the engine being damaged in 
the encounter; and on other occasions the 
rhino has only just left the track in time, 
once the beast being struck and a good deal 
hurt, the engine again being somewhat 
crippled. But the lions now offer, and have 
always offered, the chief source of unpleas¬ 
ant excitement. Throughout East Africa 
the lions continually take to man eating at 
the expense of the native tribes, and white 
hunters are continually being killed or crip¬ 
pled by them. At the lonely stations on the 
railroad the two or three subordinate offi¬ 
cials often live in terror of some fearsome 
brute that has taken to haunting the vicin¬ 
ity; and every few months, at some one of 
these stations, a man is killed, or badly 
hurt by, or narrowly escapes from, a prowl¬ 
ing lion. The stations at which the train 
stopped were neat and attractive; and be¬ 
sides the Indian officials there were usually 
natives from the neighborhood. Some of 
these might be dressed in the fez and shirt 
and trousers which indicate a coming under 
the white man’s influence, or which, rather 
curiously, may also indicate Mohammedan¬ 
ism. But most of the natives are still wild 
pagans, and many of them are unchanged 
in the slightest particular from what their 
forefathers were during the countless ages 
when they alone were the heirs of the land 
—a land which they were utterly powerless 
in any way to improve. Some of the sav¬ 
ages we saw wore red blankets, and in def¬ 
erence to white prejudice draped them so as 
to hide their nakedness. But others ap¬ 
peared—men and women—with literally 
not one stitch of clothing, although they 
might have rather elaborate hairdresses, 
and masses of metal ornaments on their 
arms and legs. In the region where one 
tribe dwelt all the people had their front 
teeth filed to sharp points; it was strange 
to see a group of these savages, stark naked, 
with oddly shaved heads and filed teeth, 
armed with primitive bows and arrows, 
stand gravely gazing at the train as it rolled 
into some station; and none the less strange, 
by the way, because the locomotive was a 
Baldwin, brought to Africa across the great 
ocean from our own country. One group 
of women, nearly nude, had their upper 
arms so tightly bound with masses of 
bronze or copper wire that their muscles 
were completely malformed. So tightly 
was the wire wrapped round the upper 
third of the upper arm, that it was reduced 
to about one-half of its normal size; and 
the muscles could only play, and that in de¬ 
formed fashion, below this unyielding metal 
bandage. Why the arms did not mortify it 
was hard to say; and their freedom of use 
was so hampered as to make it difficult to 
understand how men or women whose 
whole lives are passed in one or another 
form of manual labor could inflict upon 
themselves such crippling and pointless 
punishment. 
Next morning we were in the game coun¬ 
try, and as we sat on the seat over the cow¬ 
catcher it was literally like passing through 
a vast zoological garden. Indeed no such 
railway journey can be taken on any other 
line in any other land. At one time we passed 
a herd of a dozen or so of great giraffes, 
cows and calves, cantering along through the 
open woods a couple of hundred yards to 
the right of the train. Again, still closer, 
four waterbuck cows, their big ears thrown 
forward, stared at us without moving until 
we had passed. Hartebeests were every¬ 
where; one herd was on the track, and 
when the engine whistled they bucked and 
sprang with ungainly agility and galloped 
clear of the danger. A long-tailed straw- 
colored monkey ran from one tree to an¬ 
other. Huge black ostriches appeared from 
time to time. Once a troop of impalla, 
close by the track, took fright; and as the 
beautiful creatures fled we saw now one 
and now another bound clear over the 
high bushes. A herd of zebra clattered 
across a cutting of the line not a hundred 
yards ahead of the train; the whistle hurried 
their progress, but only for a moment, and 
as we passed they were already turning 
round to gaze. The wild creatures were in 
