Evening Star Newspaper, August 3, 1930, Page 98

A Daring Plunge Into the Heart of Y Africa, Where an Explorer Found Both Friend and Foe Among the Savage Beasts of the Jungle. EDITOR'S NOTE: James E. Bawum, who distinguished himself as an air pilot during the World War, has in recent vears spent - much time trekking through the “wilds of Africa, and has written several noteworthy books abowt his fascinating experiences.. A. hunter and cxplorer who delights in mak- “eng friends with the wild ansmal _imhabitants of the bush, but who has also had wmany hair-raising en- - counters and breathless escapes, he " gives here an intensely human and . thoroughly exciting accoumt of a . lone white maw's adventures deep “in the haunts of untamed beasts. BY JAMES E. BAUM. T was mentioned several times while I was in Khartoum last year that the area of the British Sudan is & million square miles. But that meant little or nothing to me. When talk about either miles or money soars to such dizzy alti- tudes something in my brain snaps. But when Capt. Brocklehurst, game commissioner of the Sudan, remarked that a three weeks’ trek by camel-caravan would put me in good lion country he had descended to my own patois. That—I could understand. I inquired at once: “What particular Garden of Eden harbors those voracious and unshot Yons?” w“Brock” pulled the big map down from the wall. The sheet, I saw, had been divided by héavy blue pencil marks into little square areas like miniature box-stalls. Here was a stall with the words “giant-eland, greater kudu, ele- phant.” written across it. Here was another sacred to hartebeest, tiang, sitatunga and cob. And a long way below Khartoum was another boxstall with the single word “lion” sicrawled across it with a heavy blue pencil. “There,” said Brock, “is your best chance for lion—along the Abyssinian border on the wpper reachcs of the River Rahad.” -#uch might be said about my preparations— the hiring of a cook, a tentboy, a syce, three eamel packers, three “hamla,” or pack camels, and one big bull riding camel. THE SUNDAY iercing the Haunts of Wild Animals LLOWED three weeks of steady trekking— three weeks of heat, thirst, thornbush, ticks, flies, mosquitoes, fever and of a sun that falls like a dead weight upon the shoulders. Interminable marches along wide elephant trails through 15-foot grass. The unending sway and lurch of that bull riding camel. And ihen, as our best writers would say, “the devoted little caravan” arrived at the Rahad River about 10 miles from the Abyssinian bor- der—Brocklehurst’s blue-penciled lion stall. Here we made a permanent camp, More weeks rolled by. Endless days in the African bush will do strange things to the imagination of a lone hunter. In the absence of white men with whom to exchange observa- tions upon the small happenings of the day, you turn for entertainment to the animals. You .come to know, after a while, that they have distinctive personalities. You become quite intimately acquainted with your smaller neighbors—baboons, monkeys, reed-buck, oribi and duiker—bush dwellers that seldom move from one locality to another. I remember with real affection a certain duiker that afforded me entertainment for 10 days near camp. Although full grown, the dainty antelope was no taller than a setter dog. Each day about noon he came with his family to drink at the river. The doe and fawn always left him 200 yards from camp, and, making a wide detour, arrived at the river some distance away. But my friend, a daring individualist, took keen -delight in sneaking past, no more than 40 yards to the side. He crept along with his back sunk low, watching us out of the corner’ of his eye like a crafty fox. Safely past, he straightened to his full but diminutive height, and with tiny head held high, looked back in triumph for a moment And sometimes he added a derisive snort, as if to say: 3 “There, I told that panicky family of mine I could do it!” F He had a great opinion of his own clever- ness, did that duiker. But on the tenth day he failed to appear. The doe and fawn, more shy and alert than before, came alonig and passed in a wide circle. The added neérvous- ness showed that they had been badly fright- ened. ““This looks gloomy for my friend,” I thought. “Perhaps he has tried his cleverness on the wrong party.” One error, and only one, is allotted to each member of the antelope family in Africa. The first mistake is very apt to be fatal. I was worried. Later in the day I went to look for him. A set of well cleaned duiker bones and the pug marks of a leopard in the dust' told the story. My duiker friend- had made his mistake. It was extremely poor headwork to attempt to sneak past that mattled incarnation of fury, the master-sneak of them all. The grim cat had caught and pulled him down. I felt that T had known that duiker inti- mately, and that common, every-day wilderness tragedy took on an exaggerated seriousness in my mind. I hunted that leopard with the relentless determination of Old Man Nemesis himself. And at last I got him—bushwhacked and shot him down. And as the spotted mur- derer lay gasping out his life in the grass, I put another and entirely unnecessary bullet through his heart—not in a spirit of humanity but with a vindictive jerk of the trigger that was nothing but pure revenge. In the lone- someness I considered that duiker, with his human weaknesses, a member of the family. ’I‘O a man alone in the bush, baboons and monkeys are a constant and never-failing source of amusement. On the opposite side of the river, late every afternoon, a troop of ba- boons trekked past the camp. Their habits were as regular as those of an old bachelor club-man. Indeed, those baboons had their own club in the deep shade of a giant wild fig tree that ros= in a noble arch across the stream. Promptly as trained commuters, that baboon trcop came foraging along the other bank one afternoon. I heard their chatty, gay remarks long before they came in view. First arrived the scouts, five or six old males, marching slowly and stopping now and then to listen. STAR, WASHINGTON, - D. C, AUGUST 3, 1930 It was their job to blaze the way and watch for any sudden movement in the brush, and to listen for a sound that might betoken the presence of that dreaded fury, the leopard. Their post was one of danger, and therefore honor in the tribe was theirs. And how weil they knew it! They marched with a burly swagger, shoulders proudly rolling to their step. Heads were up and tails were carried in a high curve, Upon arrival at the giant tree, one sharp of eye climbed to a lofty branch and perched sedately in a crotch. The other scouts sat promptly on their hunkers in the shade. The rank and file, noisy as a band of romping school boys, soon arrived. The younger set chattered and ran back and forth in games of monkey-tag, but the very young, the infant class, arrived in state perched on their mothers’ backs. The patriarchs, the heads of families with burdens of responsibility, sat with folded arms on placid stomachs and looked upon the world in great content. Sitting there beneath the tree like gaffers in a village square, they made an amusing picture. A sharp bark of alarm came from the gimlet- eyed sentry in the branches! Qui vive! What a sudden transformation! Silence—not a move- ment. Even babes in arms were still, long ago cuffed into understanding the gravity of such alarms. Accustomed to the strictest obedience from birth, here was no petulant, spoiled or peevish one, “mewling and pewking in his nurse’s arms,” to advertise his whereabouts te a silent, creeping ¢enemy. But this time there was no danger. A bull waterbuck strolled be- neath the tree and, looking cautiously around, - picked his thirsty way to water. A barren beach of sand lined the river for a mile. The presence of the baboon troop with a keen-eyed picket posted in the spreading tree appeared to give the bull much confidence. He drank slowly and stood ruminating, perhaps upon the dangers of a stroll. At length he walked in open view along a sandy bar, up- stream. A lion or leopard with half an eye might have marked his progress and crept ahead concealed in the brush, and hurled him- self, a living- thunderbolt, upon those sloping shoulders, The bull knew this, and stopped each 15 yards or se to turn his head and look and listen, and sniff the wandering breeze. The waterbuck advanced along the stream until he reached a point where tainted air from camp was wafted to his path. One sniff of this, one mighty bound, a reckless scrambile through the stones, a noble leap to the shelving bank, and he was gone like wind along the waste. Tm.i: baboons heard the rattling stones, the flying sand, the crash of broken brush, They saw him pass with spurning feet but could not know the cause. They gathered in a close- packed mob and listened for some following dis- turber. They had no idea what was wrong, but with wise discretion the signal for retreat was given. Babies sprang to mothers’ backs, and the troop set out in some confusion through the bush. A moment later, when the herd was out of sight, I forgot the sentry in his hidden post among the leaves and stood in plain view upon the river-bank. A clear and sharp dis- tinctive bark, the picket’s musket-shot rang out to warn the fleeing troop that danger had indeed appeared and speed was now in order. The wise old man, barking as he came, swung down from his lookout station and loped away to overtake the rest. And I knew that he would climb another tree, farther on, and watch with Argus eye to warn again if I should follow on the trail. While on the subject of baboons, it becomes necessary to confess a secret. Always, upon & lonesom= journey through a tuneless wilderness, I pack along a wheezing tin harmonica. One day that tin atrocity was in my pocket as I hunted down the river alone. The sun climbed high, and the day became too hot for anything sane to be astir. In stealth I took the wheezer out,—the stealth With a roar that seemed to shake the ground, the lion hurled himself straight for us, his eyes blazing with fire. was force of habit acquired in the haunts of scornful men—and lying with my back against a tree, I played away blissfully until, cheered and braced but sadly out of wind, I turned and glanced around. Behind me, crouching by a fallen log, app-ared the head and listening ears of a baboon. A short way off, others rallied round. As the music ceased, they turned to move away. I seized the instrument again and wrung the strains of “Danny Deever” from its stub- born vitals. The baboons stopped; every one of them sat down and peered and turned his head to catch the sound. There must have been two dozen or more in the troop, and one small babe-in-arms wailed discordantly. Its mother cuffed it soundly. It was as if a human child, dragged against its will to hear a noble orchestra, had whimpered, and {its mother, fearful of the master’s righteous anger, had spanked it to silence. Such vencration was flattering to my soul. Salved and poulticed, as it were, by such a triumph, I blew and blew while hairy gallery gods drank in the sounds. It may have been no more than prying curiosity, but I shall always claim, in spite of scientific testimony and the envious scoffs of non-musical natural- ists, that th> music itself was what held them spellbound in a sort of baboon ecstasy. But my second wind gave out. I rang the curtain down amid a storm of barks that doubtless, in the baboon tongue, were loud de- mands for encores. The audience departed, filled, I hop?, with noble sentiments and good resolutions. We moved camp up the Rahad to a place of big trees where the river made a wide bend. ‘There were many lions in that area. But they were wild and wise. For three weeks hardly a night passed without the deep organ tones of their roaring. From 1 o'clock in the morning until 4 they pounded the welkin with regularity. They came to the river to drink every night about 3, then trailed back into the high grass and thornbush just before dawn. They knew t0 & minute when the light would be strong enough to show a front sight clearly. And in daylight they simply were non-existent, extinct. DAY after day I hunted them through the thornbush—a game of hide-and-seek with- - out even the encouragement of & sight of one. In that terrific heat such luck is discouraging. The days passed in endless succession. And then one night, at that witching hour “when graveyards yawn,” I awoke, like Abou ben Adhem, from a deep dream of peace. The silence of the open forest had about it some- thing eerie, unearthly. No breeze stirred the leaves on the thorntrees. No fish, no crocodile, splashed in the oily waters of the river. No nightbird called to break the unfathomable stillness. An electric quality seemed to pervade the silence of the outer darkness. I had the feeling that the world was waiting for something. And then—the rumble of a lion perhaps a half-mile down the river began in a series of abysmally deep grunts that shook the heavy atmosphere. The roars swelled in volume, and then gradu- ally died away and became almost inaudible. At this point a second lion took up the business and carried it to new heights, until at the peak of his efforts it seemed to me that the very leaves on the thorntrees must be shaken from the branches. The two licns prowled for an hour along the river bank, and royally they drank at leisure and boasted of a hundred midnight kills. Then sauntered slowly off, roaring as they went. For a time all was quiet. But an hour before dawn a new voice warned all and sundry that another emperor was striding regally to water. This lion had the deepest voice of all. Far away I heard his coming, and in imagi- nation I couid see that loose and careless swag- ger, that slow and even tread so steady and so stark'y confident. Every little while he paused to sp~al in thunderous, awe-inspiring tones. At last he rcached the river quite close to