The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 15, 1902, Page 7

THE SUNDAY CAIL. 7 (FRoVFP or parIvE BELLES 77 GEEIMRI FAST JIFRICA Her Stories of Life in the African Bush Sound Like Kili- Baron von t an experi- company. is in German itish rallroad ap- Under the most ces the station is only y from Wol, but when Baroness made her gh there two years ago n, and at be rebui erness for a year. with African fever, nds, Dr. Madison ories of life nd like extrac but instead fe which would ap- r £ ships to many women, is eager for her return to the fron- d raised on an Ohio farm, Her of tier. able to ride a horse bareback before she had read thing to do istible char: er, an irre: Schel rf is experimen the resources of the country be m commercially banana and ther consis: He has d with e pl ins, ar bators are now busi ree incu decid a week who will chief Sach natural f It is a ter e drive. in the cer plain s ftrec all tform the is e from this pl s manipulate A over B: he flags which 1cted and Baror direct the drive 1g deft, can be are in. on the morning of the rang. closed after the a At four drive the chiefs take t them. Each has from 2 der him, making 10,000 nat reserting perhaps ten or fifteen Qifferent none of which understands the age of the others. It is the dry n, when the herbivorous S the wet geason scatter through are forced down ins, plains for food. e small, scatter driven in tow lines of natives er to the center of the sands of zebra buffalo—Thomsonian d herds are all follow } Lis escape. m. He begins to run to make Lverywhere, as he seeks to Lreak the n spring up, shouting The line of ani- in a circle. At °s the mouth great mixed sh in would destroy the kraal the purpose of the drive. A of men stationed at the gate- springs The leader of the herd back, the long line follows The second line runs parallel to the only going in an opposite direction. the herd will form half a dozen lines, running swiftly, each animal with its head the rump of the one ahead of it. and its sides touching those of in the t line, yet never pproac gre and metimes on e anims king out of its own line. An inde- serit sen is produced by locking at these vering . lines moving b round aad round, Lent body of a monster ser- ngest sight /in the for one particular - boks and reed boks é young calves—antelopes, elands and o ar t compar: ches, will be seen collected in a vast w menageries herd, ar 1d Then occurs a phenomenon which few partici- s have ever seen. The ani- P drives” by which the lize that they are being s and she declares it ader starts out, and they £ B ism stonewall’s Fatalism. - was as absolute a fatalist take his breath awa tably at Cedar = lifference, Jackson 1p to him and = - n with a re- “General T n, advance Napoleon WS grive the enemy from your front.” Law- 1 a Presbyterian and 2 plied, “General, there is a very deep ver e tenets of t n the enemy’s front.” Jackson re- I know it. Advance!” He did not 5 N waste words. Jackson's practice w el of a caisson came k of the Northern troops as off ar ng directly on him. An He very rarely called them ¥ < fr « to him to move, thing else. . Dr. Hunter McGui his t wheel struck a medjcal director, is my authority for this stone er of a moun- statement. Stonewall Jackson turned to Stonewall Jackson died in a house that . “You see, there Was {s still standing at Guinea station, in Vir no danger. I knew it.” ginia, on the line of the Richmond, Fred- was Stonewall Jackson's habit to ericksburg and Potomac Railroad. His method was T e his right hand the God of battles. I on several occasions, not- of Port Republic, his lds, while sitting on his road down which a splendidly thern battery was pouring shot General someti ant or Lawton informed me that nes he would give him an import- r so quickly that it would almost His left arm was amputated at the shoulder, being taken out of the socket. closed . his eyes in death his little daughter, then two or three years old, lay on his breast, with his right arm over her. His dying words were, “Pass the infantry rapidly to the front.”” “Tell A. P. Hill to prepare for action.” “We will pass over the fiver and rest under the shade of the trees on the opposite side.” He was delirious and, like Napoleon’s, his mind, as it feebly fulfilied its last of- fices, was with his military past.—Lippin- cott's Magazine. When he | iches for ostrich perhaps zebras to ship ‘a 4 special mals desired are cut out of the great herd and to a kraal. 1If a lion or leopard t in the drive, very early in men near him are signaled s0 that the big meat eater turned § rets c the ga | to “lie may sneak away. The Baron has an en- | tirely different method of dealing with | him. | When the kraal is full of the species | desired the closed and the | day’s drive . This is generally | about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Five e is in | hundred zebras at a time has been the | | result of such a day’s work, and that is | the sight which no American woman but Baroness von Schellendorf has seen. | The Von Schellendorfs were the first people to tame and harness zebras. The Baron himself had no idea that this could be done, for the zebra is reputed the wildest of all wild things. It was | done by leaving a young zebra two days without food, and then letting him into a kraal, where he could see donkeys eat- ing hay from the hands of natives, In two days he also would eat from their hands, put down his head to be rubbed, and even take hay from the Baron's pockets. The same method was followed with the older animals, and within ten days NATIVE b B it L after the drive two of the bras were harnessed and ridden by col- largest ze- ored boys. Baron von Schellendorf is now confident that zebras can be train- VARRIORS I CrERIMAN L£RST . AFRICA s T N F 70 ed to become the draught animals of Af- rica, a country fz al to hors Zebras are immune to the tsetse fly, and to all ases which attack the horse. The zebras of Central Africa are sixteen hands high and have powerful chests and limbs, well fitted for pulling. The Baron has now orders for many zebras, trained to the , for other portions of Africa. He charges 600 rupees ($240) for a tamed and harne d animal. The transports which he sends to Ham- burg occasionally resemble the ark. They contain lions. leopards, s s, an animal of the leopard Kkind; specimens of the rhinoceros <and hippopotamus, zebras, gnus, antelopes, elands, gazelles, boks, giraffes and elephants. Keeping house under circumstances like these affords good practice in the strenu- ous life. The Baromess tried to pick up a puff adder one day, thinking it was a pole which she could use to support her clothesiine. The puff adder is a about six feet long, and its s , unlike those of many serperts, retain their bril- liancy after death. On that account its skin is worth $ in FEurope for manufa ture into novelties. All manner of snake- skins can be ex poses, for the reptile world ranges all the way from three-foot lhizards up to the mighty python of the junsle. Near the house was a little waterfall, and just above this, where the swift flow would bear all refuse away, the servants used to rinse the pots and pans. One day the cook dropped the coffee pot in the ,brook and it whisked over the falls. They had only one more, so diligent search was made for the lost utensil, but without success. A week later the Baroness met a crocodile at the foot 6f her garden. He had come up out of the water to take a stroll in the edge of the evening. She promptly shot him, and when he was opened there was her coffee pot, quite un- injured. He had swallowed'it at one gulp. You cah shoot crocodiles by the millions along the streams. Each carries fodr musk balls about his person worth $5 aplece in London. She found that the most satisfactory dress was of thin white material, with a waist like the upper part of a kimona and a short skirt, reaching the tops of her high boots. Gloves and a broad brimmed cork hat, covered with white canvas. combleted ‘her out of door cos- tume. Her house was a bungalow built of the logs of barride and mewal lies, snake ported for similar pur-| PBABYEBRA. the only timber which wil. uot ba eaten up bodily by insect pests. The inner walls are covered with “gamt{,” which is noth-_ ing but unbleached muslin, hailing, every vard of it, from Yankee mills. The house is made gay with Indian cottons and Jap- anese umbrellas, and the whole inclosure is surrounded by a high, barbed wire fence, with poisoned barbs. They sleep in_tents, which are cooler than it is pos- sible to make the house, and which are searched for “varmints” of whatever breed before they retire for the night This gamt! is the only cloth known to the natives, and a Central African negro will work two months for three yards of it. Then he will drape himself in it, and wear it until it is perfectly stiff, like leather, and impossible to tear. The “servant girl problem” assumes new and somewhat startling phases in st Africa. The Baroness took up trained native servants from the coast, who were very good, but when it became necessary to call in additional help on the frontier she was occasionally + treated to the experience of having a strapping girl walk In to seek employ- ment in perfectly nude condition. From March, when she left the ship, un- til Qctober, when she boarded it again, the Baroness did not see a white woman. Africa is a land of enormous magnitudes. German East Africa is five times as large as Germ itself, stretching from the coast far up to Victoria Nyanza, which tn our colbook geographies was only an inaccessible dot In the jungle. Mount Kilimandjaro is 22,000 feet high. There is only oné tiny bit of railroad in German East Afriea. The German Government will allow private capital to build roads, and ‘as yet has not found the means to do so itself. The country can never be opened without rallroads. The only wlate people in the interior now are missionaries, occasional hunters and of- ficers at the military stations. Germany has as yet received no return not PosiNG FOR TMEIR PICTURES - s N HcUsekeering n a Way That Qffcrds Good Pragiice In %h Strenuous Life. for her outlay on this vast tract It ie not a country to which her own peopls can ever emigrate. The German emi- grant goes to America, not East Africa. Like all Orfental count it 1s no poor man’s land. Profit must come from in- vestment of capital by large concerns, employing pative labor and managed by resident superintendents. Capital will not enter the country, however, untfl rall- roads are built, and this the policy of the Emperor will not yet allow. Baroness von Schellendor? brought with her to this country a perfectly new species of wild animal not named or de- scribed in ady work on natural history, It i3 a queer little creature, evidently one of those “left overs™ from an earlier per— 10d, before one specles had differentiated into a number of différent ones. At first sight it reminds you of a kitten, a squir~ rel and o monkey. Its face is like that of a bear, though far smaller than the tinfest bear cub. Its ears resemble =& tat’s. Its hands are like those of a mon= key, but its hind legs are those of & kangaroo, though far smaller, and it uses them in the same way. Its tail is like that of a squirrel. Its fur is like & chin- chilla’s, and in its own country is very short. But since coming to northern climates it has grown rich and long, with a black hair on the ends. Likewise, al- though it is a night animal in its habitat, since becoming a household pet, it seems to have learned how to see in the day- time. Baron von Scheilendorf named it the “Nachtaffen,” the night monkey, be« cause of its nocturnal habits. At home it eats insects, toads, butterfiles, squir< rels and fru'ts. In captivity it eats whatever any one else does, with a strong preference for raw oysters and shrimps. The Baroness will return te Africa during the coming summer. Her busband is the nephew of one of Von Moltke's greatest generals, who was also later Minister of War to Emperox Frede erick. - An eminent German has discovered what he considers an infallible test for distin. guishing between persons actually or only apparently dead. He uses a weak solu« tion of fluorescin, & most powerful color« ing matter, which, when suffftiently di< luted, ceases to be polsonous. If this so= lution is injected under the skin of a livw ing person, in two minutes the skin, es= pecially the mucous membrane, is gtrong= 1y colored and the body has the appear- ance of suffering from an attack of acute jaundice, but in the case of a dead man the solution produces no effect.—London Science Siftings. —— e The Railrcads in Spain. the new railroad project, under which it is proposed to construct about 3100 miles of marrow gauge railroad at a total cost of $50,000,000, the state ‘guaranteeing 4 per cent interest on the capital required. This is one of the great schemes which Spanish statesmen have devised in the hope that by means of better transportation facilities, a large extension ' of firrigation works, sugar bounties and other schemes the country may be restored to business activity and prosperity. The topography of Spain is a natural obstacle to transportation. The mountains make railroad building difficult and the rivers are too small and swift to be navi- gable except for short distances. .The country, therefors, has inadequate means of communication, and those which it possesses are Very poor. Freight rates, as well as passenger fares, are very high. A first-class ticket between Madrid and Hendaya, a distance of about 400 miles, is at the rate of 3.6 cents per mile. The South Express charges one-third the price of a first-class ticket in addition to the reguylar fare. Trains are very slow. The speed of pas- senger express trains is only twenty- three to twenty-seven miles an Lour. THE Spanish Cortes has just approved The ordiriary trains run only fifteen to twenty miles an hour, and frelght rates are so high that it costs more to carry goods by rail from Saragossa to Barce- lona, 200 miles, than to ship from land. It is not strange that under sueh conditions .commercial - development in Spain is far inferior to that of other countries. Even at the seaports the Span~ fards know nothing of the facilitles which other nations possess for transhipment between cars and vesseis, except at Bar- celona, Bilboa, Huelva and one or two other places. The 3100 miles of railroad will be nar- row gauge] because it was decided some years ago that a narrow gauge was pref- erable throughout Spain. Madrid, about 2150 feet above the level of the sea, is the center of the railroad system. The motn- tain heights between Madrid and the sea- ports tmpose steep grades, and in many places long detours, which with a gauge of five feet six inches and the consequent friction have made ‘the operation of Spanish railroads very ex Spanish assert that their high transporta- tion charges are necessary on account of broad gauge railroads. All the new con- cesslons for construction Bave stipulated that raflroads shall be narrow gaugs, which, it 1s now certain, will be the fea« ture of future railroad building in Spain,