by Osa Johnson
The nights were cool, and each morning, refreshed and eager for the day’s work, we sat down to Mpishi’s breakfast of good coffee, eggs, ham or bacon, and toast. After breakfast I frequently accompanied Martin to the blinds. Frequently also, it being my wifely duty to keep the larder filled, I went either fishing or hunting accompanied by Ferraragi. Africa has comparatively few streams, but those few are full of good fish, and the Guaso Nyiro (river) near our camp was no exception. It was quite usual to catch more than two hundred pounds of fish in a day, and it was quite usual too to see our men eat most of the catch at one sitting, drying the rest over their fires to nibble on until the next treat.
The routine life of the camp was similar to that of any well-regulated household. Aloni and Toto made the beds, cleaned the tents, and washed the dishes and the clothes, while Mpishi and his assistants did our personal cooking. The natives, of course, did their own. It was my job to arrange the menus, but inasmuch as I had taught Mpishi our way of cooking, this was simple.
We always bathed and changed into fresh clothes for dinner. I made it an invariable rule to keep my hair well brushed and arranged, and to give as much attention to manicure and beauty treatments as though we were in the heart of New York rather than in the depths of so-called darkest Africa. It always seemed to me that I owed it to Martin to look my very best no matter what the circumstances.
The two things we really did miss, though, were fresh fruits and vegetables. There were no gardens in the remoter sections of Africa, and no wild fruits except an unpalatable, warty fig which Kalowatt alone would eat.
We might have been much happier without Mr. Rattray’s very logical surmise that the uncharted lake we sought was, in fact, the salty, barren, hundred-mile-long Lake Rudolf. Nevertheless, we were grateful to him for suggesting this trip to the Shaba hills. On entering them we saw countless fresh trails and knew there must be a number of good water holes somewhere about.
Our men found the water holes just two hours from the campsite we had chosen. They came back to report the good news, and early the next morning they led Martin and me to the place where they were. There were five water holes in a sandy depression some two miles long and a mile wide, and crowded at every one were not only the animals with which we were now familiar but also the stunning reticulated giraffe which Mr. Rattray had told us we would see.
All the porters except our personal help were put to work building blinds at the water holes. Martin had long since come to the decision that only with the use of these shelters could he hope to be really successful with his wild-animal photography and with characteristic thoroughness he had questioned hunters who had used them. His needs differed, of course, from those of hunters, for he had lighting to consider, and position and time, and it was necessary to make allowances for these.
His plan now was to experiment with two blinds at every water hole, one on either side to take care of shifts in wind. These were placed about a hundred yards back from the holes. Four-foot-high walls made of piled-up stone encircled a space seven feet in diameter. Supports and a roof made of thornbush completed our practically airless chamber. A narrow aperature running lengthwise for about four feet served as both peephole and an opening for the camera lens. The interiors of these little hotboxes were almost dark, and yet any quick movement betrayed our presence instantly to the sharp-eyed and sharp-eared animals. We also learned that while these animals quickly forgot the scent of a man, they remembered an inexplicable movement and kept clear of the water holes for sometimes a week.
A day in the blind was a long one, because we had to take our positions before daylight. Up at three, and with twenty or more porters carrying chairs, guns, cameras, and lunch, we set out with high hopes, no matter how disappointing the day before might have been.
Those early walks through the thickly wooded hills were unforgettable. Often it was still dark, and yet we smelled the morning, fresh and cool, and on it the sweetness of the foliage which we couldn’t see. We walked noiselessly on the broad, hard-packed rhino trails. All about us were the waking sounds of the wilderness: birds chirping, zebra barking, lions exploiting their deepest bass notes, and rhino crashing, with angry snorts, through the underbrush.
By the time we reached the blinds, dawn was in the sky, and we arranged ourselves as quickly and comfortably as possible. Our men then returned to camp. They would come back for us only when the light was gone.
And there we would sit, hours on end, Martin often in one blind and I in another, but we forgot our cramped quarters as we watched.
The animals came for their morning drinks. Zebra, gazelle, giraffe, ostrich, rhino, buffalo—down from the hills they came, sometimes as many as three or four hundred crowding amicably around one hole. We were amazed at the extent to which they respected one another’s rights. I never did get over a sort of Noah’s Ark unreality about the whole thing.
We ground out thousands of feet of film and would have remained for several weeks longer if suddenly the animals hadn’t thinned out. One morning we heard shots and knew what had happened. A party of hunters had taken possession of the Shaba hills. We even found that they were using our blinds at the far hole, so we tore these down, scattering the stones and burning the brush, and when we resumed our trek, every blind had been destroyed.
* * *
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When we pushed northward again, it wasn’t necessary to urge the Meru porters to fill their canteens. In addition, they made it known that they’d like to have some buffalo hide; tardily, they wanted to make some sandals to protect their feet. A few days later we ran across buffalo spoor on the edge of a tinga-tinga (swamp) and decided to pitch camp for a few days.
We set out the following morning to explore the swamp but found no buffalo. We did, however, come suddenly on a grazing rhino. Martin set up the camera and stationed me behind it.
“You keep on grinding no matter what,” he said. “I’ll go toward him and see if I can get him to charge.” So far, the big beast was unaware of us.
Behind a camera, Martin was completely cool, and I’ve seen him face animals of every sort as they charged toward him—all with perfect steadiness and even delight in the knowledge that it meant a fine picture. But stalking an animal with a gun was something else again, and what happened to him was similar, it seemed to me, to what is familiarly called buck fever in the States. He shook all over, his eyes bulged out, and then, as if to contradict these apparent evidences of fear, his jaw stuck out with a degree of determination that was almost comic.
“Keep grinding,” he whispered hoarsely back to me. “This is a rare, one-horned specimen!”
He now shouted to attract the rhino’s attention. The huge animal turned with a start, charged halfheartedly, then stopped in a stupid perplexity as Martin stood his ground. Apparently he was pondering what to do next.
“That’s enough unless I can get some action out of him,” Martin called.
At this point the rhino seemed to weigh the desirability of moving; then, with a snort and a puff he made for us.
My husband took aim and fired, wounding the animal. As it started off, he prepared for another shot. Just then I heard the pounding of hooves in the brush behind us together with the startled grunts of our men. There, coming directly at us, was a herd of zebra, another of oryx, and, bringing up the rear, a herd of what must have been close to a hundred buffalo. Apparently Martin’s shot had stampeded the big animals in the narrow donga, and the smaller ones were racing ahead to keep from being trampled.
Martin rushed to where I stood. It seemed certain that we would be run down unless we could turn aside the pounding avalanche. Waving our arms and screeching, we turned the smaller animals, but the buffalo came straight on. My husband aimed for a big one in the center of the herd and brought him down. I dropped another. Martin dropped a third and then we stood while, miraculously, the herd, seeing the leaders fall, divided within a few feet
of us and rushed past on either side, while small stones kicked up by flying hooves pelted and cut us and we were choked with dust.
We had forgotten all about the wounded rhino until some of the men gathering firewood found him dead. We sent Japanda to get his hide and single-horned head but found that instead of being a rare specimen, he was nothing but an ordinary rhino that somehow had lost one of his two horns.
Again we pushed on north and saw so many of the ugly and unpredictable beasts as we went that I grew tired of them. I even decided that I actually disliked them and was a little afraid of them too. That one of them had been close to goring Father Johnson certainly hadn’t added to my love of them. I tried to persuade Martin that we had enough pictures of rhino for the time being. Then one day we saw a beautiful specimen, perfectly posed, with both background and lighting exactly right for a picture. His Roman nose and splendid horns were clearly outlined, his heavy shoulders and muscles rippled magnificently in the sun. Martin set up his camera and turned it over to me; at a signal I was to start grinding.
“Keep on grinding no matter what,” he whispered as he’d done so many times before. This time he moved recklessly close to the unsuspecting beast before he gave me the signal to start turning the crank. The rhino turned, and I knew from the way he lowered his head that he was going to charge. Just then another rhino moved from behind a rock where he had been concealed, and together they charged my husband, gaining excitement from each other in the chase.
Martin was long-legged, sure-footed, and level-headed, but it seemed impossible to me that he could escape this time. He ran at an oblique angle across the camera, then turned sharply out of the path of the snorting beasts, who kept right on going.
I was shaking until my knees did actually knock together.
“Well, Osa,” he said excitedly, “I’ll bet that’s the finest picture of charging rhinos that’s ever been taken!”
I thrust my gun into Ferraragi’s hands and ran and kept on running until Martin caught me. It seemed to me that I had forfeited all my rights, all his confidence, everything, for I had neglected to grind the camera.
“Next time,” said he, “I’ll get the action; you get the picture, and don’t you worry about me.”
* * *
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We camped at Laisamis, a water hole which had been used by both Paul J. Rainey and Major Dugmore as a site for photography. We spent several days there before continuing our trek to Marsabit.
What lay ahead proved to be a grueling trek, as we crossed the Kaisoot Desert which lies south of Mount Marsabit. The road across the desert seemed impassable, and indeed there were many places where we had to unload the car and let the porters almost carry it for long stretches.
When we reached Marsabit, we stopped for a few days’ rest, and it was there that we found Boculy. A little, wizened old man with sore eyes and a jaw that was curiously lopsided, he seemed to appear out of nowhere and, presenting himself to Martin, signified his wish to join our safari. There was a curious dignity about him, a sureness that we needed him more than he needed us. We engaged him on the spot. I set about doctoring his sore eyes, but with little effect, for every two or three days he seemed to go totally blind. His jaw, it seemed, had been broken when he was a young man and, never having been properly put in place, had mended askew, which made both speech and eating difficult. He accounted for the disfigurement with a fantastic tale of an encounter with an equally fantastic elephant which at first we were inclined to doubt, but after he had been with us for a while I was ready to believe anything he said. I had the feeling that Boculy had been born old, and certainly he had a wisdom concerning elephants that went beyond mere knowledge. He was known among the other natives as the “Little Brother of the Elephants.”
This strange little man became literally Martin’s shadow. It was clear that he knew this northern country better than did our own men, and my husband sounded him out one day with regard to a probable uncharted lake in the area. Boculy looked vague, and whenever Martin raised the subject he seemed not to hear or understand. Either he knew of such a lake or he was being mysterious, as became an oracle of his proportions. Another curious manifestation, whenever the lake was mentioned, was the manner in which he rubbed the top of his head and patted his stomach, an old test in coordination which I remembered trying as a child.
At all events, it was this strange old man who led us, with a minimum of hardship and effort, on the next, very important part of our trip.
“I wish I knew where to go from here,” Martin said to me on our fifth evening in camp. We had made trips in all directions hoping to come on some sign of the lake, but without result. Boculy had disappeared within an hour after we had pitched camp days before, and we hadn’t seen him since. Then suddenly he appeared, as usual out of nowhere.
“Tembo, ’mbwana, tembo mingi sana,” he said. Translated, this meant, “Elephants, master, very many elephants.”
Martin and I talked it over and decided our trip wouldn’t be a complete loss if we could photograph “many elephants,” so we set out early the following morning in the wake of our strange guide. I think we had both hoped that if and when Boculy returned, it would be with news of the lake.
For days we marched behind our ancient guide in some very rough country. For another day we climbed steadily and then, completely without warning, we were at the edge of a high cliff overlooking one of the loveliest lakes I had ever seen.
Martin and I stared down without speaking, and then at each other, and then at Boculy. He stood with an almost unhappy perplexity on his face, and again he was rubbing the top of his head and patting his stomach. Apparently he had warred with himself about bringing us here. He had wanted this hidden paradise to remain a sanctuary for his beloved elephants, but his devotion to Martin had prevailed.
The lake was shaped like a spoon, about a quarter of a mile wide and three quarters of a mile long, and it sloped up into steep, wooded banks two hundred feet high. We stood at the tip of the spoon, which was a high cliff. Opposite, a deep cleft served as the handle. It lay in the center of an extinct volcano, and the beach which ran back a hundred feet or so to the edge of the forest was of hard, washed lava.
A tangle of water-vines and lilies—great, blue African lilies—grew in the shallows at the water’s edge. Wild ducks, cranes, and egrets circled and dipped. Animals, more than we could count, stood quietly knee-deep in the water and drank.
“It’s paradise, Martin!” I said.
He nodded.
That was how Lake Paradise was given its name.
Chapter 21
“Do not be afraid,” said Boculy. “The elephants are only eating.” We had pitched camp on a cliff overlooking Lake Paradise, and behind us the great trees seemed to have gathered all the blackness out of the night to screen the advance of a mighty and noisy foe. In every direction the trumpeting of elephants blasted the silence and shook us where we sat under our flimsy canvas roofs. The creaking and snapping of trees went on without pause.
“Do they always tear down the forest when they eat?” Martin demanded of Boculy.
“And scream?” I asked. “Do they have to do that?”
A crash nearer at hand had my husband on his feet and reaching for his gun. I had visions of the lot of us being squashed flat.
Boculy was completely calm, however, and, pitying out ignorance a little, I think, explained that the trumpeting was only friendly conversation and that the crashing had merely to do with the manner in which the big animals fed. They liked the tender shoots at the tops of young trees, he said, and bent and sometimes broke the slender trunks to reach them.
Our camp survived the night without damage, and by morning Martin and I felt a positive affection toward the huge animals for being so kind as to spare us. We sat out under the trees having breakfast, and already my husband was envisioning a complete record on film of elephant family li
fe.
“Why, this place is their home,” he said excitedly, “and they’ve let us move right in!”
Just then, over Martin’s shoulder as he sat facing me, I saw three large elephants shuffling lazily along the path that led past our tents down to the lake. Apparently in a genial, playful mood, they stopped every now and then to blow trunkfuls of dust over one another’s backs.
Martin slipped into the tent for his camera, set it up to leeward, and cranked happily. So far they hadn’t noticed us, and my husband signaled me to move into the picture. The big fellows were so exactly like the elephants I’d seen in circuses that I wanted to go right up and feed them and pat their wrinkled trunks. To walk toward them seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. I even decided the big one’s name was Jumbo. Ten or eleven feet high at the shoulder, they loomed gray and solid above me, but, so far, it hadn’t occurred to me to be afraid. When they wheeled suddenly and faced me, however, and their trunks went up in alarm and their ears stood straight out from their heads, that was something else.
“Osa!” I heard Martin shouting. “Come back here!”
I stood where I was, my feet heavy on the ground. A shivery feeling began in my stomach and darted in all directions to the surface of my skin where it became goose bumps, and a nightmarish sort of fear held me completely immovable. Martin said afterwards that the elephants and I, all equally motionless, might have been a stuffed group in a museum.
Suddenly then, as if by some occult signal, the three elephants turned tail and lumbered off. I’ll never know what possessed me, but I chased after them yelling at the top of my voice.