Nine Faces Of Kenya

by Elspeth Huxley

  Meanwhile, haven’t I got two quarts of water, a pound of biltong – and the doctor’s bottled sleep [a phial of morphine] (should I be hors de combat and the Siafu hungry that night?) I certainly have, and, moreover, I am not defenceless. I have a Lüger in my locker – a gun that Tom has insisted on my carrying, and which can be used as a short rifle simply by adjusting its emergency stock. What could be better? I am an expedition by myself, complete with rations, a weapon, and a book to read – Air Navigation, by Weems.

  All this, and discontent too! Otherwise, why am I sitting here dreaming of England? Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost soul seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer.

  West With the Night Beryl Markham

  To shoot a lion was the primary aim of every visiting sportsman. The then Prince of Wales was no exception.

  On 16 November, 1928, the Prince of Wales was to come to Arusha on his way from Nairobi to Dar-es-Salaam. It was an unofficial visit, but all the same the town was en fête; all the neighbouring farmers were to come; the hotel was giving a dance; the Masai had arranged a great ngoma. A battalion of the King’s African Rifles was paraded for inspection; a football match had been fixed up; in short, there was as complete a festival atmosphere as the little town at the foot of Mount Meru could achieve.

  My wife and I had driven our 115 miles into the town like the rest and pitched camp not far from the hotel. I was just shaking a cocktail when a little man came into the tent and said:

  “I’m the Prince of Wales, and should like to make your acquaintance.”

  “You could not have chosen a more suitable moment,” I replied with a smile, and put the ice-cold shaker on the table.

  We drank to one another and sat down. The Prince asked if I could accompany him for a few days and help him to bag a lion. Of course I willingly placed myself at his disposal, and began my duties with him that very evening in the most pleasant way imaginable – my wife and I were invited to dinner at his hotel….

  I had put down the kills by night, after shooting several zebras, and when I visited them at dawn I found two lions on no less than four of the shot beasts – eight lions in all. I waited till they had finished their morning meal without disturbing them, but when they had withdrawn into the shade of the brushwood for their day’s rest I sent for the royal party.

  Unfortunately the boys I had sent for to take part in a drive had not turned up, so when I had placed the Prince and Finch Hatton at the most likely spot for the first lions, I had to constitute myself beater along with a few drivers and the Prince’s suite. The lions broke out, but not till we had a few exciting moments when one of them rushed out, roaring savagely, only a few yards from the Prince’s adjutant, who was armed only with a shot-gun.

  At the next kill things went better, although the ground was not so favourable. I myself do not like hunting lion in long grass, and it was only after much hesitation that Finch Hatton and I decided to try it. But I proposed that the Prince should have more than one gun with him; and Finch Hatton, Captain Moore, and the Prince’s two equerries were placed on one side of the copse into which the lions had withdrawn to rest.

  For a description of what followed I will take the liberty of quoting the Prince of Wales himself. His diary of experiences in Africa, which his secretary turned into a book, contains the following passage:

  Similar tactics were employed with this difference; that Blixen (whose attitude towards lions is that of the prophet Daniel) decided to be the sole beater. He had not gone far when a lion appeared at the edge of the covert. It turned rapidly and re-entered the bush. “Shoo,” said Blixen, not to be denied, “Shoo,” and he clapped his hands. Out bounded the lion.

  He really looked rather fine. Broadside on, he galloped across the front. HRH was shooting with a 350 double-barrel Express lent to him by Grigg. With the first barrel he missed cleanly and cleverly. A little rattled at that, he took more time to his second shot. The left-hand barrel was fired at the lion when he was 140 yards away. The grass was tallish, and the big, yellow beast went bounding through it in great leaps. It was a difficult shot because of the grass, and a long one. But it was a lucky one also, for it knocked the lion over and over. HRH reloaded and ran up to where it lay.

  The lion lay still after the shot, but on closer approach he got on to his legs and made off, but he was unable to get very far. He then stopped and wheeling round, obviously intended to charge. By this time HRH was close up to him and before he could get going gave him both barrels again, hitting him full in the chest each time. The last shot dropped him anew, but the grass was so long it was not until the rifle was right on top of him that he was seen to be dead.

  African Hunter Bror von Blixen.

  Lions were a perpetual menace to the stockman. Lord Delamere hunted them sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot.

  The excitement of the sportsman may be imagined who has followed the mighty spoor for mile after mile over sand, through gullies and open bush till it disappears in a small dense clump of jungle, and the most careful search detects no mark of exit. It was by this method that Lord Delamere, the prince of lion-shooters, made the greater proportion of his bag. Single-handed, he has accounted for close on seventy lions, more than twice as many as stand to the credit of any other sportsman. He holds a far more wonderful record still. Of the first forty-nine lions at which he fired and wounded he did not lose a single one! Next to Lord Delamere, the most famous lion-hunters in East Africa are the brothers Hill, ostrich farmers on the verge of the Athi plains, and Mr A. B. Percival, the game-ranger.

  A Colony in the Making Lord Cranworth.

  I knew a Somali who without so much as a stick in his hand saved Lord Delamere’s life with his bare hands. Lord Delamere was down under a wounded lion which had already broken one of Lord Delamere’s legs and was crushing it in his jaws. The Somali seized the lion’s head on both sides, and tugged at him till he dropped his victim and terribly mauled the deliverer. This lion was despatched by the Somalis the next day, and Lord Delamere set his own broken leg and nursed himself and his boy back to health, if not to soundness of limb. Lord Delamere goes slightly lame, and the Somali is maimed for life, but received a well-deserved pension from the man he saved.

  The Land of the Lion Sir Alfred Pease.

  This Nandi hunt was witnessed by ex-President Theodore Roosevelt on the Uasin Gishu plateau in 1909.

  In an hour we overtook the Nandi warriors, who were advancing across the rolling, grassy plains in a long line, with intervals of six or eight yards between the men. They were splendid savages, stark naked, lithe as panthers, the muscles rippling under their smooth dark skins. All their lives they had lived on nothing but animal food – milk, blood, and flesh – and they were fit for any fatigue or danger. Their faces were proud, cruel, fearless; as they ran they moved with long springy strides. Their head-dresses were fantastic; they carried ox-hide shields painted with strange devices; and each bore in his right hand the formidable war-spear, used both for stabbing and for throwing at close quarters. The narrow spear-heads of soft iron were burnished till they shone like silver; they were four feet long, and the point and edges were razor sharp. The wooden haft appeared for but a few inches; the long butt was also of iron, ending in a spike, so that the spear looked almost solid metal. Yet each sinewy warrior carried his heavy weapon as if it were a toy, twirling it till it glinted in the sun-rays. Herds of game – red hartebeests and striped zebra and wild swine – fled right and left before the advance of the line.

  It was noon before we reached a wide, shallow valley, with beds of rushes here and there in the middle, and on either side high grass and dwarfed and scattered thorn-trees. Down this we beat for a couple of miles. Then, suddenly, a maned lion rose a quarter of a mile ahead of the line and galloped off through the high grass to the right, and all of us on horseback tore after him.

  He was a magnificent beast, with a black and ta
wny mane; in his prime, teeth and claws perfect, with mighty thews, and savage heart. He was lying near a hartebeest on which he had been feasting; his life had been one unbroken career of rapine and violence; and now the maned master of the wilderness, the terror that stalked by night, the grim lord of slaughter, was to meet his doom at the hands of the only foes who dared to molest him….

  It was a mile before we brought him to bay.

  One by one the spearmen came up at a run, and gradually began to form a ring round him. Each, when he came near enough, crouched behind his shield, his spear in his right hand, his fierce, eager face peering over the shield rim. As man followed man, the lion rose to his feet. His mane bristled, his tail lashed, he held his head low, the upper lip now drooping over the jaws, now drawn up so as to show the gleam of the long fangs. He faced first one way and then another, and never ceased to utter his murderous grunting roars. It was a wild sight; the ring of spearmen, intent, silent, bent on blood, and in the centre the great man-killing beast, his thunderous wrath growing ever more dangerous.

  At last the tense ring was complete, and the spearmen rose and closed in. The lion looked quickly from side to side, saw where the line was thinnest, and charged at his topmost speed. The crowded moment began. With shields held steady, and quivering spears poised, the men in front braced themselves for the rush and the shock; and from either hand the warriors sprang forward to take their foe in flank. Bounding ahead of his fellows, the leader reached throwing distance; the long spear flickered and plunged; as the lion felt the wound he half turned, and then flung himself on the man in front. The warrior threw his spear; it drove deep into the life, for, entering at one shoulder, it came out of the opposite flank, near the thigh, a yard of steel through the great body. Rearing, the lion struck the man, bearing down the shield, his back arched; and for a moment he slaked his fury with fang and talon. But on the instant I saw another spear driven clear through his body from side to side; and as the lion turned again the bright spear-blades darting toward him were flashes of white flame. The end had come. He seized another man, who stabbed him and wrenched loose. As he fell he gripped a spear-head in his jaws with such tremendous force that he bent it double. Then the warriors were round and over him, stabbing and shouting, wild with furious exultation.

  From the moment when he charged until his death I doubt whether ten seconds had elapsed – perhaps less; but what a ten seconds! The first half-dozen spears had done the work. Three of the spear-blades had gone clean through the body, the points projecting several inches; and these and one or two others, including the one he had seized in his jaws, had been twisted out of shape in the terrible death-struggle.

  We at once attended to the two wounded men. Treating their wounds with antiseptic was painful, and so, while the operation was in progress, I told them, through Kirke, that I would give each a heifer. A Nandi prizes his cattle rather more than his wives, and each sufferer smiled broadly at the news, and forgot all about the pain of his wounds.

  Then the warriors, raising their shields above their heads, and chanting the deep-toned victory song, marched with a slow, dancing step around the dead body of the lion, and this savage dance of triumph ended a scene of as fierce interest and excitement as I ever hope to see.

  African Game Trails Theodore Roosevelt.

  Shooting a pair of lions in a coffee plantation after dinner was a more low-key affair.

  At nine o’clock we went out.

  It rained a little, but there was a moon, from time to time she put out her dim white face high up in the sky, behind layers and layers of thin clouds, and was then dimly mirrored in the white-flowering coffee-field. We passed the school at a distance; it was all lighted up.

  At this sight a great wave of triumph and of pride in my people swept through me. I thought of King Solomon, who says: “The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets.” Here were two lions just outside their door, but my school-children were not slothful and had not let the lions keep them from school.

  We found our marked two rows of coffee-trees, paused a moment, and proceeded up between them, one in front of the other. We had moccasins on, and walked silently. I began to shake and tremble with excitement, I dared not come too near to Denys for fear that he might feel it and send me back, but I dared not keep too far away from him either, for he might need my torchlight any moment.

  The lions, we found afterwards, had been on the kill. When they heard us, or smelt us, they had walked off it a little way into the coffee-field to let us pass. Probably because they thought that we were passing too slowly, the one of them gave a very low hoarse growl, in front and to the right of us. It was so low that we were not even sure that we had heard it. Denys stopped a second; without turning he asked me: “Did you hear?” “Yes,” I said.

  We walked a little again and the deep growling was repeated, this time straight to the right. “Put on the light,” Denys said. It was not altogether an easy job, for he was much taller than I, and I had to get the light over his shoulder on to his rifle and further on. As I lighted the torch the whole world changed into a brilliantly lighted stage, the wet leaves of the coffee-trees shone, the clods of the ground showed up quite clearly.

  First the circle of light struck a little wide-eyed jackal, like a small fox; I moved it on, and there was the lion. He stood facing us straight, and he looked very light, with all the black African night behind him. When the shot fell, close to me, I was unprepared for it, even without comprehension of what it meant, as if it had been thunder, as if I had been myself shifted into the place of the lion. He went down like a stone. “Move on, move on,” Denys cried to me. I turned the torch further on, but my hand shook so badly that the circle of light, which held all the world, and which I commanded, danced a dance. I heard Denys laugh beside me in the dark. – “The torch-work on the second lion,” he said to me later, “was a little shaky.” – But in the centre of the dance was the second lion, going away from us and half hidden by a coffee-tree. As the light reached him he turned his head and Denys shot. He fell out of the circle, but got up and into it again, he swung round towards us, and just as the second shot fell, he gave one long irascible groan.

  Africa, in a second, grew endlessly big, and Denys and I, standing upon it, infinitely small. Outside our torchlight there was nothing but darkness, in the darkness in two directions there were lions, and from the sky rain. But when the deep roar died out, there was no movement anywhere, and the lion lay still, his head turned away on to his side, as in a gesture of disgust. There were two big dead animals in the coffee-field, and the silence of night all around.

  We walked up to the lions and paced out the distance. From where we had stood the first lion was thirty yards away and the other twenty-five. They were both full-grown, young, strong, fat lions. The two close friends, out in the hills or on the plains, yesterday had taken the same great adventure into their heads, and in it they had died together.

  Out of Africa Karen Blixen.

  Scruples.

  I shot my lion. It was a fine lion – one of the best, Delacott said, that had been killed that year in Kenya. Nine feet five inches, measured unfairly after skinning, is not a remarkable length, but its crowning glory was an especially thick golden mane, just going black in places, which grew right back beneath the forelegs and far along the body. Lions are all that they have been made out to be, but they have been made out to be so much that when at last you meet them, even though they fulfil specifications, it is hard to avoid a feeling of anti-climax. Yet from the first moment I set eyes on this particular beast, I knew I was greatly privileged. And I murdered it. Or rather, I co-murdered it.

  Hitherto I had always wondered at the reticence of certain men, not invariably reticent, when they described to me the climax of a hunt. They would tell of many a heart-breaking stalk, of arduous marches through the heat and the flies, of their feelings as at last the moment came. But the climax itself was often colourless.

 
; I had thought to join the ranks of the strong and silent but I had not reckoned with the lion. More potent in death than in life, it hangs at the foot of my staircase and, as I go upstairs to bed, I meet its eye. It is not a real eye. It is a simple affair of glass. But for all that Messrs Gerrard and Sons could do, until I wrote this chapter, that eye had a wink in it.

  “Exactly how proud are you,” it seemed to say, “of having murdered me?”

  Three sentences can tell the humiliating tale. As I fired the lion rolled over on its side. I turned to ask Delacott if I need shoot again. Just as I did so he fired himself and the lion lay dying on its back.

  The boys came rushing up to me and shook me by the hand. Even our head boy, the usually unemotional Dunga, was wild with delight. Delacott’s face was glowing. “I really do congratulate you,” he cried. “This isn’t an ordinary lion. It’s about the finest specimen I’ve ever known shot in Kenya.”

  “Thanks,” I said and was silent, hoping that he would take that silence for modesty or for the too-full-for-words condition. I was fighting desperately to keep control of myself so that as yet I should not spoil the pleasure of these people who had worked so hard for ten days to bring me this moment of triumph. Of triumph I felt nothing. All that was in my heart was a rising shame, a rising anger and a hope that I could get back to my tent before I burst into tears.