Wheels Across Africa (c 1936)

Nigel river which forms the Sahara's southern boundary we reach it 17 days after we enter the desert from the Z Valley it is as if these people had all themselves come in from the desert and could not satiate themselves with a sight in the field of water we make our way into the the crowd toward walk the marketplace all along the Nigel river is a meeting place of the North and the South a mixture of races costumes and tongues the Negro from the south meets with the Arab of the north the nomadic CS slurs T eggs of the desert all sorts of wees and objects of odd shapes change hands in these markets now doesn't he look like a tough guy from the desert and his shwed bargainer did you notice the padlock talk in the lady's nose in the lady's nose place there perhaps to keep her nose out of other people's [Music] business but here is a local Chieftain reviewing his Warriors he took these men of his to France during the world war to fight for the French and he wears the cross of the Legion of Honor on his desert Worlds at the influence of the Crusades which are in camel we are approaching one of the well classic was too scarce to bother us no speed limit and no cups another 200 miles done easily in 2 days we are now in a teg stronghold in a hugger we are guests at the court of King emly on fa and then we draw in the remote villages in the forest life goes on as it has for centuries after a few hours our presence ceases to disturb and we can watch the Placid communal life of the village the women are always at work here they are selling beans a staple of the local diet the men do the hunting or the fishing these people live almost entirely on frogs or rather on pad Pooles which are caught in traps made of local weeds and Vines the Trap are concealed among the reads along the edge of the lake and the unwear tadpole's blunder end there is little of the excitement of the chase the fisherman pulls his canoe along and picks up the Trap you and I could do it but it takes a good deal of skill to steer the canoes on his straight course the shape of the canoe is determined by the shape of the tree and many canoes have a strong tendency to travel in circles outside every Fisherman's Hut the days catch is set to dry in the sun CAD poles hold all the vitamins in the world the most powerful and good-looking fellows we saw in Africa were invariably men who lived on fish or tadpoles these well dried and crisp and an occasional full grown frog will make a delectable meal the barber shop is conveniently located on Main Street a special study will be made of your profile to choose the style of hairdress which suits your type best the hair is deposited in a neat little pile this is Congo's own soapless shave no blush no lather and the closest shave you ever had in your [Music] life different styles Prevail not only in hairdress but in the elaborate patterns tattooed by cutting the skin of the face and of the body many of these patterns are tribal in character and indicate the tribe and even the village of the owner of the tattooing but there is room for a lot of individual fancy in the exercise of personal taste notice that his teeth have been carefully filed to a point and the two front teeth knocked out she was camera shy and strongly objected to are taking her pictures our arrival in a village was usually the occasion for General rejoicing the drums would be quickly set up everyone would run into his Hut and return with their most elaborate [Music] costumes though these are not lampshades or baskets they are negro hats woven from local fiber the wearer of The Masks personify the chimpanzees of the forest and their grotesque Evolutions are supposed to imitate those of the chimpanzees not the plate lip the huge plug inserted in the upper [Music] lip by this time the orchestra has appropriated the platform on the [Music] sedan he is an individualist breaking all tradition with his solo dance on his [Music] knees at least one member of the audience thinks well of it after many days in the forest we are again in open Savannah Country we were in the only region in Africa where the African elephant popularly supposed to be incapable of taming and training has been domesticated and put to work it is wonderful to see the huge beasts haul easily enormous lugs cut in the forest which no Manpower could move we were seeing our first sausage trees bearing a last not the juicy lios which seem to hang in plenty from their branches but entirely inedible suit the landscape was at last typically African we were now in country where game was plentiful but it was seldom that we could unobserved come close enough to game for photography this busy warthog however apparently had not heard us coming we reached the dungu river which we had planned to cross on its Far Side was utterly uninhabited country said to be a wild animal Paradise but the river when we reached it proved to be impossible to cross below us on the sand banks on the edge of the river a veritable herd of hippopotamuses was asleep the haunting of the horn rudely awakened them and sent them rushing in momentary Panic to the the water they had obviously been seldom Disturbed but we could not get close to them without some precaution we succeeded however in watching unsuspected their family life mother rather anxious about baby father enjoying the sleep of the tired businessman ah baby seem safely in the water but there might be a strong undertone now I could see the reason for the good hippo mother's anxiety that floating log was a crocodile he was so well hidden that even the little waiting birds around him seemed unaware of his presence very slowly he was swimming towards the shore and we waited for hours for a chance to photograph him on land but nothing is more cautious or wey than a crocodile and he was taking his time at last he was coming ashore even then neither The Waiting Birds nor the marabu had noticed him but at the first click of the camera he turned and splashed back into the river and the Marabou in turn took flight with the sedan we explored many miles of the River Band we would come suddenly upon sand banks on which hippos were as thick as New Yorkers on eone Island beach there must have been many thousands of hippo in that River when we came unexpectedly too close to them it was wonderful to see them all get up stumble over each other in their hurry to get away to the water the water was often too shallow to hide them and there they would stand nervously snorting yawning splashing water we borrowed a Dugout canoe from the natives and fitted it with the outboard motor we had brought with us and in this somewhat strange vessel we explored the river further B ourselves in tribut ways of the dongu and saw many ciles but no transportation for the trucks across the river was to be found and nowhere could we find a Ford where we could hope that the trucks would get through under their own power without swamping the motors I was still anxious to get some pictures of crocodiles on land but even with the motor stopped and the men paddling cautiously we never could get nearer than a 100 ft without their waking up and dashing for the water at last we saw one who seemed unaware of us I signal to the the men to paddle straight towards him they did and when he suddenly woke up and started for the water he nearly leapt into the boat with us there was decidedly no chance of crossing the river under our own power the bottom everywhere was treacherous and muddy and the water after unexpected rains too high we had sent for the elephants whom we had seen at work on the edge of the forest we planned to abandon the sedan temporarily and to use elephants to take the two trucks across the river into the game country [Music] e [Music] I more than once we had been faced with turning back or going up steep 60° grades like this overloaded dripping with Muddy River water there they go up and over we pushed on through the high grass for many miles this was no good to our purpose we never would see game in this High Ground the ground was treacherous fited with hidden deep holes made by warthogs and harbu into which the trucks would unexpectedly fall to the axle and the bushes sometimes so high that it was impossible to see one's way ahead I expected a high grass belt of a few miles along the river but we cut our way through this way for the better part of the day however we were in game country all right the first first sight that greeted us when we came out was truly magnificent he was an old solitary ball elephant and the biggest one I have ever seen with good well- curved TS the sight of him gave promise of good country and we decided to stay right there our plan was to build a platform well concealed in a tree and for this purpose we had brought with us the necessary rails and Boards rope ladders and PES we had cups and blankets batteries for electric light cooking equipment and supplies even books to Wi away the hours and I plan to live in the tree until the animals would lose their fear of us the view from our tree toop home was of draking beauty herds of toi were our first visitors then elephants came out of the woods and then a rare sight on land a hippo far from water unless his home was in some undiscovered Lake nearer to us than the river Buffalo under the shade of a f [Music] an endless variety of antelope C graceful and timid a proud and Majestic water bu perhaps the most beautiful of the [Music] antilopes water Hogs the little flags at the ends of their tails as a signal to each other would run past in a nearby tree which seemed to produce succulent fruit a whole tribe of baboons would feed and chatter all day breaking the Silence of the Jungle with their vulgar noise in their loud barking we hope to see cheetah or at least some of the big cats and every day we plac fresh meat as bait under our trees at last and the most unexpected a leopard so rare a sight in daylight that this picture is perhaps unique every one of the animals of the Jungle seemed to sense his presence the vultures flew heavily from three to three the antelopes moved restlessly the clicking of the camera made the leopard uneasy his snarling startled the baboons and they started wildly chattering to pour from the [Music] tree but the noisy baboons have started a general alarm did you think a hippo could not [Music] run the leopard himself became uneasy at the general [Music] alarm once the vure swoop down for the [Music] leavings and again against its back glop of broing mountains the stage is deserted we had waited in vain for cheetah to come to our bait under the tree but a surprise awaited us when we had recrossed the river two cheetas were waiting for us we had often carried freshly killed antelopes on the platform of the sedan and the cheetah had been attracted by the smell of blood cheetah or the hunting leopard as he is often called is not a leopard he does not even belong to the cat family he's an offshoot of the dog family and has the blunt claws of the dog he is perhaps the fastest thing un leged and one of the most [Music] beautiful we have pushed on now beyond the mountains of the Moon Past Lake Victoria into British East Uganda in Kenya after snow and ice sand and rock we are now in mud we are back on so cold roads but often we make less Headway than we did through the jungle in a rainy season the tracks deeply plowed by the constant traffic of heavy oxcarts become rivers of mud in which trucks and cars sink to the axles deep in this mud heavy Boulders are embedded for hundreds of miles the cars are subjected to such a strain that it seems incredible that Machinery can stand it but nothing stops our Dependable Dodge equipment it is also the season of the local and we pass through several flights of them so thick at times that they literally obscure the Sun so thick on the ground that the wheels slip on their crushed [Applause] [Music] [Music] bodies [Music] our world lies through the great game Planes of Kenya and we see countless thousands of Wilder Bas and Antelope it is like driving through a huge Zoo without cages without sensors and without attendance at our approach the Wilder Bas to are thrown into Panic run run at all costs but as you don't know where to run you just run in [Music] [Applause] [Music] circles J their curiosity equal to ours let us approach within 150 ft [Music] we make no serious attempt to catch up with them they may not be low slung and they were designed before the days of streamlining but they are nevertheless capable of remarkable [Music] speed note the sea astonished Wilder Bas in the background and notice the birds clinging to the neck of the [Music] giraff yeah de BL we met thousands of them they are as common as the Wilder baster we meet immense herds of the ungainly topy they stretch for hundreds of yards on either side of our route but never will they divide to let us through no all those on the left must go to the right and it becomes a wild race they come from a mile away all out stretching their gallop under their bellies almost seem to be touching the ground to pass in front of the car [Music] no this is not the last but this one is the winds have not yet reached this region and the ground is bare after the brush fires which sweep this whole country every dry season the network of game Trails usually hidden out of the high grass is plainly visible the Temptation is irresistible to pursue Impalas and to watch them take off in huge leaps they often go as much as 40 ft in a single bound [Applause] [Music] the m is rough but fairly hard and we are traveling at 35 the Springs can't take [Music] it but not all things on the plains can be so light-heartedly chased here is a group of an entirely different character and they call for a great deal of caution they are so shortsighted as to be almost blind but their sense of hearing and smell are marvelously acute and they have a profound dislike of cars husband and wife we sought them at first but soon we see that they are father mother and Junior [Music] better keep moving and now at last when we almost despaired of seeing the king of beasts in his own kingdom here is our first [Applause] lion we move closer and the grph becomes alive around us we have moved into the middle of a pride of lions at their midday Siesta most of them sneak away but a big lioness does not when she circles around us [Music] threateningly Mila and Roy pay little attention to her they are looking for the big maale who must be hidden somewhere there he goes asking for no [Music] fight but in the fraction of a second they come close to death the lus is coming at us in full [Music] charge the shot has turned her over she's running away from us now she stumbles she falls it did several seconds before we move slowly towards her she's absolutely still Stone dead when Jack R's thir shot she was in her last leap less than 6 feet from Leela and Ro on the roof of the car he fired from the elbow because there was no time to take Aim from the shoulder the bullet has entered the center of her chest T her heart and lungs lodged in her kidneys with this bullet through the heart and lungs she still ran 65 y before roading over Dead We load her on the car to take her back to camp and skin her [Music] [Applause] and we are reaching now the end of our journey only 200 miles separate us now from the east coast in the Indian Ocean and we make short work of them in 87