EAST AFRICAN HUNTING.• THS author of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo
is assured of a welcome for whatever be cares to write which is accorded to few books of big-game shooting. These are too often a dull chronicle of successes and misses, interesting only to the writer after the fashion of a private diary. But Colonel Patterson goes to the heart of the wilds, being a shikari of the great old school, and like all true adventurers he has not to seek for adventures. In his new book, In the Grip of the Nyika, we get no yarns so blood-curdling as those of the lions that terrorised the railway. But we have a record of journeys into the distant northern parts of the East Africa Protectorate, ill-fated journeys, where the wilds seemed to conspire to prevent return, and, frustrated in their plot, took deadly toll of the travellers. The author never indulges in heroics or in purple patches. He writes simply and accurately, leaving the bald narrative to be its own adornment. The result justifies him, for these plain stories of his have the vividness of complete reality. Moreover, we get an impression of the writer, given all unconsciously, which convinces us that he ranks with the best of the old hunters. The wonderful gamelands of East Africa are fortunate in the possession of a warden who is at once wise and bold.
The Northern Game Reserve is about as large as Scotland and Wales put together. Its southern boundary is roughly the Guaso Nyiro River, which takes a zigzag course from the north of Mount Kenya till it disappears in the great Lorian Swamp. The western boundary seems to be anywhere you please, but we may note that Lakes Baringo and Sugota, and a considerable part of Lake Rudolf, are within the Reserve. Colonel Patterson was sent by the Government to find an eastern boundary, somewhere about the thirty-eighth degree East longitude. This boundary he found, running north from the Guaso Nyiro to the mountainous district of Marsabit. He meant to complete the northern side, and return by way of Rudolf and the heart of the Reserve ; but the Nyika—the East African name for the wilds—proved too strong for him. The journey did not lack incident. Those uneasy and most grossly corporeal spirits of the bush, rhinos, came out of the void at all hours and confused the travellers. He was often on the verge of being lost, and be had plenty of adventures with his old friends the lions. Sitting out at night over a kill was one of his favourite pastimes, and lie gives us graphic pictures of the eeriness and tension of the business. The book is so full of good animal stories that it is hard to select ; but there is one incident of a stockade built close to a water- hole, where all night long he watched the wild things of the
• (1) In the Grip of the Nyika. By Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Patterson, D.S.O. Landon: Macmillan and Co. [7s. (id. net.)— (2) The Land of the Lion. By W. S. Radiator& London: W.$eiHsnaHW. [123. 6d. not.) bush coming to drink, which gives us a curious sense of having stolen a march on the secrets of Nature. Once too—also at night—he had the felicity of looking down on sixteen rhinos fighting for precedence at a drinking-place. The party were charged, not by one buffalo, but by a whole herd, and only the lucky killing of two of the bulls saved them. They found a rogue-elephant, who killed Colonel Patterson's Arab pony, and very nearly killed half the expedition as well. Some extraordinarily good shooting was done by all the hunters, notably by the courageous lady, Mrs. B--, and good shooting was strictly necessary. A journey to the Northern Game Reserve is not an enterprise for duffers to undertake if they wish to return again.
The end of the expedition was tragic, and but for the courage of the survivors would have been a wholesale tragedy. Up in the rocky wilds on the way to Marsabit the other white man of the party died suddenly. Immediately after the natives mutinied, and were quelled with difficulty. Misfortune suc- ceeded misfortune, not the least of which was the serious illness of the leader. And all the while he had the anxious knowledge that his death would leave a lady unprotected in the midst of savages many hundred miles from the nearest white man. How the expedition got safely home is as thrilling a travel-story as we have read for long. As we have said, the book gives us an impression of a most gallant and capable leader ; and not less splendid was the heroism of the lady, Mrs. B—, who, suffering from a heavy bereavement, played, in spite of sorrow and illness, a part which few men could have equalled.
As a writer Mr. Rainsford is as unlike Colonel Patterson as possible. He is picturesque and impressionable, and much given to theorising. He writes as an American advising future American hunters, and he therefore condescends to the minutest details about equipment. For the rest, we have found him a very cheerful and agreeable companion, but we wish that he had made his book a little more accurate. We pass over his frequent misquotations, for he explains that his memory is bad, though we should have thought it better not to quote at all than to pervert some of the most familiar lines in the English language. But the constant inaccuracy in the use of proper names is a serious blemish in a book which is partly meant as a practical guide. Just when East African spelling was getting pretty well settled, Mr. Rainsford chooses to plunge it into anarchy. Even so commonly used a word as " safari " figures as " sefari " in his pages. We had thought that the spelling " Masai " had been decided by scholars like Mr. Hollis, but to Mr. Rainsford it is always " Massai." The name of a well-known London firm appears as " Edgerton" and " Edgington" within a few pages. The Indian " shikari " becomes " shakeri," which sounds like a new kind of religion. He misspells well-known names like those of Sir Harry Johnston and Mr. Lionel Decle. " Tanganyika " becomes " Tanganeka," and the " bartebeeste " masquerades as " hartebeest," which looks to our eyes very comic. The unfortunate roan antelope is once rightly spelt, but he generally appears as " rhone." Further, the writer seems to imagine that all settlers from South Africa are "Boers," and be has been hoaxed about some of the concessions which arouse his wrath. It is a pity a little more care was not used, for The Land of the Lion is a good book, and it is written in an admirable spirit of good comradeship and good sense. Mr. Rainsford recounts several bunting trips, one of which lay in the country to the north of Kenya which Colonel Patterson's expedition traversed. He describes wild Nature with much power and feeling, and the hunting adventures are excellently told. We like his theory of the decline and fall of the rhinoceros. In the far-off Miocene days, when he had to keep upsides with the sawtooth tiger and the cave bear, his brain, as we know from fossil skulls, was finely developed. But the struggle for existence in time became too easy ; his life, what with his thick hide and great size, became too pleasant ; so his brain grew atrophied, and he sunk to the insane creature we know to-day. Mr. Rainsford is properly appreciative of missionary work ; and his comments on East African politics are worthy of serious attention. In especial we would commend his views on the native question. Why is it, we often wonder, that, though all sane men seem agreed on general lines of policy, there is so little unanimity in practice ?
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