SPORT AND TRAVEL IN AFRICA.
A Game Ranger's Notebook. By A. Blayney Percival. Edited by E. D. Cuming. (Nisbet. 18s.) The African Elephant and its Hunters. By Denis D. LyelL (Heath Cranton. 10s. 6d.) In the Footsteps of Livingstone. Being the Diaries and Travel Notes made by Alfred Dolman. Edited by John Irving. (Lane. 12s. 6d.) MR. BLAYNEY PERCIVAL has laid a double debt on those who like to read about African big game. First of all, he has published, with the help of Mr. E. D. Cuming, the results of his experience as game ranger in the country behind Nairobi, and next he has directed the footsteps of Mr. Martin Johnson on a quest for film pictures of the wild beasts. Both volumes are enriched with the most wonderful photographs, and each photographer has helped out the other ; the two books play into each other's hand. Mr. Percival writes of lions, leopards, elephants, rhino and the lesser game with an expert's knowledge gained in twenty years' study ; Mr. Johnson tells the amazing story of how he, with his wife and her father (aged seventy), tumbled out into the game reserve to get pictures of lions, elephants and the rest—preferably in the act of charging. Mr. Percival and other experts told them where to go and, presumably, what not to do ; but they went there and did it. None of the three could shoot when they began, and it appears that even a practised shot like Mr. Percival missed clean the first lion he fired at ; but the Johnson party all shot at big game from short ranges from the first, and none of them was damaged, though probably they risked it even more than they knew—and they could not help knowing a good deal. They trekked very largely in Ford cars. Their first instructor was a professional hunter, who provided venison for natives in Nairobi and used a Ford car to run down antelope on the plains. Their book is likely to tempt many others to follow their example, and Mr.. Johnson may yet have a good deal to answer for. But if Mr. Percival's book is carried—as it probably should be— for the big game shot's vade mecum, even the amateur may avoid being killed. Mr. Percival deals with game at large,
• but specializes on the lion. One is glad to know that appear- ances are not deceptive and that lions are fundamentally good ; only their profession makes them cross. Mr. Percival - reared three till the biggest weighed- twelve stone, and they Were charming companions who filled his home with welcome. Unfortunately, when a, touring Bishop called, and the lions came out to greet him, the Bishop, misunderstanding, with- drew, and the lions, anxious to play with a new friend, followed in what became a pursuit of gaitered legs. After that they were sent away.
Mr. Lyell's book is devoted entirely to the elephant, and it also contains photographs of interest, especially those which show trees broken by elephants wishing to reach the top boughs. It tells all that can be desired about armament, and the exact place to aim at in the beast, and there is much detail concerning the quality of ivory and its prices. But this book is not so sympathetic a work as the other two, written by people who manifestly had sooner watch most animals than kill them. Mr. Lyell agrees with Mr. Percival in his preference for a light rifle, relying on accuracy in placing the shot rather than on a heavy bullet.
Mr. Stevens is not in the least an expert on African sport or travel, but simply a gentleman who, after a Public School and University career, went East for awhile as a barrister, and then tried Africa and liked it : first the Gold Coast, then Johannesburg, and then, for a much longer period, British East Africa. He tells us a good deal about Nairobi and its surroundings in the days before the War and during the War, and he appears to have escaped the experience of shooting a lion, which, to judge by these books, would seem a unique case in that country. On the other hand, he nmst have played cricket over a more widely distributed geographical area than almost any man on record. He ended his African career as Mayor of. Nairobi in 1920. Mr. Johnson's book shows us what Nairobi looks like, and tells us that it has electric light, and that in its well-kept streets natives " with clay-daubed hair and garment consisting of a single skin " may be seen riding a bicycle.
That is the Africa of to-day. Mr. Lane publishes a book which brings back the sense of change since Livingstone's time. Alfred Dolman was a wealthy young man who was sent on a voyage to South Africa in 1843 when he was sixteen, and made the acquaintance of a real traveller, H. H. Methuen, and the rest of his life was spent in travel. In 1848, aged twenty-one, he made his third voyage to the Cape, and undertook the journey described in the diary here printed. It carried him 1,500 miles into the interior and brought him acquainted with Livingstone's wife and her father, the missionary, Dr. Moffat. In 1850 he set out again from England, this time with the definite intention of joining Livingstone in the centre of what was then unknown Africa. At the end of 1851 he was killed north of Lake Ngami, possibly by treachery, possibly by lions : at all events lions had the body. Ilis diaries are not in themselves of any great interest, yet they help to realise days, still within living memory, when the voyage in a sailing ship was no small part of the whole adventure. Interest centres chiefly in the sketches by him, here reproduced, for Dolman was an artist of talent. Photography can give much, but it cannot give feeling ; no photograph could render, as does one of these drawings, the loneliness of the Karroo. On the other hand, Dolman's pen-and-ink impressions of lions moving about are a poor thing compared, say, with Mr. Percival's photograph of a giraffe in the act of drinking. Mr. Percival himself and Mr. Johnson have both written words which contribute to our understanding of that strange attitude. At no other time is the giraffe so liable to surprise by his enemy the lion, and his hindquarters musts be tense under him for a leap away. Another thing is clear. Even three-quarters of a century ago Dolman never saw game so plentiful and so various as Mr. Johnson found it a year or two back in the Kenya game reserve. And it is pleasant to think that this wonderful treasure-house of living natural history is watched by such a warden as Mr. Percival.
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