Karamojo Safari

W. D. M. Bell

• Publisher: Red Kestrel Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781839740367
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Karamojo Safari, first published in 1949, is a classic story of elephant hunting, safaris, native life, and the wilds of Uganda and Kenya in the late 1800s, at a time when the region (then known as "Karamojo") was completely unknown to the outside world. Walter Bell (1880-1954), known as Karamojo Bell, was a Scottish adventurer, big game hunter in East Africa, soldier, decorated fighter pilot, sailor, writer, and painter.
Famous for being one of the most successful ivory hunters of his time, Bell was an advocate of the importance of shooting accuracy and shot placement with smaller calibre rifles, over the use of heavy large-bore rifles for big African game. He improved his shooting skills by careful dissection and study of the anatomy of the skulls of the elephants he shot. He even perfected the clean shooting of elephants from the extremely difficult position of being diagonally behind the target; this shot became known as the Bell Shot.
Although chiefly known for his exploits in Africa, Bell also traveled to North America and New Zealand, sailed windjammers, and saw service in South Africa during the Boer War, and flew in the Royal Flying Corps in East Africa, Greece and France during World War I.

 

CHAPTER 1

A LONG ironstone ridge stretched across the horizon. At one end of It appeared a square earthen-work fort, Its flagstaff jutting abruptly Into the sky. At the other end of the ridge, huddled In confusion, lay the native town, while away In the blue distance the lower slopes of Elgon lay shrouded in haze, its summit hooded by a deep layer of cloud. This was Mumias, the starting point of all safaris to the countries far to the north of Elgon.

At the time of which I write—some fifty years ago—Mumias was the farthest outpost in this direction of the British flag. There lay nothing between it and the distant Sudan and Abyssinia. None of the intervening tribes were in any way under any sort of control. Most of the natives had never seen a white man; none of them had any knowledge of money other than heads, brass wire, iron chain, and the like. All were nude people, scornful of clothes and wearers thereof. Living at perpetual war with their neighbors, they were expert spear fighters, and their contempt for firearms made them rather difficult to deal with. From argument to spear thrust was a matter of little moment to them, and they had successfully brought off some startling massacres of whole trading caravans by inborn treachery and native cunning.

All caravans to Karamojo, the general term for the countries north of the Turkwel River, went fully armed. For mutual protection a large number of petty traders would combine their forces and resources, appointing one man to be leader of the whole. By an intricate system of bookkeeping each shareholder was apportioned his share of the profits at the final division when each shareholder would have to settle up with the Indian and Arab Shylocks who had advanced the money necessary for fitting out. These Shylocks abounded in Mumias and seemed to do extremely well, their business system being soundly grounded on such a basis that if one client paid, ten others might die or default and there would still remain a profit.

Ivory was the aim and object of every enterprise, its acquisition, by fair means or foul, the goal of every safari. Formerly, slaves for the Coast and the Persian Gulf had absorbed all energies, but now the unreasonable and stern opposition of the British rule had rendered it almost impossible to carry on.

Once a trading safari had crossed the Turkwel River on its journey north, white rule ceased and black rule took over. Safaris were laws unto themselves. They had their own methods of penetration of hostile tribes, of disciplining their numerous followers, and of enjoying life to the utmost. Time was of no object whatever—two years, three years, what did it matter? They carried with them great numbers of women, acquired in slaving days mostly, and they still had great numbers of male slaves also. It is true that about this time they began to find it profitable to send their slaves out to enroll for labor with whites and to pouch their wages on payday, but nevertheless many remained for safari work. I have seen boys draw a year’s pay from me and carry it forthwith to their owner, who would graciously return one fifth of it as a present. I have had the owner of some of my boys come to camp and demand the wage money they had earned and, when the tally showed that they had spent some of it, storm and rave about killing them off and replacing them on my staff with other slaves. It seems extraordinary that these boys should have continued to carry their hard-earned wages to their masters when they could have freed themselves by applying at the nearest post. Yet it was so, and the reason would seem to lie in the fact that they were not really slaves as we understand the word. A “Tajir’s” household was really a community where everyone had a share of whatever might come along. In times of plenty the head shared everything with his followers; in times of adversity he had to support them somehow. They took his name when they became Mohammedan, and if they served him well, he would finally provide them with a wife.

At the commencement of the ivory trade great profits were made. The tusks were still lying about in the bush where they had lain for years. In many cases, of course, the annual grass fires had damaged the outer skin, but ivory is tough stuff. The price was then about eight shillings the pound at the base. The natives knew nothing about money and traded freely what they contemptuously called “elephant bones” for a few pennyworth of iron, brass, or copper wire or for a string of kauri shells or a handful of beads. At every camp in the bush all hands would be sent out to search the surrounding country for ivory. Frequently they were rewarded. Of course, all this was “dead” ivory, but it was so abundant that no one turned his thoughts to the living stores of the precious stuff. There was still the small annual crop of tusks from the native traps, but the amount was very small when compared with the pick-up of “dead” tusks.

This was a period of great excitement among all concerned. Profits to the “Tajirs” were immense, and they were buying new women right, left, and everywhere, their outcasts being eagerly absorbed by their women-hungry satellites. For the natives, too, it was a time of hectic doings. Every man had seen “bones” lying about somewhere, any favor from the girls could be had for the pretty beads, and how splendid they themselves looked in their brightly polished iron collars, made from the trade wire, and their iron chain belts. What a figure they cut at the dances, and no longer had they to give quite so many cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys for a wife.

Soon, however, this supply began to run dry. Prices soared. Where handfuls of beads sufficed formerly, calabashes now had to be filled therewith, and presently sheep and other livestock were demanded in exchange for the rapidly diminishing supply of “bones.” Finally cows became the only sure medium of producing the coveted tusks. The “dead” ivory was exhausted.

Hitherto relations had been friendly between trader and native. Peaceful and unexacting, the safaris had penetrated many tribes, welcomed for the beautiful trade-stuff they brought with them. But when cows became the medium of barter, relations became rapidly worse. To the blades of those parts a cow or heifer is what gold is to the whites, the great procure-all. But cattle are hard to come by for the trader. They are too dear to buy and no native will part with them for any consideration whatever. There is only one way of procuring them—superior force.

Always the safaris had carried firearms for self-defense. Occasionally they were tried on the numerous elephant met with on their wanderings, but with little result other than a great expenditure of ammunition. None of the natives had possession or knowledge of firearms, their first contact with them arising when tracking for the Swahili hunters. And it was very largely due to this contact that the idea started, and became commonly held by the natives, that these “fire tubes” simply made a big smoke and a rude report and that, although the bullet might certainly catch you and let the fire into you, thereby killing you, all you had to do was to duck when you saw the smoke and the bullet would pass harmlessly overhead. The prevalence of this idea caused much bloodshed in the ensuing raids, the natives showing an utter contempt for the Swahili gunmen, whereas they treated me and my firearms with the utmost respect and even awe. Where safaris of three hundred guns feared to go, we, with nothing more than a few old Sniders and my own personal rifles, came and went as we would.

So far, then, the native man had cognizance of three methods of acquiring the precious white “bones”: firstly, the pick-up of “dead” ivory; secondly, his own snaring and trapping of elephant; and thirdly, the blasting into elephant of enormous quantities of lead from the “Are tubes” of the traders. They stood in the above order of merit in his mind. With my arrival in the country, however, he was about to be compelled to rearrange his ideas on the efficiency of “fire tubes” when dealing with elephant. Hitherto he had seen the Swahili and Mnyamwezi hunters approach quite close to their victims, discharge heavy loads of powder and bullets—the latter well medicated by the medicine men and the former raising huge volumes of smoke—throw down their pieces of ordnance, and clear out as fast as their legs would carry them. On their cautious return to the scene nothing but perhaps a little smoke still hanging in the air would be found. From all this evidence the native had concluded that firearms were of little account.

With my advent, bearing as I did such modernities as .303, .275, and .256 rifles, it quickly dawned upon the native mind that this was a different show altogether. Here was something that made hardly any smoke; moreover, the bullet arrived as soon as the bang! Yet the hole in the fire tube was minute and the bullet long and burning bright. When an elephant was hit it simply collapsed, finished. What on earth could it be? Medicine! Magic! So the simple-minded savage summed up the situation. The brain shot struck them as especially uncanny, for no weapon they had ever heard of could penetrate the bony structure guarding an elephant’s brain. Spears or arrows could not do so. The only weapon of theirs that might have led them to surmise the presence of such a vulnerable spot in the head was the falling spear trap. Very rarely an elephant would be pierced to the brain by the heavily weighted and poisoned shaft and would then of course drop stone dead beneath it, but no one would be there to see the extraordinary occurrence and it would all be put down to the power of the poison.

To sum up the situation, I was the first white man to dwell among these people, the first man of any sort to devote himself exclusively to hunting elephant, and the first to demonstrate the extreme deadliness of modern firearms. To these facts I owe it that for years I roamed among these truculent tribes, flogged them when they were too naughty, fined them, made them return raided cattle sometimes, and prohibited the killing of women in their raids, this being considered the most unreasonable prohibition of them all. I was then some twenty years of age, but old warriors with half a century of raids and bloodshed behind them called me “father.” They used to be convulsed with laughter when I had any of them, perhaps a man double my own age, beaten in ceremonious style by the headman of the safari. They never resented these beatings and, indeed, they hardly felt them. A man would kill another man, they argued, but would only beat a child; therefore this crazy “red” man-child, as they thought me, evidently looks upon us, great hulking warriors, as his children. Were it otherwise, he would surely kill us with those infernally dangerous guns of his. These were the sort of thoughts that passed vaguely through their unanalytical minds, I think. At any rate, whenever I had someone beaten up for bathing in our drinking water or other misdemeanor, there would be roars of laughter, the victim himself laughing heartiest of the lot.

What a nervous organization was theirs! What heroic, or rather stoic, indifference to pain. They simply did not feel anything. A flogging that would prostrate, if it did not kill, a civilized white man left them entirely indifferent. Spear thrusts received in forays they supported through miles and miles of thirsty desert in spite of formidable loss of blood and entire lack of dressings or medical knowledge. A native with a flap of lung appearing and disappearing through a gaping wound under the arm walked quietly up to a white doctor and raised the arm for his inspection. One glance and: “Take him away! Nothing can be done. The lung is involved!” That man was about again in three weeks’ time.

Nature is kind to her not too clever children. So long as they remain truly hers, she endows them with splendid health, tremendous stamina, and intense endurance; dense hair, good eyes, perfect teeth set wide apart, and the digestive ability to extract all the nourishment their diet affords; thick skulls and a smooth thick hide heavily pigmented to filter the sun’s rays; a nervous system which defies everything, including description. It successfully withstands defeat in battle and consequent ruin, famine, loss of children, wives, husbands, homes, and wealth. Nothing prevents sleep, nothing disturbs digestion. And greatest gift of all—a sublime capacity for enjoying life: that is the inheritance of those who conform to her laws. For those who cannot do so, there is but one thing—death. Weakly or ailing children pass out. Deficiencies or defects developed in later life are detected and lead either to death in battle or to ostracism, which amounts to sterilization. Sometimes this latter very necessary social regulation is attained through ridicule alone. A wondrous thought! Where nudity rules, who dare bear about with them the results of excess or indulgence?

Now in my years of contact with savages I have always felt a sort of resentment against fate or whatever you like to call it. I was a quite average sort of person physically. I had average muscular development, could run, walk, jump a bit, and swim a bit. I had an all-absorbing passion for hunting elephant which amounted to mania and which enabled me to endure fatigue and discomforts that would otherwise have resulted in boredom. Yet I was always demonstrably inferior to my native companions in everything that counted for success in our joint enterprise. I felt the sun’s rays beating my very life down whilst they merely had a headache. Fatigue would seize upon me and sometimes bear me to the very depths of despondency, as when no further response to my mind’s urgent demand for just one more burst of speed to bring me on terms with some fleeing monster would come from my tired and aching body, while my sun-resisting companions would slide away ahead with consummate ease over the terrible terrain, every now and then to look back at me in surprise that I did not come on. Of this I am convinced: they drew from the sun or sky some energy denied my clothed body. They started off in the morning without food or even the thought thereof. At night they ate their frugal meal of native whole-meal flour with some elephant meat, and that seemed to energize their bodies for a further twenty-four hours, whereas I was often too tired to eat and sometimes too tired to sleep.

On the other hand, I possessed and carried to the hunt the result of centuries of intelligent application of nature’s laws to the problem of causing death. My rifle was a weapon streets ahead of anything the black man could produce, ingenious as he is in his use of poisons and traps, spears and arrows. And moreover, my mind was more capable of appreciating the necessity of introducing my tiny death-dealing bullet into such parts of the pachydermatous anatomy as to produce the desired result in the quickest and least fuss-producing manner. In the melee of a mix-up at close quarters in thick stuff with a numerous herd of elephant my mental equipment enabled me not only very largely to overcome fatigue and exhaustion but also to control those nervous impulses which become so insistent in such moments. I had a much more detached outlook at such moments than my companions. They became wildly excited, generally demanding of me the immediate shooting of the closer animals irrespective of size and with no forethought as to what the ultimate bag might become. Their distractions became so great as to completely outweigh the advantage their presence on the scene undoubtedly supplied, so that in time I came to leave them well behind and to approach alone or with Pyjalé only. We were on our way to his country now and I was looking forward to seeing him again.

This man was a great find. He was a fine specimen physically although not so tall or heavy as many of his tribesmen. But he had “savvy” equal to that of most whites. He never bothered me with excited comments at awkward moments nor did he do any dodging about or hurried retreating. Never did he suddenly shout “look out!” as some silently foreshortening elephant darkened the sky above us. Rather would he jab the imminent trunk with one of his spears, and the resulting roar would bring round my rifle to flatten the astonished aggressor with a touch to the brain. He was always there when you wanted him, always silent, and could track like a bloodhound. He always marked where each beast fell and could bring the ivory-cutting gang straight to the spot. A marvel was Pyjalé! A paragon!

CHAPTER 2

I DO not propose to deal with my first efforts in hunting. It will suffice to say that they were immediately successful. What I propose to describe is my fourth safari into Karamojo. All truculence and opposition had by then been overcome. The natives were all on the friendliest terms and elephant were still extremely numerous.

The fitting-out of a safari for a year’s sojourn in the wilderness away from all sources of supply requires careful preparation. Money in the form of coin or notes would purchase nothing. A millionaire might have starved for want of the necessary trade medium with which to purchase a cupful of flour. Therefore trade goods in the form of beads, brass and iron wire, iron chain, and the like had to be purchased. Donkeys had to be acquired to carry them. Saddles had to be made and dozens of other items required attention. Boys I already had: a loyal gang of ruffians prepared to follow me anywhere. Rifles and ammunition likewise I had in sufficient numbers.

Our preparations for the bush were somewhat different from those of the traders in ivory. Ours was a hunter’s safari, first and last, but at the same time it was necessary to provide some sort of transport for the precious tusks. Now elephant tusks are extremely awkward things to carry by pack animals. They are long and curved in several directions so that only the shorter ones may be handled by donkeys. The very long ones, weighing from 100 pounds upward, require porters for their carriage. Porters require food rations consisting of banana flour or Matama flour, and on waterless stretches they require to have drinking water laid down in canvas bags at convenient distances. Each man carries a tusk weighing say 115 pounds, a rifle with eleven pounds of ammunition, a pound or two of grilled elephant meat, his own little personal trinkets such as a snuff horn, some mysterious objects in the way of “Dawa” (medicine), and a sleeping mat. All these are stuffed into the hollow end of the tusk, the whole thing weighing from 120 pounds up to 170 or more pounds in the case of very large tusks. Of course they are picked men, these tusk carriers. They get double rations and are enormously proud of their job. The best are from the Mnyamwezi tribe. They carry on the shoulder and acquire great horny pads from the pressure of their almost red-hot burdens. They work themselves elaborately colored bead garments and mount ostrich feathers and giraffe manes, lion manes, and leopard skins all over themselves. Whenever a very large tusk comes to camp, there is a rush to secure it; the bigger and heavier it is, the more they like it.

These men are of the greatest value to the safari and must be carefully looked after. They must have regular rations of some sort of grain besides unlimited meat. Salt must be carried for them, tentage must be provided, and if mosquitoes are bad, each man must have a net. Then their hammered copper cooking pots, all their paraphernalia and that of their wives has to be carried by donkeys, besides flour rations for months away from food centers, for often the best elephant country lies two or three hundred miles from a place where food may be traded for glass beads and iron, brass, and copper wire.

The native donkey is a grand little animal in his own dry country and will cheerfully carry his load day after day on nothing but what he can pick up in the few hours of daylight left after reaching camp. At night, of course, the poor fellows have to be rounded into a thorn zeriba which always occupied the center of the camp. Surrounded as it was by the tents and camp fires, it helped to prevent a stampede or the entry of hungry carnivora.

The donkey strength used to be about one hundre...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• AUTHOR’S NOTE
• PROLOGUE
• CHAPTER 1
• CHAPTER 2
• CHAPTER 3
• CHAPTER 4
• CHAPTER 5
• CHAPTER 6
• CHAPTER 7
• CHAPTER 8
• CHAPTER 9
• CHAPTER 10
• CHAPTER 11
• CHAPTER 12
• CHAPTER 13
• CHAPTER 14
• CHAPTER 15
• CHAPTER 16
• CHAPTER 17
• CHAPTER 18
• CHAPTER 19
• CHAPTER 20
• CHAPTER 21
• APPENDIX - NOTES ON BIG GAME SHOOTING
• MAPS