Читать книгу From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to North - Ewart Scott Grogan - Страница 14

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At last, on November 28th, I left Chiromo and started up the river once more in the good ship Scott, and again realized the feelings of a pea on a drum. Fortunately the skipper was so ill with fever that we took charge of the boat ourselves, and thus contrived to have something to eat.

We had lost six valuable weeks through our kit having been put on the wrong boat at Beira, and as Mohun's expedition had gone on in front we lost eventually six weeks more, through the transport on the Tanganyika plateau being temporarily demoralized. Thus the carelessness of our agent delayed us in all three months. Such is African travel. I no longer fret when my train is ten minutes late. Even after this wait some of our things never turned up at all. Mr. Commissioner Alfred Sharpe, C.B., the greatest and most reticent of African Nimrods, was on board, but we tried in vain to induce him to tell us some of his experiences. However, he gave me a piece of advice that afterwards stood me in good stead: that, when charged by an elephant, the safest course was to remain quite still till the brute was within four yards, and then to blaze in his face. This almost invariably turns the brute or makes him swerve; my experience has certainly proved its efficacy. Mr. Sharpe has the reputation of being the hardest and most daring shikari who ever followed an elephant; and many amusing tales are current of how in the excitement of the chase he would charge cow elephants to make them get out of his way, in order that he might obtain his shot at the leading bull. In view of the success that attends many of the imaginative literary efforts of missionaries and week-end tourists on the subject of Africa, it is a great pity that the few men like Alfred Sharpe and Lawley of Beira railway fame, who have had gigantic experience of Africa past and present, resolutely refuse to record their invaluable data in a book. Sir Harry Johnston and Selous have set an admirable example, and if a few more men of their stamp would write, much of the misleading balderdash that now passes current as representing the Dark Continent would be happily crushed out of existence.