Читать книгу A Camera Actress in the Wilds of Togoland - Meg Gehrts - Страница 7

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Actresses who, like myself, specialise in cinema productions, frequently find themselves "up against" all sorts of queer propositions of a business character; and we are not, therefore, easily surprised out of that orthodox professional calm, which we all try, more or less successfully, to cultivate.

When, however, it was suggested to me, early last summer, that I should take a trip into the far interior of Africa, in a district where no white woman had ever been before, in order to play "leading lady" in a series of dramas of native life, I confess to having been for once completely taken aback.

Nor did even the fact that the proposed expedition was being financed and personally conducted by Major Hans Schomburgk, F.R.G.S., the well-known African explorer and hunter, completely reassure me. I hesitated long. But eventually the prospect of shaking the dust of cities from my feet for awhile, and living the (very much) simple life amongst unspoilt children of nature in altogether novel surroundings, tempted me into acquiescence; and—greatly against the advice of my relatives and friends—I "took on" the job.

Largely I was influenced in my decision by the fact of my having known Major Schomburgk for some time previously, for we are both natives of Hamburg.

Although not perhaps so well known in England—outside of scientific circles—as he is in Germany, he can nevertheless, if he wishes to, truthfully lay claim to be one of the most successful African explorers and big-game hunters now living; and as his name will figure pretty prominently in the pages of this book, a brief description of him and his work may not be out of place.

Thirty-three years of age, of medium stature and somewhat slim build, he is nevertheless endowed with great physical strength. The last sixteen years of his life—since he was a lad of seventeen, that is to say—have been spent almost entirely in Africa, hunting, fighting, and exploring.

Speaking English like a native, he served in the Natal Mounted Police, and in the last Boer War, for which he has the medal, with four clasps. As a hunter, it is no exaggeration to say that his prowess is famed throughout Africa. No fewer than sixty-three full-grown elephants have fallen to his rifle, and he once bagged four big tuskers in four shots—two rights and two lefts.

Twice he has crossed Africa. His most adventurous trip—one of five years' duration—was from the Victoria Falls to Angola, Portuguese West Africa, thence back through the Congo Free State, Northern Rhodesia, and German East Africa, coming out eventually at Dar es Salam, near Zanzibar. During the whole of that time he never saw a railway, or slept in a stone house. For an entire year he was exploring the source of the Zambesi, in the Walunde country, which had not been previously visited by white people; and it was during this expedition that he trapped, and brought to Europe alive, a specimen of the East African elephant, a feat that had been frequently attempted before, but never successfully performed.

He was, too, the first white man to secure alive specimens of the rare pygmy hippopotamus, an animal that in its native state is so exceedingly scarce and shy that its very existence even was denied up till comparatively recently by most African hunters and explorers.

Major Schomburgk knew better, however, for he had actually seen one of the miniature creatures during an early trip into the West African hinterland; and in 1911, after infinite difficulty, and some danger, he succeeded in trapping no fewer than five living specimens, and, what is more to the point, conveying them from the interior down to the sea-coast, whence they were safely shipped to Europe.

Two of these are now in the London "Zoo"—one specimen having been presented by the Duke of Bedford, who bought it from Mr. Carl Hagenbeck, for whom Major Schomburgk was acting; the other three are in the New York Zoological Gardens. All five "pygmys," I may mention, were shown to the Kaiser, who was greatly interested in the curious little beasts, and warmly congratulated their captor on his success.

In addition to those mentioned above, Major Schomburgk has also discovered and named many hitherto unknown species of African fauna, including a rare new buffalo, the Bubalus Schomburgki.

Nor was this the first cinema expedition that he had organised and led into the West African hinterland. Scarcely three weeks prior to the date when he first approached me with an offer to go out to Togo as leading (and only) lady, he had returned home from conducting a similar enterprise into the hinterlands of Liberia and Togo. But that one was not a success; one reason being, he informed me, that the negative stock he took out was not the right kind for the tropics. Then, too, his camera man proved a failure.

The net result was that the money invested in financing the expedition was practically all lost. This time he hoped, profiting by experience, to attain to far better results, and, after I had signed my contract, he infected me with his enthusiasm, so that I grew quite learned—in theory—about celluloid ribbon, reels, and so forth.

I may say at once that we succeeded even beyond our expectations. In fact, it has been admitted since by experts, that the collection of films we brought back, dramatic, ethnographic, and anthropologic, were the finest that ever came out of the tropics. I can say this without egotism, and even without appearing unduly to flatter Major Schomburgk, since the pictures were not taken by either of us, but by his camera man, Mr. James Hodgson. Of course, we both of us acted in the dramatic films, but that is another matter.

It was on August 26th, following the necessary preliminary preparations in London, that we sailed from Dover in the "good ship"—I believe that is the accepted nautical term—Henny Woermamm, bound for Lome, which is the capital and port of Togo, a tiny German protectorate wedged in between the Gold Coast Colony on the west and Dahomey on the east.

The coast-line is only thirty-two miles long, but inland the country widens out a lot, and it was for this "hinterland"—largely unknown and uncharted—that we were bound.

I must confess to a certain feeling of pleasurable excitement—what girl would not experience such?—on the occasion of this first start on what will in all probability always stand out in memory's record as the longest and most adventurous journey of my life.

Our prime business was, of course, to film pictures, and we set to work promptly. Directly we got on board the tender, we commenced photographing the first scene in a drama entitled Odd Man Out, the scenario of which had already been put together in London, and concerning the plot of which I shall have more to say presently.

Naturally our business excited the curiosity of the other passengers, and as the tug drew near to the great liner, I could see that the rails of the decks nearest to us were lined with row on row of the passengers who had joined the vessel at Hamburg, all eagerly intent on watching us and our doings; and as we stepped on board, all eyes were directed at us, and many smiled a kindly greeting. As for me, however, during those first few hours my one wish was to be alone, to arrange my cabin, unpack my belongings, and generally make my surroundings as comfortable and homelike as possible.

It is the fashion of old West African travellers to protest that the pleasures and amenities of the voyage do not really begin until Madeira is passed, but as far as I was concerned I had quite settled down to life on board after our first day at sea. We played the usual ship's games, sang, talked, and I am afraid that most of us, old as well as young, married and single, flirted a little bit. I soon gathered round me quite a small circle of friends. They were mostly men friends, but this was not exactly my fault. An actress is an actress. Que voulez-vous?

And here I feel that I must say how greatly I appreciated the kindness and attention I received during the voyage from the ship's officers. The captain, a most fatherly old gentleman, the oldest officer and the commodore of the fleet of mail steamers to which the Henny Woermamm belongs, was unceasing in his efforts to do all he could for my comfort and convenience. The food, too, was excellent, and the whole surroundings most comfortable, not to say luxurious; equal, in fact, to those of any first-class hotel.

Curious how one gets used to the throbbing of the engines on board ship, and the vibration of the propeller. When they suddenly ceased, very early one morning, I was wide awake immediately. For a few moments I lay quite still, wondering lazily what was the matter. Then it suddenly flashed upon my mind that we must be at Madeira, and all desire for further sleep promptly vanished. I jumped up, peeped out of my port-hole, saw at once that it was even as I had surmised, and at once I proceeded to dress and hurry on deck.

It was Sunday morning. Before my eyes lay Madeira. Never in all my life had I seen anything one-half so beautiful. I was quite taken aback by the ethereal loveliness of the picture, and could only stand still and gaze at it in speechless admiration.

I was almost the first on deck, and so I had it all to myself for a while, and I could drink in the beauty of it, and enjoy it at my leisure. But soon the other passengers came pouring up from below in ever increasing numbers, and all became bustle, noise, and animation. Native boys swam out and round the ship in shoals, shouting, jabbering, and gesticulating, and diving for pennies which were thrown to them by the passengers.

After breakfast we went ashore, hired a motor-car, and drove up the mountain side to a spot whence a magnificent view is obtained of the whole of the bay, harbour, and town. The road up is exceedingly steep, and it was, take it altogether, the most exciting motor ride I ever experienced. I was, in fact, afraid at times that the car would slip backwards.

But if the ride up was exciting, it was nothing by comparison with the ride down. This return journey is made by means of queer-looking native sleighs over a smooth cobble-paved, but exceedingly steep road. Each of these sleighs will accommodate two passengers, and is manipulated by a couple of natives, who stand bolt upright on the elongated runners that project behind, and guide its course with their feet.

It is very like tobogganing, minus the snow and ice, and most of the passengers made light of it, but to my mind it was a rather terrifying and not altogether pleasant experience; for the road is inclined in places at an angle of something like ninety degrees, there are many sharp curves, and the crazy little vehicles fly downwards with the rapidity of lightning. Nevertheless, so skilful are the natives that I was assured that accidents are practically unknown.

After our ride our party went together into the town, and I found it very interesting to watch the passengers busily engaged in buying curios, and specimens of native work, to take home to their friends. Everybody haggled to get the price as low as possible; and yet afterwards, when they got back on board ship, everybody came to the conclusion that they had been "had."

We utilised, too, our short stay on shore to film yet another scene in the Odd Man Out drama, this being taken in the gardens amidst beautiful tropical vegetation; and one of the curious island sledges, drawn by oxen, was also introduced. In fact, I may say here that we hardly ever missed a suitable opportunity throughout the voyage to get local colour for this our first cinema play, the early scenes in which are concerned with a young white woman going out to join her husband in the wilds of Central Africa. When later on, for instance, we passed a mail steamer in mid-ocean, the camera was got ready, and I was set to pose and act on deck, with the big ship flitting past in the background as a setting. We had some gorgeous sunsets, too, and these also we pressed into our service, so to speak.

The "Blue Peter" flying from the masthead is the signal for everybody to hurry on board, and soon the anchor is up, the screw starts to revolve, and we resume our journey. Between Madeira and Las Palmas we enjoyed two of the lovely sunsets mentioned above. I never saw anything to equal them, and certainly I could never have imagined anything half so beautiful. If a painter could have painted them exactly true to nature, I am quite sure that he would have been laughed at as a futurist, or something artistically as dreadful; because no one, who had not seen the original, would have believed in the reality of his vivid colour effects.

On the morning of September 1st we passed Teneriffe, but only stopped there for quite a short while to put off a few passengers. At noon we anchored at Las Palmas, where we had a long wait. A party of us went ashore, and visited the cathedral and the few other "sights" that the place boasts of.

Then we hired a motor-car for a drive up to the Hotel Monte. At least, the chauffeur who drove us called his conveyance a motor-car, but it was the awfullest type of its kind I ever came across. The bumping was terrific, but looking over and under to try to ascertain the reason I discovered to my amazement that one of the wheels was practically destitute of any vestige of a tyre. About every ten minutes, too, we had to stop dead, because the motor got hot, and there was no water available to cool it.

At last, after a thorough shaking-up, the worst I think I ever had in my life, we arrived at the hotel, and had our tea. The view from the summit made amends in part for the disagreeableness of the drive. It was superb. It struck me as being very strange, however, that the one side of the mountain is quite bleak and bare, whilst the other is beautifully green and wooded.

In Las Palmas I saw for the first time women washing the family linen at the sides of the roads in the streams that flow downwards through pebble and shingle. The Las Palmas roads, by the way, are atrocious; but the strongly built mail-coaches, each drawn by six mules, make light of their unevennesses.

At five o'clock we paid a visit to S.M.S. Bremen, which lay in the harbour near the Henny Woermamm. Three officers belonging to her had accompanied us as far as Las Palmas, and we had been great friends with them, and now they invited us to come on board their vessel for a farewell visit. Champagne was produced, and I took a couple of glasses and found they did me good, the heat being very great, and the ride up to the Hotel Monte and back dreadfully dry and dusty.

Our captain had fixed six o'clock as the hour of departure, but we did not actually start until eleven. The ship seemed almost unnaturally quiet now that the naval officers had left her, for they were always bright and jolly, and I must confess that I had got to like "my little boys in blue," as I had christened them, very much indeed. However, I am naturally light-hearted, so I quickly banished sadness, consoling myself with the reflection that there are, after all, heaps of nice men in the world.

At length Lome hove in sight, and while I was being lowered, together with three other passengers, into the boat that was to take us ashore, the band struck up a song that was pretty popular amongst the passengers on board, "Do you think that I love you because I have danced with you?" and on deck stood an army lieutenant who was going to join his regiment in Kamerun, and with whom I had often danced. I was convulsed with laughter, because I knew that it was all his work. After this ditty came "The Girl I Left Behind Me," and looking back from the boat I saw my dear old captain, and an elderly civilian gentleman who had paid me a good deal of attention, standing on deck with a huge bath towel between them, on which they were pretending to dry their tears. It was exceedingly comical.

Landing at Lome is not at all a simple matter. First one has to be lowered into the boat from the deck of the steamer in what is called a "mammy chair"—mammy being a coast term for woman. It is a sort of wooden skip, something like one of the old-fashioned swing-boats one sees at village fairs.

The passage from ship to shore is exciting, and in bad weather it is even considered dangerous, and there is considerable surf; but the sea happened fortunately to be calm when we got there. Otherwise our arrival was inopportune. On the day before a member of the tiny European colony there had died of yellow fever, and all the flags were at half-mast.

This rather cast a damper over our spirits, although nothing could exceed the kindness and courtesy shown us by the Togo officials, from the highest to the lowest. The custom-house officers hurried over the necessary formalities as quickly as possible; and although the governor, H.H. the Duke of Mecklenburg, was unable to receive us, being engaged with Sir Hugh Clifford, Governor of the Gold Coast Colony, who had come to pay him an official visit, he had kindly arranged quarters for us, and done everything in his power to welcome us and make us comfortable.

His adjutant, Lieutenant von Rentzel, who was in hospital at the time, put his house and servants at the disposal of our party, and we had a jolly dinner party there that night, at which I played the part of hostess. He also lent me personally a rickshaw, and a boy to draw it, so that I might be able to see what there was to see in and about the town with the minimum of fatigue and inconvenience.

However, I had not much time to devote to sight-seeing, for very early on the morning after our arrival we set out to journey up country to a place called Atakpame, distant about 110 miles from Lome. A railway runs so far; and at the rail-head civilisation may be said to come abruptly to an end.