Far-Out Safari

The Number-one Boy, Manolo, was suddenly a whirling, twisting, leaping demon. He was wearing a gray baboonhide cloak and a pair of bushbuck horns on his head. War rattles clanked on his piston-pounding legs and he flourished a wildebeest-tail fly whisk, embroidered with magic beads. He had clamped a war whistle between his teeth, and occasionally blew piercing blasts. Another chap--the cook, I think--was blowing mightily on a kudu horn. Another--perhaps the room boy?--was dressed in leopardskin and rattles, and was tumbling madly on the ground. Africans of all shapes and sizes were leaping and stamping to as wicked a multiple drumbeat as ever announced the first serving of boiled missionary.

It seems now that I, wearing bare feet and a red kikoi, a kind of African sarong, was dancing as well, and the frug had nothing on what I was performing in the way of wiggle and stomp. Now the man with the baboonskin and the rattles and the horns was dusting out the spirits with his whisk, and suddenly I was sitting cross-legged under a female nyalaskin with a small black boy, a token human sacrifice, eating some nauseous mess of mealie meal and guinea fowl, and the wickedly horned gentleman was brushing the evil spirits off me.

The chanting grew stronger, the dancers leaped higher, the drums beat louder, the spirits were all about us, and then the head witch doctor bit me on the neck to let the Devil out. I was really not expecting to be gnawed.

Satan now properly exorcised, I continued to sit under the hide with the small boy while the witch doctor rolled the bones, and the dark chorus chanted response to his invocation. The bones were composed of knucklebones of leopard, lion and wart hog; crocodile toe bones, tortoise shells, cowrie shells and old coins.

This was kush-kush, a kind of Black Mass with which one begins a safari in Portuguese East Africa--a divination of what's to come. They feel very strongly about kush-kush out there, and witch doctors do a thriving business, rather like psychiatrists back home.

It appeared from the prognosis that we would see lions, but would not shoot one, because the major lions in the area were the ancestors of one Faif Medica, a poacher-turned-warden, and a considerable kush-kush man himself. We would see many buffalos, and would shoot two at once. It was not the rainy season, but heavy rains would fall. We would find honey. We must expect to see many poacher-crippled animals. But we would have enormous success on safari--at first--and then the unseasonable rains would halt us, because the frogs had told the kush-kush man so.

Then the kush-kusher walloped me over the skull with his whisk and everybody carried me around the room in a thunder of drums, to a tremendous conga lurch, and it was announced that my name was Baas Leopard. (I had been chewed up by a leopard two years ago, and my arm was still in a sling when I came to Mozambique the first time.) My hunting partners were Ben Wright, president of This Week, and Walker Stone, editor in chief of Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance. They thought all this mumbo jumbo mildly amusing.

The first thing Wright shot was a one-eyed wart hog. The next victim was a very long-horned greater kudu who had been crippled in a poaching snare. The next was a very sick sable antelope bull, on his last legs from an old arrow wound. All were fine trophies.

Wright shot a buffalo bull, and nailed it with the first bullet. It fell, but appeared to get up, and I checked in with the collaboration bullet, because night was falling and you don't chase wounded Cape buffalos after dark.

Two dead buffalo bulls lay on the ground. Another had come swiftly back and appeared to be the first one getting up and heading for thorn. I had shot the carbon copy.

Stone and Wright shot most of the major trophies in a couple of days, and I hauled in near-record kudu and nyala, as an afterthought. Wright collected an unlikely, accidental leopard, possibly in honor of me and my new name.

After three days the heavens wept and it rained for a solid week. I finally had a word with my gunbearer, Luis, also a kush-kush practitioner of repute, and he evidently stopped the rains. The moon filled and the weather was lovely and the shooting was fine. We found the honey, all right; a bee stung me between the eyes and I couldn't see for three days.

Stone wore "lucky beans" in his hat, and didn't get stung. He collected four gallons of honey, and left some for the honey guide, the bird which leads you to the hive. If you don't leave honey for the guide, next time out he leads you to a snake. I believe it.

I do not say that you need the services of a witch doctor and a kush-kush ceremony to go hunting in Africa today, but it sure helps.

Like the old gray mare, safari today ain't like she used to be. Today you just can't jump into a Jeep and go whistling off to wallop the nearest inoffensive creature. You may have to travel far, and you have to figure on everything from uncertain weather to politics and outright native warfare. The winds of change, of which Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Macleod spoke so breezily, have switched the whole safari picture in black Africa. In recent years a two-way radio meant communications with town headquarters. In Kenya at least, the (continued on page 96) Far-Out Safari (continued from page 86) possession of a piece of complicated machinery today is apt to get you shot for a spy by some ambitious ward heeler bucking for sergeant. Vast areas close without warning, due to game shortage, flood and native battles; and rules change according to the whim of newly emerged nations. Once-wide-open territories, such as Kenya and Tanganyika, are now operated on the "block system," which means you have to book months in advance, sometimes, and are restricted to your own area. In the Portuguese African countries, Mozambique and Angola, the shooting country is gobbled by concessions, or coutadas, under private management. Poaching has drained some portions of Kenya and Tanganyika, and the wardens are empowered arbitrarily to close and open such areas. I know several sections of Masailand which haven't been really shot over in 14 years, but the poachers have been very busy.

This piece is being written in Mozambique, one of the last strongholds of lush animal life and smiling natives. But my outfitters have had nine recent cancellations. I asked why.

"Every time some bloody wog in the Congo or in Whozitsville rubs out another wog, it makes the papers, and puts the clients off their stroke," my hunter, a profane South African, said. "You've got this bloody madwoman Alice Lenshina with that cult in Rhodesia, killing off people right and left, and you've got the rebels kicking hell out of the army in the Congo. Most of you people"--he looked at me with disdain--"potential clients, I mean, think that Africa is about the size of New York. I mean to say, have you ever been murdered on your last three safaris here?"

"Only by the garlic in the food," I murmured. "And by the conversation of your last female client."

But it is very true that the areas are shrinking, as self-determination rears its nationalistic banner. Mozambique, Angola--if you don't run into a massacre--Bechuanaland and a portion of Southern Rhodesia are the best bets. Chad, I'm told, is good, but there are few fancy frills to be had in hunters or equipment, in the classic sense of romantic white hunter, good tentage, a well-filled chop box and evening cocktails in front of the fire. The Congo--forget it. You never know which native is on first base in the government, or who is making war on whom for what. At this writing the battles are brisk.

I used to do safari on horseback, with camels carrying such vital supplies as water and booze to keep your system safe from harmful irritants. Hunting African elephants on horseback is a dicey business, at best, because once in a while you have to get off the horse and haul him up the nearest escarpment. Horses, generally speaking, are no damned good--particularly when an old gentleman rhino boils out of a bush in a testy temper.

The elephant-cum-horse-cum-camel safari was about as far out as today's plush operation, with the sanitary toilets and the built-in mosquito nets, as a fellow could find. But you can't do that anymore--at least not in Kenya. The Northern Frontier, where the big Jumbos with the big teeth live, is closed to hunting. It is closed because the Somalis who live in northern Kenya figure that they dwell in an extension of Somalia, and they keep shooting up the locals in the name of lebensraum. You have some trouble on the Ethiopian border, too. A bunch of gay cats called Gelubba can't go courting until they hand the father of the potential bride a set of fresh testicles--somebody else's testicles--to prove that they're worthy to come a-wooing with a flower stuck in the wig. This is discouraging to the innocent bystander who might reckon that a man comes equipped with only one set of crown jewels.

Last time I was in the Northern Frontier (NFD, it's called), I thought I'd got myself mixed up in a TV serial. Everybody was furious at everybody else. The Gelubba were pummeling the Turkana up near Lake Rudolf. The Rendille were pounding hell out of the Samburu, who, in turn, were pounding hell out of the Rendille. The Merus were coming down the hill to steal Somali cattle, and the Somalis were defending themselves with old Arab blunderbusses and tin swords. I personally got involved in a knife fight with a flock of Somali camel jockeys who wanted my water. (The fight ended unspectacularly. My companion, a white hunter, cooled my adversaries with a flashlight. It was a very large flashlight.)

But everywhere in East Africa the air was full of iron. On the Uganda-Kenya border, the Suk and the Karamojong engaged in no less than 260 full-scale battles in a year. The Masai and the Wakamba were filling one another full of poisoned arrows and spears in border cattle rustlings. My own boys, Wakamba, when we were in the Masai, spent all their spare time making bows and arrows and stripping the dead animals of sinew for bowstrings. The best bowwood grows poetically in the Masai country, and the Kamba were arming to kill Masai.

• • •

Over the last dozen years, I have been on possibly 20 safaris. That's to say, I've hunted twice in India, once in Alaska, four times in Mozambique, once in Australia, once in New Zealand and about ten times in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika. I have shot three elephants of over a hundred pounds per tusk, killed a couple of lions and attended the deaths of a dozen others. I lost count on leopards--maybe 20--and have no idea about buffalos; maybe a hundred. The small game--zebra, impala, Thomson's gazelle, Grant's gazelle, wildebeest, gerenuk, oryx, duiker--in general, camp meat, must run into a thousand. I have shot three tigers, been severely mauled by a leopard, shot gaur and water buffalo, cheetah cat and chital deer, wild dogs and hyenas and guinea fowl and sand grouse and bustard and francolin (all white meat, even the legs, a lovely bird, the francolin), and I have had cerebral malaria, infectious mononucleosis and have been poisoned by tsetse flies and maddened by mosquitoes. I have walked a thousand miles, Jeeped a hundred thousand, and have rung up another hundred thousand in light planes on homemade airstrips in deep bush. I have slept in tents, as well as rondawels and native huts, and I have also slept on the ground in the pouring rain. I have eaten elephant, snake and fried grubworms. I have drunk native beer, palm wine and a tasty mixture of blood, milk, cow urine and wood ash.

This is not meant to be construed as personal triumph, but only to lay a platform for the statement that two thirds of what you read about safaris, and hear about safaris, is sheer cock and purest bull.

There is a simple formula to successful safari. First, you must have enough money to go first-class. You do not wait until you get to Mozambique or Nairobi to choose your hunter, on the off-chance that they will undercut one another in bidding for the job. You do that, and you wind up with some reformed locust-control type, and all he will get you is lost. What you do is ask somebody who has been out before to recommend a reputable firm and an established hunter, or you pick up a sporting magazine and check the safari advertisements. Prices are nearly the same on most safari outfits, and most of the good firms have competent hunters, with steady staffs and stout equipment.

What you want is comfort, not unnecessary hardship, because even on the lushest, plushest safari, there will be discomfort enough. That's to say, you will crawl through bush, walk endless miles, bump interminably on trackless terrain, be scorched by sun, frozen by morning wind, be bitten by every bug ever created, go to the can in the bush, be rained on, be frightened out of your wits, and bored to distraction in the long waits and perpetual dusty journeying.

With all these negatives going against you, what you really don't need is a white hunter who is frightened of game, has no sense of direction, doesn't know (continued on page 166) Far-Out Safari (continued from page 96) the country, can't judge trophy heads, tries to sleep with your girlfriend and has employed a surly gunbearer and a lousy cook. You don't need a white hunter who can't fix anything that happens to a car, a gun or a camera--and believe me, something is always breaking down on safari, whether it's a car ruining its bearings, a scope jumping suddenly out of focus, or a camera with its innards full of sand, water or just plain contrariness.

The white hunter should be most of the things contained in the boy-scout code--kind, courteous, thoughtful, able, inventive, amusing, undrunk, brave and, above all things, competent at running an outfit that will average 12 natives for a small safari, and up to 30 for a big one. His skinners should be able to skin well, so the trophies won't be ruined. The personal boys should have washed everything you drop on the floor 20 minutes after you dropped it. The head boy and his assistant should be immaculate in uniform, body and performance. The gunbearers should be able to bear guns, track and skin--and also keep the guns oiled, the ammo sorted, and the hunting car washed clean of yesterday's blood. The cho-boy, the sweeper, should keep the lavatories sanitary, and the boy who fills your shower or canvas bathtub should hold the number of frogs, newts, shrimps, scorpions and baby alligators to a bare minimum.

The tentage, if it's that kind of safari, should be stout and waterproof. If it's like the one I'm on now, the permanent camp dwellings--whitewashed rondawels with peaked straw tops and plaster walls--should be as well tended as a good hotel room. There should be soft toilet paper and Kleenex and a first-class dispensary, as well as the Red Cross box that contains snake-bite treatment and like that. Everybody should have at least two flashlights, as well as pressure lamps, and the first time the hunter says: "We had some last week but we just ran out of it," shoot him. Hunters are nearly always running out of something, including gin and ammunition.

You cannot have too much gin or ammunition. The only thing drier on safari than a dry throat is a dry gun. The best part of safari is to be found at night, sitting around the fire with a drink, telling and listening to a lot of lies, and rehashing the day's heroism. To this aspect of the trip, alcohol is as necessary as firewood. Most good white hunters are rotund with a fund of anecdotes, plus a positive wealth of folk, animal and flora lore. They should be encouraged to talk as well as to drink. Most good ones drink copiously and hold it adequately, and after all, you are paying for the booze. When the hunter stops drinking your gin and eats privately in his tent, you might as well pack it in.

The hunter-client relationship is as ticklish as any I know. The "good" client is a man or woman who comes out to enjoy the trip, and who does not want to kill too much, or to shoot inferior trophies. Quite frequently mild men and mousy women become suddenly blood mad, and want to squeeze the last drop. They rise at three A.M. and await the dawn impatiently, so they can begin the day's murder. They keep lists of what they've shot and what they plan to shoot, down to die last dik-dik on the ticket, and resent any moment of daylight that is not punctuated by a rifle blast. The good hunters despise clients of this stripe, as they hate braggarts who do not perform well, as they loathe boasters who run when the buffalo charges or the leopard gets up from his deathbed for one last pass. One gentleman just left here, after shooting everything, including hippo and crocodile, lion and eland, tiny oribi gazelle and ugly wildebeest. He left his wife in camp, where she talked all the innocent bystanders into trauma, while he relentlessly milked every bloody hour from the day. He has shot everything, everywhere, and is careless of trophy. All he wants is to see death, and go on to assassinate some-thing else. As he left after a month, he tipped his hunter a dollar.

A good hunter should never let a client shoot anything that isn't a superior representative of its species. I have known one--now delicensed--who would cheerfully allow the shooter to kill any-thing, regardless of size, horn length, mane, sex or species. He also slept with his clients' women. Before he was unfrocked for some peculiar business with illegal elephant shooting, he achieved his lifelong triumph. He took 15 women on safari, rewarded one for shooting a buffalo by bedding her behind an anthill while the boys carved up the other carcass, and then, later, achieved a reverse triumph when his wife invaded another lady's tent--just as our friend's robe fell off while he was embracing the lady. The safari ended rather suddenly, and so did the marriage.

A tip to the uninitiate has to do with hunting friends, both male and lady.

Under no circumstances should two friends who have only known each other in cities, professionally or cocktailwise, embark on a first safari. Competition breeds temper, and the two Toots Shor buddies are apt to wind up as deadly enemies when one gent's leopard is bigger and spottier than die other fellow's; one lion shaggier, one buffalo wider, one kudu longer. We had a recent example of two doctors here in Mozambique; they came out arm in arm, friends to the death. In a few days, when Jack shot something that Charlie hadn't collected, they quit speaking. Then Charlie knocked off something that Jack wanted but couldn't find, and suddenly they requested to hunt out of separate camps. They went off separately, and will hate each other all their lives because Jack's sable is shorter or Charlie's nyala is thicker. The only time two men should hunt together in Africa is when they've had a vast experience in mutual hunting in Pennsylvania or South Carolina, and even then it's dicey.

As for women: Something strange happens to women under an African moon. Hemingway wrote it well in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Momma comes out, perfectly contented with Poppa. Poppa is showing off in front of Momma--particularly if Momma is a younger, second or third spouse, or perhaps just a girlfriend that Poppa has fetched to romance under the velvet canopy of African sky, spiced with stars and slashed by a big butterfat moon. Tragedy.

Poppa's pure hell in the paper-box business, but he starts trying to compete with the outdoor mechanic, die white hunter. The white hunter is usually young, always strong, generally charming and very competent at his work, which is chasing things, tracking things, killing things and fixing things. He is full of wise words and anecdotes.

Momma sees the hunter patch up a busted Land-Rover with chewing gum and string. Momma sees the hunter go boldly into the bush after a leopard that Poppa has gutshot. Momma sees Rock Hunter stand spraddled in the face of a charging wounded buffalo because Poppa has also gutshot the bull. Momma sees Poppa run, stumble and fall, then watches Rock Hunter save his life by shoving the barrel of his rifle in the buffalo's eye. Momma sees Poppa red-faced and sweating, falling behind, tripping over the grass withes, complaining about the flies and the bugs, getting his fingers stuck in the rifle, missing what he should hit, hitting what he should miss, like the one cow buffalo in a whole herd of bulls.

Momma forgets that Poppa is very big in the paper-box business, that he belongs to six clubs, that they have a duplex in New York, a country home in Connecticut, Meissen china, and three cars, including a Cadillac. She just sees this little city man trying to compete with a Rock Hunter type, who does everything well because he's done it all his life. She does not pause to reflect that Rock Hunter would be a bum in the paper-box business, couldn't get into the club, and would be thrown out of Twenty One for being badly dressed. In shorts and bullet loops, under that papaya slice of moon, with hyenas calling, lions roaring, fire bright and Poppa down in the tent with a sprained back, Rock Hunter is purest romance. Whether or not Rock Hunter takes advantage of the lady when she flings herself into his arms and murmurs, "Darling, take me now, whistling thorns and all," Momma will never feel the same about Poppa again. She may not hate Poppa when they get back to The Colony and the paper-box factory and the home in Greenwich, but when Poppa folds her in his flabby embrace she will close her eyes and see Rock Hunter, not Poppa.

What Poppa should remember, if he does bring Momma, is that Poppa is old enough to be rich enough to afford a safari, and that Poppa doesn't know his rifle from a rhino, and that Poppa shouldn't try to compete with some young yahoo who was breast fed by a lioness and who would be lost in any place that didn't have trees in it. Poppa should walk slow, shoot slow, and let Rock Hunter do the work. In this fashion a certain amount of dignity is maintained, and Momma should be forcefully impressed with the fact that Poppa is not Tarzan, but only Big Daddy from the paper-box circuit, out in Africa to have some fun, not to compete in a rural Olympics with some young Adonis who is all legs and nine tenths muscle.

We had a rather sad example of this husband diminishment here the other day. Momma was well-preserved 30ish. Poppa was not-so-well-preserved 60ish. Poppa was slow to shoot, so Momma would take the gun away from him and do it herself. Momma would also laugh heartily when Poppa missed something, and remark to the world that Poppa was too old for this kind of work. It gave the locals some rather odd ideas about American marital relationships. Once I saw a lady command her husband to shoot that lion, which Poppa had shirked three times, or else, and this in front of six other people at die mess table. At last count, relations were still strained.

• • •

It is quite possible that the Portuguese territories, Mozambique and Angola, offer more diversified game than any other areas in Africa. Mozambique will give you about 20 species for a license cost of $107, plus extras for a second head, which can be bought very reasonably on a coupon system. Mozambique will give you elephant, leopard and lion in addition to the three top trophies--sable, kudu and nyala. If you're a pig fancier, they have the best and biggest wart hogs I've ever seen, and in great profusion. To me--I'm a pig nut--there is nothing more emotionally stirring than a big pig with 15 inches of ivory sticking out of each side of his face. The 50-mile-an-hour chase over log-and-pig-hole-boo-by-trapped terrain is thrilling, if you can manage to stay inside your doorless Jeep. (I got unloaded three times last year.) The wart hog is not ugly. He's beautiful, and the tusks, silver-mounted with bottle opener and corkscrew, make great bar implements, but it's a tough way to furnish a bar. When you've come to a screeching halt you have to dash madly on foot after 300 pounds of armed animal who dearly loves to fight back with the ripping knives he wears in his face.

Angola offers you bigger and fewer sables, smaller and fewer kudus, and has more and better lions and leopards and elephants. In addition, it has roan antelopes, mostly prohibited in Africa, sitatungas, sassabies, and the red lechwes, all exotic, if smaller, antelopes which are hard to come by in most of the other shooting territories. Angola is represented by Safari-Shikar Tours & Travel, Inc., 8 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, and handles the Luina-Lengue concession, as well as the Mavinga concession. Longa-Mavinga is operated by an English-speaking Brazilian named Jorge Alves Lima, and Luina-Lengue by a Senhor Lopo de Carvalho. The other big concession, the Macusso, is run by Captain Antonio Mario Tello, and I'm told it's wonderful. The best source of information on Angola, as well as other African areas, is a book by Robert Lee, called Safari Today (The Stackpole Company), which is really a bible on far-out African hunting, if subject to sudden change due to wind and political weather. A letter to Doctor Abel Prattas, director of the Central Hunting Association, Luanda, Angola, can supply any information not to be found at Safari-Shikar Tours & Travel, which has all the circulars providing full how-to particulars and prices.

Safari-Shikar Tours & Travel also has the complete gen on Safari Outfitters of Mozambique (Beira), Nyala Safaris, Lda., of Lourenço Marques, and Simões Safaris (Beira). It handles the Sudan, a practically unshot area, which offers bongo, giant eland, Nubian ibex, Mrs. Grey's lechwe, white-eared kob and lelwel hartebeest--all unusual trophies, and mostly peculiar to the area--as well as most of the common stuff. The same firm does business for Bechuanaland, which gives you giant oryx, the needle-horned prototype of the ancient unicorn, plus die sable-kudu-lion-leopard-elephant axis.

If you want to get outside Africa, while you're still dealing with Safari-Shikar Tours & Travel, they'll offer you polar bear out of Tromsö, Norway, fishing and bird shooting out of Argentina, and limitless shooting and fishing in New Zealand. They've got so much game in New Zealand--all imported, because there was nothing out there originally except the moa bird, the kiwi and the three-eyed dragon--that there's no limit, no licenses and no special seasons. On things like deer--Scottish stag, fallow deer, Japanese sika deer, as well as Canada geese, they'll pay you a bounty. You can shoot chamois, mountain goats, boars, wild goats, Asian tahrs--a beardless version of the ibex--enormous elks, moose, and ducks out of your ears. I believe they even had zebras, once, as they experimented with imported fauna.

I have shot and fished in New Zealand, and it's all true. It probably has the finest fishing in the world, inland--I caught a 20-pound brown trout, and the record, as I recall it, is over 34 pounds. A 12-pound rainbow is usual on flies at Lake Taupo, and you can catch a fish out of an icy pool and fling him over to a hot spring and boil him on the spot. The deep-sea fishing is equally fantastic for marlin and sail. The late Zane Grey kept a yacht out there, in his later years, and rang up more records than an IBM computer. New Zealand's a long way to go, but well worth the trip if you've the time.

Outside of Africa, India's still a good bet, and I found the Allwyn Cooper Company, based out of Nagpur, Madhya Pradesh, a wonderful experience ten years ago. The owner is Vidhya Shukla, son of the province's late governor, and the outfit got me three tigers in ten days. They guarantee a tiger in shooting distance, and there's a flock of other stuff as well--buffalos (water), gaur or seladang (wild ox, the biggest of the bovines), bears, pigs, panthers (leopards), blue bulls, black bucks, chitals, sloth bears, sambars (big shaggy stags), and any amount of variegated bird shooting. We used to shoot peacocks for the pot, but I believe they're royal game now. Safari-Shikar Tours & Travel handles Allwyn Cooper as well. Air India will also put you onto a gentleman named Rao who has a good reputation for shikar, the Indian word for safari.

But for my money, the Portuguese possessions--Mozambique and Angola--are streets ahead of any other shooting area. White hunters are a nickel a gross in Kenya. With the exception of a handful, the good ones have left town out of prudence. The remainders are mostly reformed locust-project boys who call themselves white hunters. The old warriors such as Hemingway's hero, Phil Percival, are either dead or debilitated. The modern classics had much to do with killing Mau Mau, and the Mau Mau, beginning with the prime minister, Mr. Kenyatta, is government these days. So the modern heroes, such as Harry Selby, gave up their homes and took their wives and children away. Selby is hunting out of Bechuanaland, and can still be booked via the firm of Ker and Downey, which is hanging on by its fingernails in Nairobi. (Neither Donald Ker nor Syd Downey takes shooting safaris anymore. The firm is owned by a man named Jack Block, who also runs the Norfolk and New Stanley hotels.)

Currently I am making my fourth safari to Mozambique in a period of two years. It is expensive--$3500 for three weeks for one client, and $30 a day for a nonshooting companion, plus the usual extras of ammunition, booze, private air transport from either Beira or Lourenço Marques, cigarettes, and suchlike nuisances as tips to the assorted staff and the white hunters. Disregarding air fare from wherever you are, and taxidermy in its final stages, I reckon three weeks in Mozambique will cost you a flat $5000.

This trip was prepared by the firm of Mozambique Safarilandia, cable address Safarilandia, Post Office Box 1378, headquarters, Hotel Tivoli, Lourenço Marques, Mozambique, Portuguese East Africa. It is backed by two brothers, Mario and Jorge de Abreu, and has a firm connection with the Bureau of Tourism. It is actively run by a Prussian baron named Werner von Alvensleben, a colorful type with a Heidelberg scar.

Solid anchor man is an Australian who never saw Australia. Wally Johnson was conceived in Australia, born in South Africa, and is a Portuguese resident. Wally is First Hunter, Chief of Camp, and the best hunter and tracker I ever knew. He looks as much like a white hunter as I look like Fred Astaire. Wally is 50ish, fat, bald, short, red-faced, and his mustache is a blond wisp. His conversation is generously laced with Australian, South African, Zulu, Changaan and kitchen Kafir profanity. But around the fire, after a hard day, when the gin pours, he is a master raconteur, and his narratives are delivered in almost B. B. C. English. Wally is well worth the trip, and also the money. But there are extras, such as young Walter, Jr., 23, who is nearly as good a hunter as his father. Walter, Jr., is a literate, practical, well-educated young man who has chosen hunting as a profession over tempting otters as an electrical engineer in Germany and elsewhere. He is strong enough to play fullback for the New York Giants, and has a snub nose and a smile guaranteed to steal any female companion you might bring along. He also shot his first elephant when he was nine.

Apart from Baron von Alvensleben, the major exotic member of the troop is another German, named George Dedek, who is also worth the price of admission. George sports a monocle, carries an umbrella and cuts his hair with a comb with scissors in it. George is meticulous; the umbrella wears a bulb that can be used either as an oral spray or an enema. When he goes even for one day into the bush, he carries tent, chair, nylon rope and Zenith radio whose antenna can also be used for a fishing rod. He smokes a Jaeger pipe with a cover on it, and speaks fluent English, German, Changaan, high Coastal Swahili, and French.

The rest of the hunting personnel--there must be about nine, according to the size of my bar bill--is a mixed bag of South African, Rhodesian and Portuguese. Outstanding is a Portuguese nobleman named Manoel Posser de Andrade, whose grandfather was once president of Portugal. Manoel is a pleasant blond chap in mid-40s, who will tell you with a smile, in purest Oxonion, "I was a gentleman once who could afford to hire safaris. But I resembled my father too closely. Slow horses and fast women have made a white hunter out of me. Whiskey helped." Manoel is a fine hunter, a pleasant companion, and a gentleman of the old European tradition from his hat to his rawhide boots.

This particular concession comprises about 36,000 square kilometers. It has everything from elephants to anteaters. Its general face is that of Connecticut in the fall. No bugs, except in the rainy season. Snakes, yes, but not many. The only snake I've seen in four trips was an 18-foot python that they brought into camp to play with.

The elephants here are nothing in the tooth department, but on a twin concession on the Limpopo, a day's drive away, there are some quite-decent bulls. Last shot was 90 pounds per tusk, which is good even for the old days when the NFD was open in Kenya. But the Limpopo concession is mostly dense bush or ironwood and mopane, the most unpleasant bush I've ever hunted in. It seizes your car, hits it in the chin, wallops it in the stomach, and then rabbit-punches it as you pass, all blows accompanied by horrifying noise. Two hours in mopane and you're ripe for the psychiatrist. But the animals love it.

The country here on the Save river, close by Lake Zenave and only 45 minutes by air from Beira, the second biggest city, is gorgeously alive with fauna, beautifully bright with flowers, stately with trees, and as noble in its spaciousness as an English deer park. The air is crisp and winy; the nights are cool and the days are never very hot, although the sun is warming after the morning fog lifts.

There are lions and leopards here, in fairly short supply, but they can be obtained by hard work and clever baiting. The Cape buffalo is here in lavish force, and is easily come by. The standards--waterbuck, eland, bushbuck, reedbuck, oribi, wildebeest, zebra, impala, duiker, hartebeest--are almost embarrassingly profuse, and it is not uncommon to see a thousand animals in a day. Fishing is good, and you can also shoot crocodiles and hippos while you wait for the tiger fish to strike.

But the big deal is something almost impossible to encounter these days--the big three. That would be sable, that noble black antelope with the arched stiffmaned neck and the haughty head with the great backsweeping sabered horns. The sable is as big as a horse and ranks as the world's top trophy. Then there is nyala, of the bushbuck family, a most amazing animal as big as a quarter horse, with a white mane up top, bongo-type horns with ivory tips, a white-striped black body and a black undermane, orange legs and almost literally a purple goatee. You could shoot him for camp meat if you were allowed more than one to a customer.

The most spectacular of the trophy animals, although he is not so hard to find as sable, is the greater kudu, which has generally been regarded as the Grail of African hunting. He is grayish brown in hide, which is barred by white stripes. He has a full mane on his underneck, white chevrons on his nose, and white spots on his cheeks. The horns are double-curled, colored like walnut meats and tipped with ivory. He is about the size of a race horse, with long legs and a fluffy white tail. The record kudu of the world came from here: 72 inches around the curves. Shootable is 50; very good is anything over 50. The best I've ever shot was just the other day--56 inches--which is notable, and even more notable were the braggadocio-building conditions under which he died. It was very thick mopane-ironwood bush, and all I could see was his neck. I broke that neck with a tiny 100-grain bullet from a pipsqueak gun, a Holland & Holland tailor-made .244, which isn't much bigger than a hopped-up .22.

This rifle, I must say, has changed my entire concept of weaponry. The Kenya boys tend heavily to brutish double rifles and solid bullets. There is actually nothing that can't be killed with a Winchester .375--and very little that can't be put down permanently with my .244. That's to say, I have killed a 41-inch sable with it, and the record here is 44 inches. The sable was shot at a good 300 yards, and last year I stoned an enormous kudu at about 400 yards with a bullet no bigger than a sharpened point of a pencil. A waterbuck is as big as a mule; I must have killed a score over the last few years with this kickless marvel of machinery. Nyala--here go the braggies again--half a dozen, and the last was 29 inches, almost the local record.

I've shot a bull buffalo, weighing something just under a ton, with my mild marvel. You have to hold tight, but a hit between the eyes or behind the ear, or even behind the shoulder, will induce him to wind that last sad bellow. The old-time white hunter wouldn't go up against a buffalo with anything much less than a .470 double, which throws a bullet as big as a cucumber and kicks like home-cultured gin.

Except for elephant, and possibly rhino, the solid bullet is really part of the buggy-whip age. Winchester's Silvertip, which I think to be the best bullet ever mass-produced, is deadly in the .30-06 and murderous in the .375. You can hear a solid bullet whistle as it passes clean through a buffalo, but the Silvertip, which mushrooms perfectly and penetrates deeply, will knock him over like a bowling strike.

The trouble, I think, about new hunters and their guns is that they've read too many articles by hand-loading gun nuts, seen too much advertising and read too many books by amateur safari hands. Too many guns, like the legendary cooks, spoil the broth. The ammunition gets mixed up, the weights of the guns change according to caliber, and the shooter never really becomes comfortable with his rifle. In this respect--comfort--a rifle is very much like a woman.

During the time I wore leopard-skin hatbands, carried everything from canteens to scout axes, had an elephant-hair bracelet on my wrist and affected tailor-made safari jackets, I owned weapons for all occasions and was pretty lousy with all of them. The 450/400 double balanced differently from the .30-06, which had a different feel from the .375, which was an unlikely neighbor of the .316 (I read about that one, bought it, and can't remember ever hitting anything with it), and the .316 took my mind off the .220 Swift, which is useless for Africa. And when I got around to the varying gauges of shotguns, I was never sure whether I was shooting the .410 or the 20 or the burly 12.

Over the years I have graduated to tennis shoes or desert boots, shorts, a beret or a bandanna to keep my scant hair out of my eyes, any shirt with pockets, no socks, no underwear--underpants gall you during a long day's drive in a Jeep or 30 miles on a horse--and I have chopped my armory down to a minimum.

The little .244 is good enough for anything except elephant and rhino. I keep a battered .375 as an insurance gun for big stuff. I shoot a feather-light 20-gauge shotgun, and that's it. There is a big double somewhere, and I vaguely remember a Hornet or a Swift. God knows what's happened to all the assorted shotguns; most likely I gave them away.

If I had to settle for just one weapon, I'd choose the .375. Put a solid in it, and you can kill an elephant or a rhino. You can also shoot a bird without damaging the carcass, because the bullet goes clean through. With expansible bullets, you can shoot anything else in the animal world and drop it in its tracks.

• • •

The most important single aspect of successful safari anywhere, apart from the presence of client, money, game, gun and hunter, is weather. In any country--apart from New Zealand, and even the Kiwis have better seasons than others--you have to find out when it starts raining and when it stops. The game moves according to rain, and the most pleasant time to hunt is just after the long rains, in May when the roads are passable again. In most hunting country, you can't move from here to there in the rains, because the vehicles are permanently mired, and the game retires to thick bush. Living is miserable, and the trip useless. I once saw a movie company miscalculate rains in Kenya, and the entire cast, including a tame lion, sat around for three months without shooting a foot of film. And when you've got stars drawing pay, technicians drawing pay, and everybody drunk, sore and sick, you make no movie. Even the tame lion had rheumatism, and the extra cost ran into millions. The same applies to safari; nobody ever shot anything worth-while sitting in a dripping tent.

For certain animals the best time is the tail end of the dry season, when there's no water in the ponds and pools, and animals congregate around the few remaining water holes. The weather is hot and miserable, and the grass burnt black. The country is ugly, but the big boys--elephant, notably--hang around what water's left. And you can catch the cats, as well. They are staying pretty well nailed in order to prey on the antelopes and gazelles, which have to patronize the only crap game in town. For serious hunters--elephant, leopard, buffalo--the last of the long hot summer is ideal. And in India (no, Virginia, there are no tigers in Africa), the hot season is far and away the best.

I have had several odd experiences with weather manipulation. As a pretty good witch doctor--kush-kush, machawi, mundumugu, voodoo, what you please--I once made some Mau Mau-type medicine because it hadn't rained in two years. The ceremony involved a human skull, an arch of thorns, a slain goat and some judiciously sprinkled gunpowder to make the fire flare. I suppose my medicine was stronger than I knew. A tornado came and blew my camp flat, and it rained solidly for two years. I left the country. I had no Luis to lift the spell.

• • •

Most first-timers overload themselves with kit. It takes a very horny hoof to hunt in tennis shoes, and a sore-footed hunter can't hunt. The best boot in the world, I think, is the Russell "Bird Shooter," and its nine-inch version is light, waterproof and guaranteed not to chafe, even on its first wearing. It has nonskid soles and also keeps the mosquitoes and tsetse flies off your ankles. All you need is one pair of boots and something light for slopping around camp after the shower's had and the gin pours.

We used to cool our booze in canvas garibas or chaguls--canvas bags for water and canvas boxes for the hard drink--and allow evaporation to do the work. Now any respectable safari firm has refrigerators, gas or kerosene, for mobile use, and dynamo-fed monsters for the main camp. The outfitter will supply the booze at cost, in Kenya at least, but it's a good idea to give him an early idea of what wines and spirits you think you'll need, and also how many cigarettes you think you'll require.

You can have hunting clothes made overnight by Indian tailors, or buy them off the rack in most African towns of any size. They cost less than the air freight, and you give them to the boys at the end of the safari anyhow. Two suits, jacket and pants, are plenty, because everything is washed, dried and ironed on tine day you drop it on the floor or ground sheet.

What people don't generally realize is that Africa can be bitterly cold, in some sections, in some seasons. I always stock a woolly bathrobe--you'll wear that over pajamas around camp at night, after you've bathed--a cashmere sweater and one close-hugging suede windbreaker. The sweater under the windbreaker keeps you warm up top, and I like a couple of pairs of corduroy pants for camp wear or for days when your khaki isn't warm enough in the early morning. In a pinch, you can always use your robe for an overcoat.

Forget the floppy double terai sombrero that the old hunters used to affect. It just blows off in the Jeep or is scraped off in the bush. The commando beret keeps my bald spot cool. An English squire cap such as John Huston fancies is as good; a baseball-type billed job is excellent.

Underwear, socks, handkerchiefs--a bare minimum, because they get washed every day, too. I preach not in the interest of economy, but only because you'll be lugging your gear around in a small tin safari box, and space is precious, whether it's a shooting brake or hired aircraft to tote you over the landscape.

Don't depend on any outfitters to remember bug dope. Most white hunters are salted from years of being bitten, and in the festive hysteria of getting out of town, little things get forgotten. It doesn't happen often, but on one occasion, a couple of white hunters got taken in farewell festivity and actually forgot the guns. Another lost a loaded truck, but that was exceptional, too. A small check list helps.

If you're traveling with baggage, keep a firm eye on it. I wound up on safari once wearing a business suit and a Homburg due to some ticketing mix-up which sent my gear to Léopoldville when I was getting off in Beira. I spent the entire month in makeshift clothing, and this was by no means my first safari.

If you send your guns and gear out ahead, ship the stuff at least three months in advance, and demand a cabled affirmation of their arrival. In recent years I have made at least two lifelong friends by lending my weapons because their artillery was tied up in a strike in Mombasa.

Do not discount the light plane, even if it costs a few hundred bucks more. Game areas are often hundreds of miles apart, and it is pound-foolish to waste days eating dust to travel from a sable or kudu area to an elephant area, when you can shoot the ground safari on ahead to bump and rattle and break axles and have flats while you take it easy for a day or so and then arrive at the next airfield in an hour or less. African bush pilots are the best I've seen, and nearly every area has an airstrip. And if it hasn't, your hunter will make one by merely smoothing the anthills, filling in the pig holes, tracing the strip with his Jeep, and lighting a greenwood fire to advise the pilot on the way of the wind.

And don't think you're cheating yourself of an experience by not traveling overland. Most of what you pass through is as dull as Delaware, if you're not actually on a highway, and you'll see more of the country--and the animals--en route by chartered aircraft.

There is one word to the unwary on cameras. You can hunt or you can take pictures. But you cannot hunt and take pictures, except possibly after the animal's dead. Permanent enmities have begun because somebody snapped a picture just as the rifleman was taking aim, and maneuvering into ideal lens position is guaranteed to spook any trophy animal. But if you are taking pictures and scorn shooting, four cameras are ideal. One should always be full of color, one of black and white. There should be one cine, preferably with a zoom. And as important as any is the new Polaroid, which also shoots color. This is kush-kush of a high order, and impresses the natives any amount. The locals are always being promised pictures and rarely receive them. To be able to cook up a color print in a minute is very big mouti, and often leads to valuable cooperation. It also gives the shooter the pleasure of seeing himself standing on the neck of what he has just belted with his gun. If I were a camera hunter, I'd take five, because one is a cinch to go sick on you, from dust or concussion.

In the lens line, any good swiftly detachable telescope for a heavy rifle is useful, for if you wound a dangerous animal and have to follow him into thick bush, a scoped rifle is useless for quick shooting at close range. You simply can't find the animal in it fast enough to keep him off your neck.

For your light rifle, I'd fancy a bolt-on permanent model, as you'll be taking much longer shots at much smaller beasts. The finest I know is the Bausch & Lomb Balvar, which adorns my little .244. It's a variable job, and spins up from 2.5 to 8 power. At its extreme magnification, you get practically 20-inch-television views of the prey. I once saw white hunter Harry Selby kill a jackal with this gun and this scope at 750 measured yards! Of course, he was holding a touch high ...

I have not dwelt on the intangible plus of safari, no matter where you take it. There is no computing the wine of morning air, the elephant you track for 20 miles only to find he has just one tusk; the six sable bulls you don't shoot because you hope to see a better one; the roaring of the lions outside camp; the whoops of the hyenas and the scary night sounds you will never identify; the brilliant birds and the daily dramas--a cow buffalo protecting her newly dropped calf from five lions, or a pride of 27 lions tumbling like kittens--elephants making Japanese straw hats for themselves from grass because the sun's too hot; the taste of that first drink after you've come bone sore to camp; the feeling of utter peaceful exhaustion after you've showered; the daily rehash and the steep tales of olden times around the campfire; the sleep that needs no pills; and finally, the sweet sadness you feel as you leave, bug-bitten and thorn-scarred, when you think you may never see it all again.

That you have to work out for yourself. But it may explain why I've been coming back at least once a year since I first saw Mount Kenya bare her snaggled tooth to the freshly laundered morning air of green Kenya, and watched the snows grow heavy on Kilimanjaro. There is something of safari--the leopard's snarl and the baboon's curse; the leaping golden impala and the scarlet desert rose; the yellow waxy acacias with their umbrella tops; the great blue lakes and the angry, barren, mountain-strewn deserts of the north--that you will not be able to find on TV or even in church. If you're lucky, you'll find it in yourself.