Part 4
A MORE DISTANT VIEW OF THEM.]
To-day one may perhaps read in the _East African Gazette_ that Mr. Smith, the railway engineer, favoured by extraordinary luck on a hunting expedition, has seen one solitary bull elephant not far from Lake Nakuro! This is something quite out of the ordinary, and Mr. Smith is to be congratulated. Unfortunately his efforts during many years to have even one young East African elephant sent to London have been without any result. A young animal is no longer to be found. In the same number of this newspaper, under another heading, we read the report that the export of ivory this year by the Uganda Railway has been utterly disappointing; the quantity carried has been terribly small, hardly worth mentioning!
I had a talk lately with a travelling companion who had spent some time with me in the wilderness ten years ago, and who had just revisited those distant lands, availing himself of the railway. Alfred Kaiser, a widely travelled man, recalled to me the life we had lived together, when there was yet hardly a trace of European influence among the people of the interior by Lake Victoria. In memory we saw again the inhabitants of then hardly known Sotikoland receiving us mistrustfully on their frontier, thousands strong. Their glittering spears sparkle in the morning sun; chiefs, ministers, and court ladies of the Wakawiróndo appear in camp in most primitive costume; club-armed warriors regard us with the most open distrust; cowry shells and artificial pearls form their costume and are used as their money; sudden attacks and fighting are quite in the order of the day.
And now, only ten years later, Kaiser has seen the Masai at Lake Nakuro, English-speaking caricatures of civilisation.
A feeling of something like resentment comes upon the traveller who has had to pay toll for his journey with the ceaseless sweat of his brow, when he thinks that now any one can reach Lake Nakuro in a few days from the coast. It is true that the over-anxious globe-trotter is kept in check by only too well justified fears of the treacherous malaria and the sleeping-sickness that has made such terrible progress of late. Otherwise the railway journey from Mombassa to the Victoria Nyanza, and then down the Nile to Cairo, would be a much-travelled route.
I have tried to describe, in brief outline, the rapid, unwelcome change of our time, the result of European civilisation forcing its way in. As I describe things, so they were half a century ago, and even yet ten years ago, when I stayed by the shores of Nakuro, and no railway had yet been made there.
To-day one can no longer find the old spell of the Elelescho there, or anywhere else where the white man has penetrated.
The traveller probably sees only a shrubby plant.
It covers many a ridge, and the lonely plains of the uplands, and sends afar its spicy perfume. The botanists call it _Tarchonantus camphoratus_, L. They class it among the Compositæ.
But here it can no longer exercise any spell.
That has flown far, far away, into the interior. There, where the white man has not yet come, it still prolongs its existence.
How long, yet will it be before it has entirely departed?
II
From the Cave-dweller’s Sketch to the Flashlight Photograph
The mysterious charm of wild nature, undisturbed, almost untouched, by the hand of man,--the charm inherent in all that I have in mind when I talk of “the spell of the Elelescho”--explains the keen and profound interest with which my pictures of animal life were received at home.
In these days, when even electricity has been harnessed by men, there is a feeling that the knell has been sounded of all that is wild, be it man or beast. And however unpretending and inadequate the little pictures might be that I had won from the wilderness, yet all nature-lovers felt that they had here before them authentic, first-hand records revealing secrets which the eye of man had never before looked upon, or had had but scant opportunity for studying.
These pictures were the first to show really wild animals in full freedom, just as they actually live their life on velt and marsh-land, in bush, forest, air, and water. They showed nature in its unalloyed reality, and therefore a peculiar stamp of truth and beauty must have imprinted itself upon them. They came, too, as a surprise, for in many points the hitherto accepted representations of the animal world and those given by my photographs did not agree.
Mere subject counts for so much in a picture with most people that it takes them a long time to appreciate a work of art the subject of which does not at the first glance appeal to them. This applies peculiarly to my African photographs. It is not a very easy matter for the eye to grasp the movements of the varying forms of animal life in their natural freedom. Often their appearance is so blended with their surroundings that it requires long practice to distinguish the individual characteristics of each, the fleeting graces of their momentary aspects.
I could not, therefore, help feeling a certain apprehension that every one would not at once be able to understand and decipher my pictures in my book, _With Flashlight and Rifle_. It is necessary when one looks at them to understand, in some degree, how to read between the lines; one must make an effort to grasp their more elusive features; in short, one must devote oneself to the study of them with a certain gusto, a certain intelligence. There was a further difficulty arising from the fact that the illustrations could be reproduced only by a process in which unfortunately much of the finer detail of the originals is lost. The use of the process, however, was necessary for various reasons.
There can be only two ways of securing the best possible result in the execution of pictures of such subjects. The ideal method would be for heaven-sent artists, after years of study, to give us works of this class, and combine in these masterpieces the strictest truth with the finest craftsmanship. But this requires a thorough study of each separate species of animal seen from afar and at close quarters--and how is this possible, seeing that one gets only momentary glimpses? The other method is that of photography, the picture on the negative, which can claim the advantage of documentary accuracy, and at the same time leaves a certain scope for the artistic sense of the operator. So the greatly improved photographic methods of to-day can step in, at least as a substitute and makeshift, in the absence of works of art such as the genius of one man may give us. Considering the extreme difficulty of taking portraits of living animals in their wild, timid state, such pictures can only in a few instances lay claim to technical photographic perfection. But at least so far as my own taste goes, a certain lack of sharp definition in the picture (often deliberately sought for in taking other objects) is not only no disadvantage, but is even desirable. As a confirmation of this idea of mine, I may mention the opinion of an American journalist, who declares that my picture of a herd of wild animals given on page 327 of _With Flashlight and Rifle_ to be the most perfect thing of the kind he has seen, and the most pleasing to him, and compares it to the work of a Corot.
It must be noted that _if the animals are drawn so as to stand out separated from the landscape which is a needful accessory of the picture, and brought forward into the foreground in an obviously selected pose, they must appear unnatural to the eye of the expert_. Such pictures cannot fail to give an unnatural impression, for in the freedom of the wilderness the animal world never presents itself in this way to the eyes of man. In their full significance as masterpieces of nature, all the various aspects of the animal world are first manifested to us in close connection with their environment. It has been a keen satisfaction to me to find that many world-renowned artists have appreciated warmly the beauty of these photographs, and have given expression to this feeling. I have been told, for instance--what I myself had already noticed--that numbers of the pictures, especially, those showing birds on the wing, bear a great resemblance to certain famous works of Japanese painters[12] of animal life, works that seem to dive into the secrets of nature. It has been brought home to me, indeed, both by hundreds of letters and thousands of opinions expressed in conversation, that the pictures have excited almost universal interest, and that my labours have not been in vain.
Fully to enjoy the peculiar beauty of such photographs of living wild animals, the best way is undoubtedly to see the pictures considerably magnified by means of the magic lantern. On account of the special character and strangeness of most of the objects shown, I have the lantern slides lightly tinted. This colouring can be done without in the least altering the picture in its details, and its object is merely to secure greater effectiveness. Approval from all sides, both from artistic circles and from the public, satisfies me as to the correctness of this proceeding. Only in this way do photographic pictures shown by transmitted light produce the full impression of beauty and naturalness; they seem to transport the spectator directly to the far-off wilderness.
There must be some good reason for the widespread interest manifested in these pictures of the life and ways of animals, some of them still so little known, and all of them living in remote solitudes. It seems to me that the cause is deep-seated--that deep down in the heart of the highly-cultured civilised man there are involuntary yearnings after the sensations of wild, healthy, primeval nature. The progress of mankind from the so-called barbaric stage to the highest civilisation has been accomplished in so short a time, in comparison with the whole period of man’s existence, that it is easy to understand how such a longing may survive. In every man there must be something of this craving for light and air and primeval conditions.
“The conflict of man with the animal world,” says Wilhelm Bölsche, “has passed away unsung and uncelebrated. The civilised man of to-day has hardly a recollection of the endless lapse of time during which mankind had to struggle with the beasts of the earth for mastery.” Let us for a few moments turn our gaze backwards to that far past. In epochs that the learned date back by hundreds of thousands of years, we find attempts made by the cave-dwellers to execute artistic representations of nature as they saw it. The artist of prehistoric times set to work with his rude instruments to draw in merest outline on a smooth rock-face, on a tusk taken in the chase, or on some such material, the things that had particularly attracted his thoughts or stimulated his efforts. Specimens of these primitive works of art have been handed down to us. In the first place there are pictures of animals, scratched upon ivory, and notwithstanding all their crudeness, sketched with sufficient ability to enable us to-day to recognise with certainty the objects which the artist tried to depict. Such sketches scratched on ivory, showing various kinds of animals (some of them now extinct) and forming the oldest documents of the animal-sketcher’s art, have been found in the caves of the south-west of France, in the old dwelling-places of the so-called “Madeleine” hunters of La Madeleine and Laugerie Basse. The museum at Zurich also possesses similar primitive documents from the Kesslerloch cave, near Thaingen, in the canton of Schaffhausen.
It is indeed not surprising that the cave-dweller of those days took his models from the ranks of the animal creation. All his thoughts and efforts were directed to the chase; he had no resources but in this pursuit, and he had to carry on, day and night perhaps, a fierce struggle for existence with wild beasts. One can thus follow the development of the human race through the course of time from the primitive sketches of beasts down to our own days, in which it has been reserved for the hand of man to execute masterpieces inspired by genius, and in which man makes the sun to serve him in depicting and preserving representations of all that lives and moves, creeps and flies. By means of the sketches of animals laboriously scratched on pieces of ivory by the Cave men of Southern Europe, we make the acquaintance of the long-haired prototypes of the living elephants of to-day. These animals were the most coveted big game in Europe. Clearly recognisable sketches of reindeer tell us that a climate like that of the northern steppes prevailed at the time; others of horses show that the wild horse was then to be found in Europe; those of the aurochs prove the existence of that animal. There is a remarkably close resemblance between the style of all these drawings and that of the rude sketches made by the Esquimaux of our own day. Some such Esquimaux sketches of animals on walrus tusks, at the most a hundred years old, are to be found in the Berlin Ethnographical Museum. Interesting, too, are the sketches of giraffes from the hands of ancient Egyptian artists. They show us that the artist of those days in drawing animals allowed a loose rein to his fancy and imagination. Thousands of years must separate these representations of animals from the sketches of Asiatic wild life which Sven Hedin discovered at Togri-sai-Tale near Lôb-nor. They are scratched on bright green slate, and depict yaks, wild asses and tigers, and the hunting of them with bow and arrow. They appear to be of the same kind as the animal-sketches made by the South African Bushmen, discovered by Fritsch in the year 1863. These cave pictures show us various members of the fauna of Cape Colony, which has already been to so great an extent exterminated. During the period of the Middle Ages a more perfect style of representing animals was gradually evolved, but even about the year 1720 we find representations that are inaccurate to an incredible extent, and, indeed, so recently as the early part of last century, one sees in the travels of the French naturalist Le Vaillant, in the picture of a female hippopotamus, a proof that the development of animal-drawing had as yet made little progress.
But what a difference in drawing and technique has come about in less than a hundred years! One need only compare the pictures of those times with the works of our own days, to be convinced that, besides artistic execution, there is now an increasingly exacting demand for the precise truth. Indeed, one of the first points to be insisted on is that photographic pictures _shall not be altered, worked up--in word, in any way “retouched.”_ Only on this condition can they really claim to be--that which in a special sense they ought to be--_true to nature, absolutely trustworthy “nature-documents.”_ This distinguishes the photograph from works of art executed by the hand of man, which must conform to each individual conception of the artist.
It is a hard saying that the modern cultured man is becoming, continually more and more estranged from nature. But in this matter let us take the standpoint of the optimist, who says to himself that there must be a reaction--a conscious, deliberate return, which indeed will represent the result of the highest stage of culture. There is an increasing perception of the existence in our home landscape of an ideal worth, that we have not yet been able sufficiently to estimate. To-day already there is a movement on all sides, and the demand is heard, ever stronger and clearer, for the protection of the beauties of nature. We must protect Nature in the widest sense of the word. And even if, in the stern progress of evolving civilisation, much that remains in the treasury of primitive nature must be destroyed, we shall be able long to preserve and rejoice in much else.
And here come into play the healthy desire of man in his primitive state, the cry for light and air, and all the beauty of nature. It is hardly a hundred years since we in Europe learned to value the landscape beauties of unspoilt nature. English writers of travels a century ago still spoke of Switzerland with aversion; it was for them a horrible, dismal mountain country. And it is easy to understand how man in his hard struggle for the necessaries of life regarded, and was forced to regard, nature around him as on the whole unfriendly and menacing. But since those times there has been a change for the better, even though it cannot be denied that many men require very specially adjusted spectacles to enable them to enjoy this or that beauty of the nature around them! Thus the landowner feels a pleasing satisfaction at the sight of his cornfields. And yet these cornfields are hardly anything else but an artificially formed bit of bare velt, on which at certain times a short-lived vegetation grows up, whilst at other times the naked soil presents itself to the eye--uninviting, stripped of all adornment, arid and empty. Thus, too, the man who loves wine feels that well-cultivated vineyards are a beautiful sight; but it may be doubted whether he would do so if, say, only cotton-pods grew on the vines! In ancient times, as Humboldt shows, with the Greeks and Romans, as a rule, only country that was “comfortable to live in” was called beautiful, not what was wild and romantic. Yet Propertius[13] and many others praise the beauty of nature left to itself, in contrast with that which is embellished by art. Then we have a long way to travel through the Middle Ages, when the Alps are described to us as “dismal” and “horrible,” till we come to the nature-studies of Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe. At first there were very few to sympathise with them. Their view gradually prevailed, in spite of many backward eddies. Thus Hegel had only one impression of the Swiss Alps, that of a performance tiresome on account of its length--a judgment not far removed from that of the Savoyard peasant who declared that people who took any interest in snow-covered mountains must be insane.
On the other hand, we find in Eastern Asia, and especially among the Japanese, from the earliest times, the most ardent love for nature, and there even the poorest knows how to adorn his home with flowers, and to turn the beauty of the landscape to similar account.
A great part of the interest felt in natural beauty is perhaps to be traced to extraneous considerations. On the other hand, here in Germany we see most of our people full of feeling for our glorious forests and for our German scenery in general. We have to face the prospect, however, of a silenced countryside--a countryside without song or music.[14] That is a matter for anxiety. Insects, birds, quadrupeds, life and movement should be a part of the landscape. This idea should continue to attract more and more adherents. German thought and feeling are altogether in unison on this subject, and it is to be hoped that the cry for the protection of the beauties of nature, for the preservation of the plant and animal worlds, and all that is picturesque in our native landscape, may continue to find expression. The League for the Preservation of the Homeland in Germany gains daily new supporters.
Men like Professor Conwentz and many others have been working for years in this direction, and carrying on a most successful propaganda. This action for the preservation of the Homeland, taken in the highest and broadest sense of the word, must tend to evoke and foster the love of nature and its beauties in ever wider circles.
In other countries, too, steady progress is being made towards the same goal, and the importance of these considerations has long been recognised. In England and in America a way has recently been found to give practical effect to the idea of the protection of the beauties of nature by measures well calculated for this end. In this connection, too, a refined æsthetic culture is gaining ground. I do not at all close my eyes to the difficulty of regulating the conditions bearing on this matter. But in this connection we must not shrink from decisive measures. Those who come after us will be the first to prize and esteem these measures at their full value.
What I have here described as something to be desired and worth striving for at home must also hold good for the whole world--the preservation of all that is characteristic, all that belongs to primitive nature, wherever it is to be found.
The beauties of nature are most abundant, and in our time they are all--all--threatened with destruction and in need of protection. Where we can save and preserve any of them, our hands should not remain idle.
But where this is not possible, let us secure “nature-documents,” paintings, representations of all kinds as true to life as may be.
In this way we shall, at least, save for future ages memorials of enduring worth, for which our children’s children will give us thanks.
III
New Light on the Tragedy of Civilisation
Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, says in his lately published work, _Out-door Pastimes of an American Hunter_: “The most striking and melancholy feature in connection with American big game is the rapidity with which it has vanished.”