WHEELS ACROSS AFRICA

we were planning once more another Voyage of Adventure this time Africa from anwp Belgium to Paris through France and Spain to the straight of jalter and then down across the vast continent of Africa to the Indian Ocean we had received the necessary permits from the British French and Belgium governments we were awaiting in antp the arrival of our trucks here from New York for 18 months these trucks were to be our living quarters loaded with supplies they weighed 6 tons a piece a few hours later we had the honor of being received in the Royal Palace in Brussels by the king and queen of Belgium King leopole himself a keen photographer manely inspected our trucks and especially our photographic equipment Queen astred talked graciously to Mrs Dennis little we knew that barely a few weeks later we were to hear in the center of Africa the tragic news of Queen asid's Death the hour of our official departure had come the last interviews were given the last photographs taken and we were on our way the plast Concord in Paris gray on this February morning bitter cold on the Windswept mountains of Spain and now the famous rock of jalter faced us across the bay we were on the Ducks of Alerus and again our trucks swung from fragile looking cables for the short crossing of the streets which would take us to Spanish Morocco a week after leaving Brussels we were on African soil sua where we land has modern ducks and a modern ramp to lead in into the ancient city but soon we strike Inland and enter another world we are approaching the Sacred City of mole Idris it is the time of the grand mem a famous yearly muhammadan Festival the wealthy Arabs have come on magnificent Arabian horses pilgrims flock into the city in thousands and already the fantasias have begun see them go the finest horses and the finest Horsemen in the world with in the city the crowd overflows everywhere the rooftops are crowded thousands pour through the narrow archways into the marketplace it is with difficulty that we make our way through the crowd and that Roy Phelps takes his pictures entertainers have come to the city from all over Morocco the solemn fire dancers who hold burning coals in their hands and produce lighted torches from their flowing sleeves the fire eaters who Breathe In Flames and smoke and assure the credulous pilgrims that fire is their only diet and see this fellow he is only breaking bottles but wait he does not break them as you and I this is a bed he has making he's very tired and wants to take a beauty rest that and see this one he is not tired but uh hungry no fire for him nothing will satisfy him but well Blended broken bottle what an idea for a breakfast food and here is a snake charmer as daring as those of India this is the African black cobra as vicious and as deadly as the Indian Cobras drums and flute provide the hypnotic music and now we are approaching the long forbidden city of Fez every day is Market Day at the gates of the city and for centuries these walls have witnessed the age-old bargaining of the East today is the Sheep market and hundreds of sheep tied in neat bundles neck to neck patiently await their fate by buying and selling his thirsty work but there comes the everpresent water carrier and there is the everpresent beggar through the ancient Gates we enter into the city after 30 years of French occupation old Fe has not changed much and it has not lost its medieval aspect and traditions its gilds of Artisans still do their painstaking work by hand in small and dimly lighted workshops this is a copper worker shop one of many hundreds in everyone is a crude lathe turned without electric power and artists who have a deep pride in their craft patiently fashion objects of beauty the medieval tradition of the apprenticeship still survives it takes many years to graduate from the spinning wheel to the big looms on which the f intricate Moroccan rugs and blankets are woven in the tailor shops the tailor sit cross-legged this complicated braiding is necessary to the making of the Arab bruse and these children will spend their whole youth in learning its hundreds of possible patterns see the Potter at work out of a shapeless lump of clay his hands can produce any graceful shape they need far more skill than those of his Apprentice who has only learned to decorate his master's work someday no doubt the narrow streets Will Make Way for wide arteries with clanging street cars and motor buses power lines will run everywhere the children will be taken out of the dark little workshops and sent to school but much of the charm of Fez will be gone as well as it squalet there will remain only its gorgeous Mosaic Gates and its lovely minettes to Bear witness to its C F and fascinating past a formidable barrier of mountains separates the fertile Plains of Morocco from the barren wastes of the Sahara Desert here in Africa are huge Cedars and Pines and often heavy snow we had left Europe in Winter and had had bitterly cold nights in the mountains of Spain we were back again in snow and ice and in our first camp in the atlas the water in our radiators froze and we had to chip ice off the windshields Africa is a country of contrasts look at this hooded figure passing in a setting so unfamiliar look at the telephone lines for we are still on a Thoroughly Modern Road the Military Road across the Atlas Mountains superbly engineered and built by the French Foreign Legion for the opening up of France's huge African Empire away once more we are now swiftly going down the southern side of the mountain range we learn to appreciate good hydraulic brakes on roads like these in less than 4 hours we will pass from a temperature well below freezing to the almost intolerable heat of the desert at 6:00 in the morning we were struggling in snow and ice at 11: we are in the Ze Valley and the temperature has reached 110 we are carrying over 800 gallons of gasoline in our tanks filled to capacity and even intens on the roofs of the trucks a brilliantly Green carpet of date palms is laid in the bottom of the valley and towards this cool and lovely Garden the road gradually takes us down a series of Rocky and Barron escarpments the Mountain Streams have made the Ze Valley one of the most fertile in the world and it is dotted with picture Villages the rivers on the southern side of the Atlas Mountains never reach the ocean they lose themselves and disappear in the Sahara Desert we cross them on the foreign Legions Bridges with an inch to spare on either side and we enter the Sahara reject from your minds all you ever heard about the Sahara being just one huge ocean of sand there is in the Sahara every kind of barren and forbidding landscape huge Rocky Cliffs mountain ranges tumbled masses of rock in the deepest valleys along its northern as well as its Southern Edge lie The Oasis graceful Palms the Vivid green of which contrasts almost violently with the orange red of the sand dunes and the deep blue of the sky for several hundreds of miles before we enter the absolutely Barren desert they will dot our course and rough tracks hard hard on tires but easy enough going for our powerful Dodges connect them with civilization The Oasis Villages still cling to the sides of the mountain in the coolness of the morning there is busy activity on the roofs even the goats live on the roofs there is the mosque the muis and appears summoning the faithful to prayer the Sun beats down unmercifully on the narrow streets but there is cool shade along the mud walls and in the dark and crooked passages and there is little hard work to do at least for the men the men don't even walk when they can help it but there is one work which the women do and which goes on all day long the whole life of the Oasis depends on the water of its Wells there are lovely biblical scenes at the Wells of the women filling and loading their water jars every drop of the precious water must be carried up the Steep stairways to the Village throughout the midday hours the camels chew watch this far one bring up its cud there and now watch the near one up desert food is pretty tough and takes a lot of thoughtful chewing late in the afternoon with a good deal of grumbling and cursing in the weird camel's tongue the Caravans prepare to start camels are still the desert's only regular means of communic communication and transport and the camel should by now be pretty well resigned to it but who never grumbles at the beginning of a day's work their knees have been hobbled all day and it probably hurts to stretch their legs often these Caravans slowly plotting their way across the Sands make a scene of breathtaking Beauty the Sands are never still the slightest Breeze lifts and carries a fine gold and powder which comes Rippling down the sides of the dunes and slowly in the course of centuries Alters their outline old saharian tell you the dunes are smoking and they refer to the light Fringe of sand which the wind is blowing off the top of the dunes too often the Forerunner of terrifying and disastrous sandstorms in every one of these Oasis outposts the French have a Garrison of colonial troops it is a marvelous sight to see these Horsemen Galloping by in their brilliant uniforms mounted on Arabian horses especially trained to the soft sand of the desert their officers are the finest men of the French army endured as hard as their men to the long marches under a burning Sun and to The Thirst of the desert it is not many years since the desert was infested with Lawless bands of twareg pillagers and these lonely outposts were in constant danger of attack this very one stood a heroic and bloody Siege discipline as strict as that of the finest Cavalry schools of Europe prevails here many hundreds of miles from France among these hard-bitten desert men and now we are leaving the last of the roads behind us before us stretches the desert hundreds of miles of sand and gravel sometimes firm and smooth so that we can make good time sometimes perfectly hard under a thin covering of soft sand sometimes soft and without bottom under a thin hard crust which suddenly gives way under the wheels there is in the Sahara every kind of sand and weeks of experience will not teach you where a surface which is to all appearances hard will unexpectedly give way the dreaded rotten Earth is the worst as fluid and slippery as talum powder sometimes as we shoveled and sweated a camel Caravan would pass and how scornfully the camels would look at us they had no 6- ton load to carry however and no no 4ton trailer to pull we had been many times assured that the attempt to pull a 4-ton trailer across the Sahara was lunacy and I came close to believing it with their terrible overload the dodg there was little to vary the monotony of the trip tracks on the sand of a previous French military Expedition told us we were on the right road we drank water 2 and 1/2 gallons of water per day per person the regulation allowance in the desert and yet a consuming thirst parched our throats which no amount of drinking could satisfy I had been in dread of sandstorms and one day it was upon us we were 200 mi from shelter but we felt our sealed engines with their air and oil filters would get us through we went on for 4 days a burning wind carried millions of tons of sand across the face of the desert for 4 days we choked breathed sand ate sand rubbed our inflamed eyes driving in the choking atmosphere of the trucks filled with inches of fine dust which every bump would raise in a blinding Cloud became Agony we were now picking up our supplies for the second leg of the trip from now on we were to give up our comfortable Pullman installations and the trucks the trailer discarded we were filling the trucks to the roof with cases of gasoline long ago sent here for us by camel Caravan every item was to be checked over and over food and water for 20 days 300 gallons of water the greater part of the desert still lay before us but we felt we were Veterans of the Sahara and that nothing would stop us one and a/4 tons of gasoline in each truck from now on we would sleep on the ground we had given the little boys cigarettes and pennies and they hated to see us go but the town was preparing to give us a sandoff in the manner of the Sahara as we drove the crowd around us grew and soon the sand and gravel kicked up by the flying hoofs of the horses made me fear for our windshields in the heavy sand we tried vainly to overtake the furiously galloping horses we were to again alone truck number two was freed at last from its heavy trailer the motors hummed cheerfully the road was straight level and without turnings traffic was too scarce to bother us no speed limit and no cops I want to show you one of our camps this is breakfast time just at Sunrise the temperature is not 120 now it is around 40 and has been well below freezing during the night we have slept on Cuts with all available blankets but in the cold air and before the therm ometer begins to climb the sand is appreciably firmer than it will be during the day and the start at Sunrise will give us several hours of easier going the Temptation was always strong to drive at night but each time we attempted it being unable to gauge the firmness of the surface we got hopelessly bogged in sand and lost much more time than we gained but vegetation is again beginning to appear in the distance we see Nomads their herds of goats and camels we are approaching one of the whales we have been warned against having anything to do with the TW EGS at the whales because an epidemic of small pox is Raging among them but our drinking water has been put in gasoline drums and after a week of drinking gasoline water gasoline tea gasoline coffee and gasoline soup we long for fresh water also the herds of goats and donkeys the colorful desert people make too picturesque a sight to resist we have soon made friends with the twar EGS I grouped two of the prettiest girls for a picture here in the desert they don't insist on hiding their faces as they would in the towns our cleanest cans are filled with water it is cloudy and it has a strong alkaline taste and alas as we soon find it has strong medicinal properties but it is a lovely change after gasoline the camels like it and each take their normal weak Supply 40 to 50 gallons it takes many ref fillings of a goat skin to water a herd of camels the babies have to start very young this one was born this morning but already he has to be taught to take his fill of water so that on the Long March he will not beat too much of a drain on the mother baby camels are lovely white woolly things but they are all wrists and elbows and seem terribly ill at ease and unable to cope with this complicated world another 200 miles done easily in 2 days we are now in a twg stronghold in the hogar we are guests at the court of king imol the king of the tws this massive man rules over a territory almost as large as the United States for us the court Orchestra plays for us the king's followers danc the traditional stick Dance of the twgs no reputable woman would thus unveil her face and I am told in Whispers that these women are Shameless to do us greater honor the king also displays his camels they are Priceless animals and they are made to Pace before us gorgeously saddled their heads held high their legs moving in an odd Rhythm stiff and stately and now we're on the last l leg of the desert Crossing scanty yellow grass begins to appear we are approaching n on the Niger River which forms the Sara's southern boundary we reach it 17 days after we entered the desert from the Ze Valley it is as if these people had all themselves come in from the desert and could not satiate themselves with the sight and the feel of water we make our way into the crowd towards the marketplace all along the Niger River is a meeting place of the North and the South a mixture of races costumes and tongues the Negro from the south meets with the Arab of the north the nomadic PES schur TW EGS of the desert all sorts of Wares and objects of odd shapes change hands in these markets now doesn't he look like a tough guy from the desert and and a shrewd bargainer did you notice the padlock in the lady's nose placed there perhaps to keep her nose out of other people's business but here is a local Chieftain reviewing his Warriors he took these men of his to France during the world war to fight for the French and he wears the cross of the Legion of Honor on his desert robes and here is the influence of the Crusades which I had heard about as being still strong in this region the saddles on these horses the Quilted robes which they wear the gorgeous headdresses of the men all these are directly descended from the Crusaders an unchanged tradition since the Middle Ages leads due east across British Nigeria into the Camaroon and the Lake Chad in Fort Lami we stop only long enough to see a wedding procession but wait the word is not right because neither bride nor groom is here it is a bridal shower A procession of the Friends of the Bride bearing gifts to the house of the young wife notice the distended cheeks of the professional trumpet blowers and here are the friends and their gifts what would be more useful in a Young household than a good assortment of pots and pans the bride is probably a wonderful cook again notice the medieval influence and the gorgeous trappings of the horses why do the children follow the procession on one foot a wise old man told me that this is symbolic perhaps of the normal course of marriage we push on again and cross the whole of French Congo and at last have reached bangas Su on the Buu River and on the border of Belgian Congo rivers are now our main obstacle we cross them on Native fairies a precarious platform of logs on Native Dugout canoes each hued out of a single tree trunk but these fairies were never made for six tons and each one has to be strengthened before we can dare attempt The Crossing all together on the trip we made 80 Crossings of rivers and we crushed and splintered many a Dugout canoe but we only foundered three times it is slow work waiting for the trucks to be laboriously fed over before we can cross ourselves at this fery a little bird jinette has been intrigued by the chromium plating on our headlights he sees his reflection and mistakes it for a rival or an enemy he is having a terrific battle but the other is holding his own a right to the body a left to the heart between rounds he goes to his corner but not for long there goes the gong he's leading with his left again they clinch they break apart boy oh boy is this a fight he's completely oblivious of us oblivious of everything we bring the camera gradually closer and our last pictures are made with a 2-in lens at less than 4 ft from him we are now in the great Congo forest and rapidly approaching the equator precarious Bridges across torret and Ravines are a constant anxiety to us we get out of the car examine the bridge find that the logs have rotted or been eaten Away by termites and we decide the bridge is Thoroughly unsafe and then we cross in the river OTE villages in the forest life goes on as it has for centuries after a few hours our presence ceases to disturb and we can watch the Placid communal life of the village the women are always at work here they are shelling beans a staple of the local diet the men do the hunting or the fishing these people live almost entirely on frogs or rather on Tad poles which are caught in traps made of local reads and Vines the traps are concealed among the Reeds along the edge of the lake and the unwar Ted poles blunder in there is little of the excitement of the chase the fisherman pulls his canoe along and picks up the traps you and I could do it but it takes a good deal of skill to steer the canoes on a straight course the shape of the canoe is determined by the shape of the trees and many canoes have a strong tendency to travel in circles outside every Fisherman's Hut the day's catch is set to dry in the Sun tadpoles hold all the vitamins in the world the most powerful and good-looking fellows we saw in Africa were invariably men who lived on fish or tadpoles these well dried and crisp and an occasional full grown frog will make a delectable meal the barber shop is conveniently located on Main Street a special study will be made of your profile to choose the style of hairdress which suits your type best the hair is deposited in a neat little pile and this is Congo's own soapless shave no brush no lather and the closest shave you ever had in your life different styles Prevail not only in hairdress but in the elaborate patterns tattooed by cutting the skin of the face and of the body many of these patterns are tribal in character and indicate the tribe and even the village of the owner of the tattooing but there is room for a lot of individual fancy and the exercise of personal taste notice that his teeth have been carefully filed to a point and the two front teeth knocked out she was camera shy and strongly objected to our taking her picture our arrival in the village was usually the occasion for General rejoicing the drums would be quickly set up everyone would run into his Hut and return with their most elaborate costumes no these are are not lampshades or baskets they are negro hats woven from local fiber the wearers of The Masks personify the chimpanzees of the forest and their grotesque Evolutions are supposed to imitate those of the chimpanzees note the plate lip the huge plug inserted in the upper lip by this time the orchestra has appropriate the platform on the sedan he is an individualist breaking all tradition with this solo dance on his knees well at least one member of the audience thinks well of him after many days in the forest we were again in open Savannah Country we were in the only region in Africa where the African elephant popularly supposed to be incapable of taming and training has been domesticated and put to work it is wonderful to see the huge beasts haul easily enormous logs cut in the forest which no Manpower could move we were seeing our first sausage tree bearing alas not the juicy liver worsts which seem to hang in plenty from their branches but entirely inedible fruit the landscape was at last typically African we were now in country where game was plentiful but it was seldom that we could unobserved come close enough to game for photography this busy warthog however apparently had not heard his coming we reached the dungu river which we had planned to cross on its Far Side was utterly uninhabited country said to be a wild animal Paradise but the river when we reached it proved to be impossible to cross below us on the sandbanks on the edge of the river a veritable herd of hippos was asleep the honking of the horn rudely awakened them and sent them rushing in momentary Panic to the water they had obviously been seldom Disturbed but we could not get close to them without some precaution we succeeded however in watching unsuspected their family life mother rather anxious about baby father enjoying the sleep of the tired businessman a baby seems safely in the water but there might be a strong undertone now I could see the reason for the good hippo mother's anxiety that floating log was a crocodile he was so well hidden that even even the little waiting birds around him seemed unaware of his presence very slowly he was swimming towards the shore and we waited for hours for a chance to photograph him on land but nothing is more cautious or wary than a crocodile and he was taking his time at last he was coming ashore but even then the waiting Birds nor the maribou had noticed him but at the first click of the camera it turned and splashed back into the river and the maribou in turn took flight with the sedan we explored many miles of the river bank we would come suddenly upon sandbanks on which hippos were as thick as New Yorkers on a Coney Island beach there must have been many thousands of hippo in that River when we came unexpectedly too close to them it was wonderful to see them all get up stumble over each other in their hurry to get away to the water the water was often too shallow to hide them and there they would stand ner ly snorting yawning and splashing water we borrowed a Dugout canoe from the natives and fitted it with the outboard motor we had brought with us and in this somewhat strange vessel we explored the river further we lost ourselves in tributaries of the dungu and saw many more hippos and a great many crocodiles but no transportation for the trucks across the river was to be found and nowhere could we find a f where we could hope that the trucks would get through under their own power without swamping the motors I was still anxious to get some pictures of crocodiles on land but even with the motor stopped and the men paddling cautiously we never could get nearer than 100 ft without their waking up and dashing for the water at last we saw one who seemed unaware of us I signal to the men to paddle straight towards him they did and when he suddenly woke up and started for the water he nearly leaped into the boat with us there was decidedly no chance of crossing the river under our own power the bottom everywhere was treacherous and muddy and the water after unexpected rains was too high we had set for the elephants whom we had seen at work on the edge of the forest we planned to abandon the sedan temporarily and to use elephants to take the two trucks across the river into the game country the oh more than once we had been faced with turning back are going up steep 60° grades like this overloaded dripping with Muddy River water there they go up and over we pushed on through the high grass for many miles this was no good to our purpose we never would see game in this High Grass the ground was treacherous pitted with hidden deep holes made by Warth Hogs and hardar into which the trucks would unexpectedly fall to the axles and the bushes sometimes so high that it was impossible to see one's way ahead I expected a high grass belt of a few miles along the river but we could cut our way through this way for the better part of a day however we were in game country all right and the first sight that greeted us when we came out was truly magnificent he was an old solitary bull elephant and the biggest one I have ever seen with good well- curved tusks the sight of him gave promise of good country and we decided to stay right there our plan was to build a platform well concealed in a tree and for this purpose we had brought with us the necessary rails and Boards rope ladders and pulleys we had Cs and blankets batteries for electric light cooking equipment and supplies even books to while away the hours and I plann to live in the tree until the animals would lose their fear of us the view from our Treetop home was one of breathtaking Beauty herds of topi were our first visitors then elephants came out of the woods and then a rare sight on land a hippo far from water unless his home was in some undiscovered Lake nearer to us than the river Buffalo under the shade of euphorbias an endless variety of antelope calm graceful and timid the proud and Majestic water Buck perhaps the most beautiful of the antelopes warthogs the little flags at the end of their tals as a signal to each other would run past in a nearby tree which seemed to produce succulent fruit a whole tribe of baboons would feed and chatter all day breaking the Silence of the Jungle with their vul noise and their loud barking we hoped to see chah or at least some of the big cats and every day we placed fresh meat as bait under our trees at last and the most unexpected a leopard so rare a sight in daylight that this picture is perhaps unique every one of the animals of the Jungle seemed to sense his presence the antelopes moved restlessly the clicking of the camera made the leopard uneasy his SN Ling startled the baboons and they started wildly chattering to pour from the tree but the noisy baboons had started a general alarm did you think a hippo could not run the leopard himself became uneasy at the general alarm at once the vulture swooped down for the leavings it had in vain for cheetah to come to our bait under the tree but a surprise awaited us when we had recrossed the river two cheetah were waiting for us we had often carried freshly killed antelope on the platform of the sedan and the cheetah had been attracted by the smell of blood cheetah or the hunting lepers as he is often called is not a leopard he does not even belong to the cat family he is an offshoot of the dog family and has the blunt claws of the dog he is perhaps the fastest thing on legs and certainly one of the most beautiful we have pushed on now beyond the mountains of the Moon Past Lake Victoria into British East ugandi and Kenya after snow and ice sand and rock we are now in mud we are back on so-called roads but often we make less Headway than we did Through the Jungle in the rainy season the tracks deeply plowed by the constant traffic of heavy oxcarts become rivers of mud in which trucks and cars sink to the axles deep in this mud heavy Boulders are embedded for hundreds of miles the cars are subjected to such a strain that it seems incredible that Machinery can stand it our road lies through the great game Plains of Kenya and we see countless thousands of wiy Beast and Antelope it is like driving through a huge Zoo without cages without fences and without attendance at our approach the wiy beasts are thrown into Panic run run at all costs but as you don't know where to run you just run in circles the giraffe their curiosity equal to ours let us approach within 150 ft we make no serious attempt to catch up with them they may not be low slung and they were designed before the days of streamlining but they are nevertheless capable of remarkable speed note the three astonished Wily beasts in the background and the birds clinging to the neck of the giraffe here are zebra we met thousands of them they are as common as the wiy Beast we meet immense herds of the ungainly topi they stretch for hundreds of yards on either side of our route but never will they divide to let us through no all those on the left must go to the right and it becomes a wild race they come from a mile away all out stretching their Gallop until their bellies seem to be almost touching the ground to pass in front of the car no this is not the last but this one is the rains have not yet reached this region and the ground is bare after the brush fires which sweep this whole country every dry season the network of game Trails usually hidden under the high grass is plainly visible the Temptation is irresistible to pursue Impalas and to watch them take off in huge leaps they often go as much as 40 ft in a single bound the ground is rough but but fairly hard and we are traveling at 35 the Springs certainly can take it but not all things on the plains can be so light-heartedly chased here is a group of an entire fairly different character and they call for a great deal of caution they are so nearsighted as to be almost blind but their senses of hearing and smell are marvelously acute and they have a profound dislike of cars husband and wife we thought them at first but soon we see that they are father mother and Junior better keep moving and now at last when we almost despaired of seeing the king of beasts in his own kingdom here is our first lion we move closer and the grass becomes alive around us we have moved into the middle of a tribe of lions at their midday SE esta most of them sneak away but a big lionist doeses not and she circles around us threateningly Leela and Roy pay little attention to her they are looking for the big male who must be hidden somewhere there he goes asking for no fight but in a fraction of a second they come close to death the Lioness is coming at us in full charge the shot has turned her over she is running away from us now she stumbles she falls it is several seconds before we move slowly towards her she is absolutely still Stone dead when Jack ROMs shot she was in her F leap less than 6 ft from Leela and Roy on the roof of the car he fired from the elbow because there was no time to take Aim from the shoulder the bullet has entered the center of her chest torn her heart and lungs lodged in her kidneys with this bullet through the heart and lungs she still ran 65 y before rolling over Dead We load her on the car to take her back to camp