African and European Addresses

African Camp Fires, by Stewart
Edward White

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Title: African Camp Fires
Author: Stewart Edward White
Release Date: December 24, 2004 [EBook #14451]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AFRICAN CAMP FIRES
BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN
AND NEW YORK

CONTENTS.

PART I.--TO THE ISLAND OF WAR.
I. THE OPEN DOOR
II. THE FAREWELL
III. PORT SAID
IV. SUEZ
V. THE RED SEA
VI. ADEN
VII. THE INDIAN OCEAN
VIII. MOMBASA

PART II.--THE SHIMBA HILLS.
IX. A TROPICAL JUNGLE
X. THE SABLE
XI. A MARCH ALONG THE COAST

XII. THE FIRE

PART III.--NAIROBI.
XIII. UP FROM THE COAST
XIV. A TOWN OF CONTRASTS
XV. PEOPLE
XVI. RECRUITING

PART IV.--A LION HUNT ON KAPITI.
XVII. AN OSTRICH FARM AT MACHAKOS
XVIII. THE FIRST LIONESS
XIX. THE DOGS
XX. BONDONI
XXI. RIDING THE PLAINS
XXII. THE SECOND LIONESS
XXIII. THE BIG LION
XXIV. THE FIFTEEN LIONS

PART V.--THE TSAVO RIVER.

XXV. VOI
XXVI. THE FRINGE-EARED ORYX
XXVII. ACROSS THE SERENGETTI
XXVIII. DOWN THE RIVER
XXIX. THE LESSER KUDU
XXX. ADVENTURES BY THE WAY
XXXI. THE LOST SAFARI
XXXII. THE BABU

PART VI.--IN MASAILAND.
XXXIII. OVER THE LIKIPIA ESCARPMENT
XXXIV. TO THE KEDONG
XXXV. THE TEANSPORT RIDER
XXXVI. ACROSS THE THIRST
XXXVII. THE SOUTHERN GUASO NYERO
XXXVIII. THE LOWER BENCHES
XXXIX. NOTES ON THE MASAI
XL. THROUGH THE ENCHANTED FOREST
XLI. NAIOKOTUKU
XLII. SCOUTING IN THE ELEPHANT FOREST

XLIII. THE TOPI CAMP
XLIV. THE UNKNOWN LAND
XLV. THE ROAN
XLVI. THE GREATER KUDU
XLVII. THE MAGIC PORTALS CLOSE
XLVIII. THE LAST TREK


PART I.
TO THE ISLAND OF WAR.

I.
THE OPEN DOOR.
There are many interesting hotels scattered about the world, with a few
of which I am acquainted and with a great many of which I am not. Of
course all hotels are interesting, from one point of view or another. In
fact, the surest way to fix an audience's attention is to introduce your
hero, or to display your opening chorus in the lobby or along the façade
of a hotel. The life, the movement and colour, the drifting
individualities, the pretence, the bluff, the self-consciousness, the
independence, the ennui, the darting or lounging servants, the very fact
that of those before your eyes seven out of ten are drawn from distant
and scattered places, are sufficient in themselves to invest the smallest
hostelry with glamour. It is not of this general interest that I would now
speak. Nor is it my intention at present to glance at the hotels wherein
"quaintness" is specialized, whether intentionally or no. There are

thousands of them; and all of them well worth the discriminating
traveller's attention. Concerning some of them--as the old inns at
Dives-sur-Mer and at Mont St. Michel--whole books have been written.
These depend for their charm on a mingled gift of the unusual and the
picturesque. There are, as I have said, thousands of them; and of their
cataloguing, should one embark on so wide a sea, there could be no end.
And, again, I must for convenience exclude the altogether charming
places, like the Tour d'Argent of Paris, Simpson's of the Strand,[1] and
a dozen others that will spring to every traveller's memory, where the
personality of the host, or of a chef, or even a waiter, is at once a
magnet for the attraction of visitors and a reward for their coming.
These, too, are many. In the interest to which I would draw attention,
the hotel as a building or as an institution has little part. It is indeed a
façade, a mise en scènebefore which play the actors that attract our
attention and applause. The set may be as modernly elaborate as
Peacock Alley of the Waldorf or the templed lobby of the St. Francis;
or it may present the severe and Elizabethan simplicity of the
stone-paved veranda of the Norfolk at Nairobi--the matter is quite
inessential to the spectator. His appreciation is only slightly and
indirectly influenced by these things. Sunk in his arm-chair--of velvet
or of canvas--he puffs hard and silently at his cigar, watching and
listening as the pageant and the conversation eddy by.
Of such hotels I number that gaudy and polysyllabic hostelry the Grand
Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix at Marseilles. I am indifferent to the facts
that it