Fritz Joubert Duquesne

“ If these animals are good to build up a white race in Africa, why are they not good to use in this country? They are good. You have here hundreds of miles of country that is exactly like the habitat of our African game, and would breed those animals, which can all be domesticated. Every desirable animal we have in Africa can be domesticated. ”

“ The present arm of the United States army is practically a Mauser. The Remington resembles this rifle in the fact that, although it is an autoloading arm, it has a bolt action, that has overcome the African hunter's prejudice against arms of American manufacture, the breech actions of which although strong, do not appeal to the professionals who have been educated to prefer the bolt- action Mauser and Mannlicher. To emphasize the fact that no one firm could supply everything, take, for instance, the ammunition. The large express rifles use a special powder known as "strip cordite." ”

“ If any of you have looked at the pictures of Africa, where Roosevelt has been, you will find that all of our rivers are clean. They have clean surface water. It is only in the shallowest streams that the lilies will grow.
Why do not lilies grow in Africa? We have the hyacinth down there, but it does not grow over the country like it grows here. You have nothing to destroy it. The hippopotamus will eat all water plants, all the aquatic plants. It lives on them. It will never leave a river where it can get food. ”

“ He fought Indians and highwaymen, searched for gold with prospectors, hunted big game to supply the camps with meat, always doing more than a mans share. At last he got his wish. He became a scout. For fifteen years he wandered over that wilderness of canyon and desert that runs from the Great Divide to Mexico. Fighting the fierce Apache, hunting Mexican thieves, doing everything that was part of the daily life of a scout in those days. Everyone throughout the West, knew, or knew of Fred Burnham, a brave man, a wonderful scout, a splendid shot, and a fine horseman. ”

“ Rifles of various calibers are carried for economy. It is cheaper to use a small rifle on small game, a medium rifle for medium game and a heavy rifle for large game, than to carry one weapon for all-round work, which would have to be big enough at least for the largest game. Nothing smaller than a .450 express would do for that. It would be distinctly uneconomical, not to say foolish, to shoot a small antelope with an express rifle — like using a pile-driver to kill a mosquito. Again, cartridges become very costly by the time they reach the interior of Africa. ”

“ Besides the hippopotamus there is the African buffalo, that would live in marshes that at present have nothing on them, according to the people who are thoroughly familiar with your marshes. At the best you breed crocodiles. The African buffalo will live in the marshy country. The leather of the African buffalo is far superior to any domestic leather now made or used. The hide brings a very high price in Africa. So much do we think of those hides — and, mind you. we have every domestic animal that you have in America, besides all our wild animals — that we always use the hides in Africa. ”

“ How did it come that an American, and Americans after all never really liked by the English, who are always prejudiced against anything that is not born under the Union Jack, became a British hero, with a dozen gallant deeds to his credit, any one of which would have brought him or anyone else fame. How did Burnham come to be in Africa. ”

“ As a matter of fact, Colonel Roosevelt favored no particular firm. He could not favor one manufacturer, for no makers of arms and ammunition in this country or in Europe can supply at present all the weapons necessary for an African hunter's battery.
For instance, the double-barrel express rifles used to hunt the large African game, such as the rhinoceros, elephants and hippopotamus, are made in Germany and Belgium and sold in England under the names of the various firms that sell them. These weapons run from the .350 to the .600 double cordite express. ”

“ It is the strongest leather for harness and the strongest shoe leather. Then there are all the different animals that we have — especially the eland. The eland is an animal that runs from 800 to 1,500 and 1,600 pounds in weight. Its habitat is the desert country, where no domestic animal at present known will live. These 'animals shun farms. They do not hang around farms and hang around human beings; so they will be no menace to the farms. They are not fence- climbing animals. The difficulty we have had among the Boers is to keep those animals in our country. ”

“ When Colonel Roosevelt gave out the news of his intended hunt in the East African jungle, a large number of rifles were offered him by amateur hunters in all parts of the world. Inventors with all kinds of infernal machines, guaranteed to do anything but talk, brought their contrivances to the White House. Many struggling manufacturers, just waiting for a boost from someone like the President of the United States, were thoughtful enough to offer him a rifle for nothing. ”

“ King Leopold has nut the elephant to school. The way they do it is to shoot the mother when sne has the young elephant with her and take the young one. King Leopold's school is in the center of the Congo, with some hundreds of these animals, and he is letting them grow up. The people in India do the same thing. Of course, it is somewhat different there, because the Indian elephant does not have the courage or stamina of the African elephant. It would not be advisable to introduce the elephant into this country, but it would be a very fine thing in Brazil. ”

“ The shot echoed through the hills and in a moment the Matabele army was in arms and rushing toward the cave and spreading in a search for the shooters. Burnham and Armstrong flew over the ground like springboks dodging shots and spears. They reached their mounts in safety and then rode like demons for their lives being driven into a corner half a dozen times from which they had to fight their way like bull buffaloes. ”

“ To-day camels and ostriches from Africa are being raised in Australia.
To-day camels are used exclusively in the Kalahari Desert and all through the great African deserts, where men died with thirst and hundreds of people were lost. To-day the Afghans and the whites take the camels and use them as pack animals; and not only that, but they are good draft animals. Bred as we breed them, scientifically, and not the way the Afghans breed them, they carry 800 pounds. One man can drive a string of a thousand of them. He only has to lead the first one, and the others walk after it. ”

“ For instance, the Remington Arms Company is noted amongst hunters as the makers of that wonderful piece of American ingenuity, the autoloading rifle, a remarkably ingenious and powerful weapon which, on account of the simplicity and strength of its breech-action and its accuracy and rapidity of fire, has found favor amongst the African hunters who have had a strong prejudice against the lever type of American repeater. ”

“ In Africa it is not the gun-carrying frontiersman who has only brute courage and a carelessness about the continuance of his own existance that succeeds in the arduous task of inflicting civilization on the land. ”

“ That animal lives in the desert. It selects the desert as a home, and it lives on the scrub of the desert. It does not live around water. It does not want water. It is constructed somewhat after the fashion of a camel, and its flesh, on scientific examination, is found to be the very purest flesh. It has absolutely no uric acid, which the other animals all contain. That animal can be domesticated. It is most harmless and it is almost childlike. Its onlv defense is to run, and it is something of a runner, I will tell you. Of course it has a large watchtower neck, which preserves it in Africa. ”

“ NOW that ex-President Roosevelt is in the wilds of British East Africa and the cables are kept hot with the news of his exploits in the tropical jungle, it is natural that hunters all over the country are interested in the battery of arms the great sportsman is carrying. ”

“ Burnham’s gallant effort to save Wilson’s party made him a hero where practically everyone had an heroic deed to his credit.
Major Forbes, with about three hundred men who were all tried and true, was out to give battle to King Lobengula and his warrior hosts. While Forbe’s force was pursuing the king and his warriors, he in turn was being followed by an army of warlike Matabele who were operating the well-known surrounding movement practiced in all campaigns by the African races related to the Zulus, and which has cost the British more than one defeat at the hands of the Kaffirs. ”

“ But you must remember that in Africa the animal is fighting the crocodile and the human being — the white man, especially. The crocodile follows the hippopotamus; it will follow the lady hippopotamus when she is going to increase the family, and gobble up the young one before the mother sees it. Naturally the animals are a little bit vicious under those conditions. But where the crocodiles have been exterminated, the hippopotamus is as tame as a common garden cow. ”