Fritz Joubert Duquesne

“ 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. ”

“ The English give them one name; the Belgians give them another; the Germans give them another, and the Boers give them another. All the African animals have different names in the different languages that they are addressed in, so that they do not know themselves when they cross into different territory. For instance, the gemsbok is a gemsbok in one place and an oryx in another. I do not know what they call the bastard eland. ”

“ That animal lives in a character of country where no domestic animals live. The eland lives where domestic animals can live, but do not live. The same is true of the koodoo. The same is true of the reedbuck. The duykerbok is the same. All of these animals have selected as habitats places that will protect them, where they can get away from the lions. As you know, Africa has millions and millions of game animals running wild. They are alive to-day because they have selected habitats that are a natural protection to them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lions increase like dogs, whereas these animals increase one or two a year. It is those two things — their naturally selecting a habitat where they can not easily be followed, and their running and fighting powers — that leave them alive to-day. If the white men did not come in with their express rifles, they would be increasing and increasing until they would be shoved off into the sea.
I may tell you that the rivers down there where they have the hippopotamus are full of fish. The hippopotamus, you know, interferes with absolutely nothing but the vegetation in the rivers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are the greatest food-producing animals in the world. Living on cheap fodder, as he said, they will gain a hundred pounds of flesh a month after birth until they reach the weight of 4 tons. They have a fairly valuable ivory. Of course it is not as valuable as the ivory of the elephant; but when they are 3 or 4 years of age they have fairly good teeth, which are valuable. The bones are very valuable; and the skin is one of the most valuable things that the Boers have in Africa. ”

“ Hagenbeck breeds the hippopotamus for exportation. He sells them to circuses, and charges $8,000 apiece for them. It is a very profitable undertaking. The animal can be led; you can feed it on a milk bottle, like a baby. It can be led. It is absolutely not dangerous. Of course if you take an express rifle and put a bullet into it, no animal will stand that. ”

“ It is resurrected every day. It is a common thing to see a thin skim of ice, perhaps from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in thickness, over the shallow pools. It just freezes, even up there, and right down into the country. It gets very cold down in South Africa in the Kooroo land, where the elands — large herds of them — were first seen by the Boers. ”

“ Neither the plant nor the fish can live on the air that is not there. As the plant is the stronger, and is able to take air from above, it will draw it at the bottom and draw it from the top, and the fish is suffocated in the water. Then when a storm comes and blows the water plants, which are floating, all to one side, the fish are netted up against them and kept in one place until they die. These plants exhaust the air in the water that is passing through the fishes' gills, and that destroys the fish. ”

“ They put an animal out, and they want to break it in right away, and they want to get some money for it right on the spot. That is what they are in Africa for. They want to take the animals and break them in at once. The Germans are more scientific than the English. In German East Africa they are making a great success of domesticating all these animals I "have spoken of, and crossing the zebra. Not only that, but I have photographs of the zebra in harness, being driven like an ordinary horse — a pure-blooded zebra being driven like an ordinary horse. ”

“ They make their own roads, and they require practically no food. Wherever there is desert, and a little cacti, or anything like that, the camels will eat it; and they will go for seven days without water. They are excellent food ; and as Doctor Irwin says, they are fine milkers. The natives of the desert in Africa and Asia not only milk the camel, but they make butter of its milk, just the same as we do of cow's milk. ”

“ You will notice that all the African animals are fighting animals. They are all intelligent; their eyes stand out well; they have good, supple necks, and that is the only reason why they are alive. They would have been devoured by the lions long ago if it were not for these qualities. ”

“ It is almost as transparent leather as greenhide. It is very valuable for the covering of automobiles and automobile wheels. During my boyhood days the French soap manufacturers used to come down there and pay us all sorts of prices, competing with one another, to get the fat of the hippopotamus; and we made a considerable amount of money from saving the fat when we killed a hippo. The Boers were in the habit of going down to the river and killing a hippo and bringing it in and dividing it among the different families in the district. ”

“ It is pretty hard to get rid of four and a half tons of meat. In the case of the bones of the animal, we would take an ordinary wood saw and saw them in halves, and make a great big pot of soup for a large number of people, including the Kaffir servants on the ranch or the farm, as we call it. ”

“ Now, a mountain lion or a wolf would not worry the animals of Africa. We have an animal down there, the oryx, which can not onlv destroy an American mountain lion, but it can destroy an African lion. Yet it is not an enemy of man. ”

“ Referring to the matter of temperature, up in the high country where the yictoria Nyanza is — and, by the way, "Nyanza" means " lake" — it is very cold; so cold that the people and animals that live there have to come out of the places where they live and sun themselves before they can move around. They come put and lie on the rocks until the sun practically melts them into life. ”

“ There are a great number of other animals that it is unnecessary to go into, because they are all more or less the same in this respect ; they are all the same because they are different. The animals in Africa adopt different habitats. ”

“ We have been fighting the Zulus and the Kaffirs in general ; and we lived on the wild game of Africa without any help from the outside. AVe have produced a pretty sturdy and strong and intelligent race — I think they are intelligent — just on these animals. ”

“ Those anintals are alive only on account of their fighting qualities and their protective qualities. They are very fleet runners. You could put them out West, here the mountain lions and wolves and other animals have exterminated the game. According to the reports from one of your committees or one of your bureaus here, it cost $15,000,000 in loss of cattle and sheep and to hunt down wolves and mountain lions last vear. ”

“ That proves that the animal can be domesticated. It is considered a very fierce animal, but it is not so fierce. It has fine ivory and a fine skin. It is easily domesticated. They start at the wrong end ”

“ They have to use saws to cut it. It grows up close where the water is fairly swift, and the water runs under it. You can walk across some parts of the Nile without even knowing that it is the Nile at ah1. ”