The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-07-19
AN AFRICAN "z0O. {"
STR HARRY JOHNSTON'S sue GES-
 TION
That n Great Game Preserve be Estab-
 lished in British East Africa.


 Sir Harry Johnston proposes that the government shall be asked to sanction the reservation of a tract of eXtraordi- nary natural game country, through
 which he has just passed, as a national park anr game preserve, or rather a wild Zoo" for future generations. The Idea would pass into the fact, if he were dealing with congress in Ameri- ca, before the session was over. Here, too, public opinion has grown very fast on questions of this kind, and it is ear nestly to be hoped that the colonial of flee will say Yes" at once, before 1t is too late. Instead of being in an inac- cessible part of the Dark Continent, the border of the proposed wild African Zoo" lies within two days march of the Uganda railway, just where it be- gins to descend from the Mao escarp- ment into the great valley in which ake Victoria rises. Thence it runs north and east on elevated plains, from the rim of which some of the most beautiful and astonishing scenery that the world has to show lies spread be- fore the eyes in what seems a limitless panorama. The splendid photographs of these scenes, taken for the Uganda railway committee, and now stored at the colonial office, are like nothing so much as Martins famous pictures of s the plains of heaven. The similitude has struck both those who have seen N the pictures here and those who have just returned from similar ground in Central Africa. The nearest point on Aa rnf1t ;o1 1i,,A 11rl,ip iph crosses the celestial plains, is Eldoma Ravine station, and the country, the site of the proposed reserve is partly open, lightly wooded plain. partly dense forest Gin which the new beast, the okapi, was found), and we'll wa tered by the heads of rivers. It is ready stocked with animals to a degree which astonished even Sir Harry Johnston, used as he is to the herds on the lower parts of the railway. In an interview with Reuters correspondent, Corroborated subsequently, by his own remarks to the Geological society on S Tuesday he stated that near Mount Elgon he passed through sthe most ex- traordinary quantity of big game that he had ever seen in tropicaI Africa. The country is uninhabited, and no one need fear that we are dispossessing the aborigines if we take it over as na- tional trust. The natives succeeded in killing each other off so effectually that there are none left. One result has been to induce the animals to lay aside all fear of man as natural ene- my. They were as tame as deer in an English park. My expedition" says Sir Harry Johnston, passed through herds of elephants, and was continual ly putting up rhinoceroses, singly and in pairs. We could really be said to have been escorted for stretches of several miles by zebras and antelopes that would approach within ten yards. ions were constantly met with, but were so hard at work on zebra and ehartbeest that they did not interfere Wffn the caravan" This wonderful land is only five hundred miles by rail from Mombasa, whence any one can travel first class for threepence mile, and enjoy the use of sleeping car.
 The insistence on protection from man, and the indifference of practical people to the temporary presence in such a natural park of numbers of lions and other fierce carnivora are justified by experience, though most people would imagine that permanent popu- llAtion of lions was more destructive than the inroads of hunters. But it is certain that the creatures which only kill to eat never destroy species, as the man does who kills to sell. The bal ance of nature is something more than a phrase When man, who has raised Himself above nature, does not intrude to upset it, the forces of destruction and reproduction are generally equal when the account is made up When Audubon made his voyage up to the headwaters of the Missouri the buffalo hunting Indians had been almost anni- Inflated by smallpox. Consequently on the primeval prairies, where there were then no large carnivora of any kind to kill off the buffalo, though wolves no doubt destroyed many of the calves, the Indigenous fauna was practically left in natural conditions. Over millions of acres, where there is now not head of game left except a few prOnghorn ante slopes, the buffalo grazed like domestic cattle. In some places thousands could he seen at time. Wapiti deer also, which are now only found on the moun- tains and in the spruce forests, grazed among the buffalo, like deer and cattle in park
 MT. J. E. S. Moore, in the interesting record of his second expedition to the central lakes of Africa and the Moun- tains of the Moon, just published, pre- se11ts a picture of great game in extra ordinary numbers, existing in "a state of nature" in the sense in which the French encyclopedias, criticised by M. Le Roi in his "Lettres sur les Anil maux," endeavored to depict them. This "state of nature can only mean the conditions in which animals live when they are only in society with each other and man has not yet appeared on the scene. Hitherto such glimpses into solely animal communities have been very rare, because man is creature of such world wide distribution that the animals seldom have a chance of undi- vided occupation. On the penguin reefs of Patagonia and the antarctic is- lands where the birds mistook the men for seals and made off inland to avoid them. and in Spitzbergen and Franz Joseph Land, reindeer, bears, birds and seals when first discovered by explorers were living under absolutely natural conditions, and in great numbers. one
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