Sand rivers by Peter Matthiessen, 1937- Hugo van Lawick Page B
Authors: Peter Matthiessen, 1937- Hugo van Lawick
Tags: Zoology
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inscribed with the name of Constantine John Philip lonides, 1901-1968, "erected with great respect by members of the East African Professional Hunters' Association".
"Old Iodine!" Brian said. "There was a hunter! He had joined the British Army in the twenties just to go out to India to hunt, and when he heard that the hunting was better here, he transferred to the King's African Rifles - that must have been about 1926. When he quit the Army, he became an elephant poacher in the Congo, and finally he signed up with the Game Department, which in those days was mostly concerned with protecting the Africans and their shambas from elephant and lion.
"Iodine lived to hunt, and he was a superb hunter, with great patience and knowledge of the animal. Took him four months of stalking in the Aberdares before he came out with his first bongo! That animal bays up very quickly to dogs, but Iodine refused to use dogs or salt licks or any of the other tricks that are used today. Getting a bongo later became a sort of ambush, all set up for the client by someone who had a particular bongo all staked out; these so-called hunters went out and got their bongo in a single day."
From the grave site there was a prospect of the Mkungu Mountains west of the Ulanga River, as well as the great southern distances of the
PETER MATTHIESSEN
Selous. Looking at the headstone, Nicholson grunted, "Iodine always said he wanted to be thrown out to the hyenas, but that if 1 had to bury him, it should be here."
As in his attitudes toward human beings vis-a-vis snakes, there was a suggestion of posing in lonides's attitude toward his own remains: "I strongly object to being a nuisance after 1 am dead," he had told one interviewer. "I've been a carnivore all my life, and I'd much rather benefit a few local vultures and jackals." And to another he had said, "One of the most stupid of all premises is that life is in some peculiar way sacred, and that every body must have some sort of ceremony performed over it. Nature is an adequate arbiter in these matters. My hyenas would dispose of me satisfactorily." His fond mother - perhaps the only person, and certainly the only woman, he was ever known to put himself out for-confided to one of his chroniclers that her son "was ruthless by nature, absolutely ruthless." It seems mildly surprising that he confessed a wish to rest his bones here, since in neither of the two published accounts of his life with which I am familiar is there any important reference to the Selous; it seemed as if, when he left the Selous in 1954, he had lost all interest in his life's greatest accomplishment. Not that lonides thought in terms of making a contribution; indeed, he liked to boast of his own selfishness: "I'm completely selfish. Whatever I've done has always been for my own ends and my own enjoyment, because that's the only way to live, in my view - and who else's view is there any sense in living in, for God's sake?"
We gazed about us for a little while at the vast wilderness all around: no sign of man, no marks or sounds, for hundreds of square miles. Even the ring-necked doves had fallen silent. There is a silence in the imminence of animals and also in the echo of their noise, but the dread silence is the one that rises from a wilderness from which all the wild animals have gone. In the dead still afternoon of the old continent, it seemed to me that the silence of Nandanga still had imminence, a listening, a waiting in the air.
The day was late, and we descended quickly to Goa and Melva, then found our way down through the woods. It was important to cross the Kipilipili before dark. In a green meadow bathed in the humid light of the sinking sun, a family of bush pig was setting out on the evening forage. The big boar was gray and his mane silver, but the sow and all the spry young shoats were rufous red, with clean white manes. The boar sensed something that did not belong here, and while his family moved out of sight, poking
"Old Iodine!" Brian said. "There was a hunter! He had joined the British Army in the twenties just to go out to India to hunt, and when he heard that the hunting was better here, he transferred to the King's African Rifles - that must have been about 1926. When he quit the Army, he became an elephant poacher in the Congo, and finally he signed up with the Game Department, which in those days was mostly concerned with protecting the Africans and their shambas from elephant and lion.
"Iodine lived to hunt, and he was a superb hunter, with great patience and knowledge of the animal. Took him four months of stalking in the Aberdares before he came out with his first bongo! That animal bays up very quickly to dogs, but Iodine refused to use dogs or salt licks or any of the other tricks that are used today. Getting a bongo later became a sort of ambush, all set up for the client by someone who had a particular bongo all staked out; these so-called hunters went out and got their bongo in a single day."
From the grave site there was a prospect of the Mkungu Mountains west of the Ulanga River, as well as the great southern distances of the
PETER MATTHIESSEN
Selous. Looking at the headstone, Nicholson grunted, "Iodine always said he wanted to be thrown out to the hyenas, but that if 1 had to bury him, it should be here."
As in his attitudes toward human beings vis-a-vis snakes, there was a suggestion of posing in lonides's attitude toward his own remains: "I strongly object to being a nuisance after 1 am dead," he had told one interviewer. "I've been a carnivore all my life, and I'd much rather benefit a few local vultures and jackals." And to another he had said, "One of the most stupid of all premises is that life is in some peculiar way sacred, and that every body must have some sort of ceremony performed over it. Nature is an adequate arbiter in these matters. My hyenas would dispose of me satisfactorily." His fond mother - perhaps the only person, and certainly the only woman, he was ever known to put himself out for-confided to one of his chroniclers that her son "was ruthless by nature, absolutely ruthless." It seems mildly surprising that he confessed a wish to rest his bones here, since in neither of the two published accounts of his life with which I am familiar is there any important reference to the Selous; it seemed as if, when he left the Selous in 1954, he had lost all interest in his life's greatest accomplishment. Not that lonides thought in terms of making a contribution; indeed, he liked to boast of his own selfishness: "I'm completely selfish. Whatever I've done has always been for my own ends and my own enjoyment, because that's the only way to live, in my view - and who else's view is there any sense in living in, for God's sake?"
We gazed about us for a little while at the vast wilderness all around: no sign of man, no marks or sounds, for hundreds of square miles. Even the ring-necked doves had fallen silent. There is a silence in the imminence of animals and also in the echo of their noise, but the dread silence is the one that rises from a wilderness from which all the wild animals have gone. In the dead still afternoon of the old continent, it seemed to me that the silence of Nandanga still had imminence, a listening, a waiting in the air.
The day was late, and we descended quickly to Goa and Melva, then found our way down through the woods. It was important to cross the Kipilipili before dark. In a green meadow bathed in the humid light of the sinking sun, a family of bush pig was setting out on the evening forage. The big boar was gray and his mane silver, but the sow and all the spry young shoats were rufous red, with clean white manes. The boar sensed something that did not belong here, and while his family moved out of sight, poking
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