At Present The American Has Either To Take Over In Toto The
English Idea, Which Is Not Adapted To Him, And Is-TO HIM-A
Nuisance, Or To Go It Blind, Without Experience Except That
Acquired In A Temperate Climate, Which Is Dangerous.
I am not
going to copy out the English list again, even for comparison.
I
have not the space; and if curious enough, you can find it in any
book on modern African travel. Of course I realize well that few
Americans go to Africa; but I also realize well that the
sportsman is a crank, a wild and eager enthusiast over items of
equipment anywhere. He-and I am thinking emphatically of
him-would avidly devour the details of the proper outfit for the
gentle art of hunting the totally extinct whiffenpoof.
Let us begin, first of all, with:
Personal Equipment Clothes. On the top of your head you must have
a sun helmet. Get it of cork, not of pith. The latter has a habit
of melting unobtrusively about your ears when it rains. A helmet
in brush is the next noisiest thing to a circus band, so it is
always well to have, also, a double terai. This is not something
to eat. It is a wide felt hat, and then another wide felt hat on
top of that. The vertical-rays-of-the-tropical-sun (pronounced
as one word to save time after you have heard and said it a
thousand times) are supposed to get tangled and lost somewhere
between the two hats. It is not, however, a good contraption to
go in all day when the sun is strong.
As underwear you want the lightest Jaeger wool. Doesn't sound
well for tropics, but it is an essential. You will sweat enough
anyway, even if you get down to a brass wire costume like the
natives. It is when you stop in the shade, or the breeze, or the
dusk of evening, that the trouble comes. A chill means trouble,
SURE. Two extra suits are all you want. There is no earthly sense
in bringing more. Your tent boy washes them out whenever he can
lay hands on them-it is one of his harmless manias.
Your shirt should be of the thinnest brown flannel. Leather the
shoulders, and part way down the upper arm, with chamois. This is
to protect your precious garment against the thorns when you dive
through them. On the back you have buttons sewed wherewith to
attach a spine pad. Before I went to Africa I searched eagerly
for information or illustration of a spine pad. I guessed what it
must be for, and to an extent what it must be like, but all
writers maintained a conservative reticence as to the thing
itself. Here is the first authorized description. A spine pad is
a quilted affair in consistency like the things you are supposed
to lift hot flat-irons with. On the outside it is brown flannel,
like the shirt; on the inside it is a gaudy orange colour.
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