Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous, D.S.O., Capt. 25th Royal Fusiliers
John Stuart Mill · en
"Since I received your letter I have heard again from President
Roosevelt. He tells me that he has heard from Mr. Buxton,[60]
and that Mr. Buxton thinks that he ought not to engage a white
man to manage his caravan. He quotes me the following passage
from Mr. Buxton's letter: 'If you wish to taste the sweets of
the wilderness, leave the Cook tourist element behind, and trust
to the native, who will serve a good master faithfully, and whom
you can change if not up to your standard.' The President then
goes on to say that he is puzzled; but that his own judgment now
_'leans very strongly_' towards engaging a white man, and as I
know that several men who have recently travelled in East Africa
have also strongly advised him to do so, I feel sure that he
will decide to engage Judd or a man named Cuninghame, who has
also been strongly recommended to him. I must confess that I
fail to follow Mr. Buxton's argument. The objection to being a
Cook's tourist is, I always thought, because one does not like
to be one of a crowd with many of whom you may be entirely out
of sympathy, and how on earth the fact that he had a white man
to look after all the details of his caravan, instead of a
native headman, would give his trip the flavour of a Cook's
tour, or prevent him in any way from tasting the sweets of the
wilderness, I entirely fail to understand. Rather, I think, it
would enhance the sweetness and enjoyment of his trip by
relieving him of all the troublesome worries connected with the
management of a large caravan. First of all, I believe that both
Judd and Cuninghame would have a wider knowledge of the whole of
East Africa than any native headman. The President would say,
'Now I want to go to the Gwas N'yiro river, where Neumann used
to hunt, or to the country to the north of Mount Elgon, or to
the country where Patterson saw all those rhinoceroses, giraffes
and other game last year.' His manager would then work out the
amount of provisions it would be necessary to take for such a
trip, the number of porters necessary, engage those porters, and
in fact make all the necessary arrangements to carry out the
President's wishes. He would then arrange the loads, attend to
the feeding of the porters, the pitching of camp every evening,
and give out stores to the cook, and generally take all the
petty details of the management of a caravan off the President's
hands. As regards hunting, the manager of the caravan would
never go out with the President unless he asked him to do so.
He, the President, would go out hunting with his Somali shikari,
a staunch Masai or other native to carry his second rifle, and
natives to carry the meat and trophies of any animal shot. Of
course, if when going after lions, elephants or buffaloes, he