African Safari-SD
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00:00 [Music]
00:00:10 [Singing]
00:00:20 [Music]
00:00:30 [Singing]
00:00:40 [Singing]
00:00:50 [Music]
00:01:00 [Music]
00:01:10 [Music]
00:01:18 Africa is a land of vast plains like the Serengeti.
00:01:22 And Africa is a land of delicate beauty with graceful creatures like the flamingos.
00:01:28 And of magnificent mountains like Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
00:01:33 And colossal cataracts like Victoria Falls on the Zambezi.
00:01:38 Victoria is twice as high as Niagara.
00:01:46 Some of Africa's birds are so large you can feed a family of ten from a single ostrich egg.
00:01:52 [Music]
00:02:02 Africa has its share of weird and wonderful creatures like the chameleon, which has its eyes set in turrets.
00:02:09 While one looks straight up, the other can look straight down all at the same instant.
00:02:13 That's what the boss should have in the office.
00:02:16 One of the oddest creatures in Africa is the pangolin.
00:02:21 Although it is a mammal, it has scales like a reptile.
00:02:24 Termites are the wrecking crew of Africa.
00:02:30 In one week they can completely devour a thatch native hut,
00:02:34 carrying the bits and pieces of grass into their underground fortress.
00:02:38 [Music]
00:02:43 Africa has its share of poisonous creatures like the boom slang, a deadly tree snake.
00:02:48 [Music]
00:02:53 And there is the puff adder, which literally walks on its ventral muscles.
00:02:57 And there is the tsetse fly, which transmits the dreaded sleeping sickness.
00:03:04 It feeds solely on blood, which it sucks from the skin of its victim.
00:03:08 In this case, the arm of a Briton in Tanzania.
00:03:11 After a full meal of blood, his abdomen is so distended he can hardly fly.
00:03:19 Many of Africa's plants are equipped with defensive devices to help them survive.
00:03:25 But some of Africa's creatures lose in the conflict for survival.
00:03:32 Fish are constantly dying in the jaws of crocodiles.
00:03:35 A turtle dove falls prey to a fast flying falcon.
00:03:40 Predators must prey on others, for without death there would be no life.
00:03:47 And here in Africa, life constantly regenerates itself.
00:03:51 [Music]
00:03:57 Young antelope are thrust into a strange and often cruel world.
00:04:02 They are frequently the victims of crocodiles.
00:04:07 [Music]
00:04:24 They are also often the victims of lions.
00:04:27 [Music]
00:04:57 [Music]
00:05:02 But large animals like the Cape buffalo are sometimes, though not always,
00:05:07 successful in beating off an attack by the king of beasts.
00:05:11 [Music]
00:05:26 [Music]
00:05:41 [Music]
00:06:04 A lioness locked her jaws on the throat of this wildebeest in a vice-like grip
00:06:08 from which it could not escape.
00:06:11 [Music]
00:06:15 Newborn crocodiles rarely survive beyond the first week,
00:06:19 falling easy victim to servals, civets, birds of prey, and even their own parents.
00:06:25 [Music]
00:06:29 Jackals have much to fear from giant eagles.
00:06:33 [Music]
00:06:40 The Marshall eagle is the largest and fiercest eagle on the continent of Africa.
00:06:44 He has a wingspan of about seven feet, and he eats monkeys, snakes, lizards, rabbits, and rodents.
00:06:50 He is a very powerful, very spirited bird.
00:06:55 [Music]
00:07:17 Baby leopards have much to fear from other predators
00:07:20 until they grow big and strong enough to defend themselves.
00:07:25 [Music]
00:07:28 And Africa has its share of large, dangerous animals like the rhinoceros.
00:07:33 The natives of Africa are just as unusual as its wild creatures.
00:07:37 For example, there is the Banyaruanda tribe of the former Belgian Congo,
00:07:42 which has the odd custom of chipping their teeth to points
00:07:45 because in their estimation it enhances their beauty.
00:07:48 And besides, they can make out better in a fight.
00:07:52 When this fellow bites, he's going to make a good impression.
00:07:56 They strike the top of a knife blade with a steel rod,
00:07:59 and with each strike they knock a chip off the tooth.
00:08:02 It's a very painful process, and this man will have great difficulty eating or drinking for about three weeks.
00:08:08 And believe it or not, he actually pays to have this done.
00:08:12 [Sound of a knife being chipped]
00:08:19 Now let's see what progress he made with that lower tooth.
00:08:22 [Sound of a knife being chipped]
00:08:26 A bit of an argument ensues because the patient, or should I say the victim,
00:08:30 is willing to pay five francs, but the dentist wants ten francs.
00:08:36 This woman is very excited about the whole thing.
00:08:39 [Sound of a knife being chipped]
00:08:46 Some men earn their living by capturing Africa's wild creatures for sale to zoos.
00:08:51 One of them is yours truly, capturing a python in Zambia.
00:08:55 The technique is to stand just outside of striking range.
00:08:59 You have to watch for his teeth. He has long, sharp teeth.
00:09:02 And then at the right moment, you grab him by the head.
00:09:07 I pack this python in a comfortable wooden crate and send him by air to my tax collector as a Christmas present.
00:09:15 [Sound of a python chirping]
00:09:20 This python is larger than the first.
00:09:22 The larger they are, the easier they are to catch because the slower they strike.
00:09:26 But of course, the longer their teeth, so you have to exercise a little more care.
00:09:31 [Sound of a python chirping]
00:09:38 This snake weighed more than 100 pounds.
00:09:41 [Sound of a python chirping]
00:09:45 I travel across the vast expanses of Africa in my pickup truck,
00:09:49 and my objectives on this trip, in addition to capturing animals for zoos,
00:09:53 are to bring back specimens of a new subspecies of Egyptian cobra for the American Museum of Natural History,
00:09:59 and to assist Uganda government surveyors in mapping an unexplored section of the Mountains of the Moon,
00:10:05 and to get a taste of high adventure in the years that lay ahead.
00:10:14 I often travel off the road, and sometimes my only means of navigation is a compass.
00:10:24 If I head for the ridge in the center, I'll be right on course.
00:10:30 I pitched my camp here in Tanzania, and one day as I walked to my safari truck, I saw a startling sight.
00:10:38 A full-grown cheetah.
00:10:40 I ran for my rifle because in this district, cheetah are classed as vermin since they kill so many domestic animals,
00:10:45 and the government encouraged me to collect any I found.
00:10:49 Cheetah are the fastest four-legged animals in the world.
00:10:55 [Cheetah chirping]
00:11:05 Chances are this fellow is half a mile away by now.
00:11:10 In most countries and colonies of Africa, cheetah are classed as royal game.
00:11:15 The problem is you are not permitted to shoot them under any circumstances, but in this district, it's just the reverse.
00:11:22 Oh well, it's a nice sunny day, so I think I'll go for a walk through the felt and see what wildlife this district holds in store for me.
00:11:35 This rhino is standing just about where I have to walk because there is marshy ground to both left and right.
00:11:42 I'm going to try to skirt as far to the left as I can, but I don't want to provoke him if I can help it since I don't have a rhino on my game license.
00:11:52 This rhino weighs about two tons, so game license or no game license, I'm going to slip a cartridge into the chamber just in case.
00:12:02 But I'm not going to shoot if I can possibly help it.
00:12:12 One step closer and he would have gotten a bullet.
00:12:22 Nope, you just can't go for a walk nowadays.
00:12:28 Rubies. Tanzania is rich in minerals, particularly in gemstones.
00:12:34 And practically every rock on this outcropping had about eight or ten rubies in it.
00:12:43 These are genuine rubies.
00:12:46 But I didn't have a geologist's hammer or a pick, and I couldn't very well get them out with my fingernails or my teeth, so they're still there.
00:13:10 I got out my pocket chart and made a notation of exactly where this place is in case I decide to come back someday and put a road through here.
00:13:21 Here in Tanzania, flies are a scourge to man and beast alike.
00:13:28 Looks like a couple of Thompson's Gazelles squaring off for some sort of match.
00:13:36 Don't look now, but I think there's going to be a fight.
00:13:43 I knew it, I knew it.
00:13:48 I fought like that once, and just look what happened to me.
00:13:58 By George, looks like a fight.
00:14:08 Lions. A pride of six.
00:14:11 One hiding up in some rocks and five out in the open.
00:14:14 The best thing to do in a case like this is to walk right on past and show no sign of fear, because contrary to what most people think, lions do not normally eat people.
00:14:24 If you run from a lion, he's bound to give chase. That is the worst possible thing you could do.
00:14:34 But lions are like people. They all have different personalities. Where one will decamp, another will stand his ground.
00:14:48 This third fellow seemed even less inclined to move than the first two.
00:14:55 The next two didn't even look friendly. Notice the hair on the back of his neck.
00:15:06 Nope, they're just putting on a performance. This is simply a demonstration to try to frighten me off. They don't really mean it.
00:15:16 This last fellow was a downright coward.
00:15:32 Guinea fowl are common here on the plains of Central Africa, but they have many natural enemies, and they must be constantly on the alert because sometimes death stalks just around the corner.
00:15:43 In the uppermost branches of a tree high overhead sits an African hawk eagle, and he scans these guinea fowl very intently because he is hungry.
00:16:06 This is how he captures his prey.
00:16:15 Like all birds of prey, he kills with his talons, not with his beak. Birds of prey use their beaks only for shredding meat into bite-sized pieces, and do not attack or defend themselves with their beaks.
00:16:43 Vultures, hundreds of vultures, and as I look below I see the cause of it. A hyena is dragging a wildebeest carcass through the water. He's got it there so the vultures and jackals can't get to it.
00:16:58 He's been feeding on it for so long he just can't take another bite, but he'll be darned if he'll let anybody else have any.
00:17:06 Vultures wait patiently. Others soar overhead.
00:17:22 And the jackals wait patiently.
00:17:36 Well, now it looks like he's had his fill and the vultures wade in.
00:17:54 Vultures spend more time fighting with one another than they do in getting down to eating. They never do seem to get along with their own kind.
00:18:05 I found a baby chimpanzee, and at first she was trembling with fear, but in a few minutes she grabbed my jacket with her little fists as if she was looking for protection from the big bad world around her.
00:18:16 I guess she thought I looked like a reasonable facsimile of her mother. I called her Trudy, and she now lives in a zoo in America. At this point she had a tummy like a beach ball and a face like a dried up prune.
00:18:29 She was a very clever little ape. Within three or four days I taught her to come to me when I called her by name, which is pretty good going for a wild creature.
00:18:57 Next day her relatives paid me a social call and stole some food from my truck.
00:19:26 I loaded my truck with animals for the trip to the nearest airport. This is a cheetah cub.
00:19:38 Next, a large crate of colorful East African lovebirds, also known as fisher's parakeets.
00:19:49 And then we loaded boxes of poisonous snakes.
00:19:57 I extended the range of my truck from the normal 300 miles to better than 1,000 miles by carrying these spare jerry cans.
00:20:18 Now watch how Trudy grabs my bush jacket with her little fists. Once she gets hold of me like that, you just can't get her off.
00:20:25 If you try, she will scream and cry like a little baby, and it's tough to drive with her between you and the wheel, but she's just got to sit right there.
00:20:36 On the way I saw some Thompson's gazelles, which are characterized by their windshield wipers in the rear.
00:20:47 Their chief natural enemy is the wild dog, which gangs up in packs and runs them down.
00:20:54 Another one of their natural enemies is the lion. It's no secret this fellow just had a full meal.
00:21:00 But their fleet-footedness is the thing that saves them because they can generally outrun their predators.
00:21:09 I saw many wildebeest, which were having their young about this time of year.
00:21:24 The men of the village don't do this, and they think the women are absolutely mad.
00:21:30 They paint their faces the same way, but this pigment lasts only about three or four days, so they have to go through this whole process at least twice a week.
00:21:42 Little boys played strange games that I never could quite figure out.
00:21:47 A unique thing about pygmies is that without exception all the women have masculine faces.
00:22:02 Then the chief showed me their favorite musical instrument, which they call a lukambi.
00:22:07 It is a hollow wooden sounding board on which they have mounted flattened steel nails.
00:22:12 And oddly enough, it is exactly the same sort of instrument natives use in widely scattered parts of Africa.
00:22:20 I asked the pygmies if they would like to go for a ride in my truck.
00:22:23 They thought this would be a great and glorious adventure.
00:22:26 The whole village turned out in a single file.
00:22:43 Sixty seconds after I drove up, I had 39 pygmies on top of and inside of my truck.
00:22:49 I bet the Ford Motor Company never knew they could carry this many people.
00:22:55 This fellow said he had a spear he would like to trade with me.
00:23:06 I just happened to have a piece of cloth I bought in Nairobi for this purpose.
00:23:11 Ah ha, that really struck his fancy.
00:23:14 Well, it's a trade. The spear is mine, the cloth is his.
00:23:18 We each thought we got a bargain.
00:23:33 This fellow that made the trade with me is a very bashful pygmy.
00:23:36 He wants to go for a ride in the truck too, but he doesn't want to brazenly climb aboard without first asking my permission.
00:23:43 I never saw such a polite pygmy before.
00:23:48 And now we're off for an exciting ride at all of two miles per hour.
00:23:53 I was afraid that if I went any faster I'd lose those fellows on top.
00:23:57 After living with these tiny people for a few weeks, I visited a Bantu village at the edge of the forest.
00:24:12 It was here that I saw how they operate their old-fashioned muzzle loaders.
00:24:17 They pour some black powder down the barrel,
00:24:29 slide in a paper seal,
00:24:38 then drop in a piece of lead fashioned to the shape of a bullet.
00:24:42 Whoops, time out for snuff. He can't do his work properly without snuff.
00:24:46 He puts as much powder up his nose as he puts down the barrel.
00:24:54 Now he cocks the hammer and puts a percussion cap on the striker base.
00:25:02 Then he slowly closes the hammer down on it.
00:25:05 Now all he has to do in order to fire is simply cock the hammer.
00:25:10 Now he's going to demonstrate his prowess with this noisy weapon.
00:25:23 Missed by 15 feet.
00:25:26 When I arrived in Uganda, I made arrangements with a game ranger to use the launch which the government put at his disposal
00:25:33 I'm searching for monitor lizards and these four-foot lizards frequent the banks of rivers in Central Africa.
00:25:39 I'm now on the Victoria Nile between Lake Victoria and Lake Albert and I'm going to scan both banks carefully for these giant monitors.
00:26:00 On the way I saw many of the colorful birds which are so characteristic of this part of Africa.
00:26:05 Marabou storks, pelicans, Egyptian geese, darters and cormorants.
00:26:13 This hippo ran along an underwater plateau and then suddenly he stepped off the edge.
00:26:31 A yellow-billed kite spotted a dead fish floating on the surface and he swooped down and snatched it up in his talons.
00:26:40 I saw many crocodiles along the banks of this river.
00:26:50 Then I saw some cattle egrets landing on a mud bank.
00:26:57 Ah-ha, it wasn't a mud bank at all. It was a herd of sleeping hippos. You get lots of surprises out here.
00:27:13 Crocodiles often wander far from water at night but seldom more than eight or ten feet from it during daylight hours.
00:27:24 They have the odd custom of sleeping with their mouths wide open. Notice all the flies in this fella's mouth.
00:27:34 Boy, I hope those flies don't drown.
00:27:41 Then I saw some hippos kissing and a couple play fighting.
00:27:57 Monitor lizards, just what I was looking for. They're digging in a hole in the sand bank for turtle eggs.
00:28:04 Hippos and predators like eggs of all kinds, birds' eggs, crocodile eggs and turtle eggs.
00:28:11 And when they find one, they gulp it down voraciously.
00:28:24 I disembarked at a landing that the game ranger had erected nearby and I instructed the crew to return before nightfall with my natives and my camping gear.
00:28:33 I surveyed this area for a campsite which will serve as a base for capturing these giant lizards.
00:28:47 One morning while my camp was under construction, I went out for a walk and on what was practically my front lawn, there was a monitor.
00:29:16 I tried to catch for him, but he turned the tables on me and for a minute I was wondering who was trying to capture whom.
00:29:22 He has very powerful jaws and sharp teeth and you must be very careful how you grab him not to lose a finger.
00:29:43 Now it's all over but to grab him by the head, but this is easier said than done because he's not going to cooperate one bit.
00:29:52 This is what is known as having a lizard by the tail.
00:30:08 I packed him in a comfortable wooden crate and sent him off by air express to my animal agent in America.
00:30:20 I packed my animals and my gear in my truck and I headed for the Serengeti plains of Tanzania.
00:30:40 (Music)
00:31:09 (Music)
00:31:18 At about this time of the year, lionesses are having their young on the Serengeti plains.
00:31:23 They usually have three or four cubs to a litter and stay with them for about two years to protect them from danger when they're tiny and to teach them the fine art of hunting.
00:31:33 Lion cubs don't know all the fine points of stalking their prey by instinct. They have to learn these through long hard hours of instruction from their mother.
00:31:42 If they make a mistake, they get cuffed good and hard and they learn mighty fast.
00:31:52 Lions show real affection for one another pretty much as in the case of human beings. They have a very closely knit family life.
00:32:04 But when a lioness has her young, she is usually in a very nasty protective disposition and this is no time to disturb her or to get too close.
00:32:15 But she is very patient and accommodating toward her cubs. She is literally a mobile milk bar out here in the hot dusty plains of Tanzania.
00:32:26 A unique thing about lionesses is that they will nurse cubs from another litter besides their own. They never cared less whose cubs they are.
00:32:33 For example, here you'll see that one cub is much larger than the others which shows that this lioness is babysitting for another lioness who's gone off hunting. Sort of a cooperative society.
00:32:46 Yep, life is one big bowl of cherries when you're a lion cub. Ma and Pa do all the work and you have all the fun.
00:32:53 These cubs will be full grown lions in less than three years. Adult males weigh about 450 pounds, adult females about 350 pounds.
00:33:03 (music)
00:33:31 Animals can tell when lions are out to make a kill and when they know that they're not, they will stand by and let one pass very closely.
00:33:39 It's sort of a sixth sense that animals have that lets them know this. But these wildebeest and zebra know that this old boy is up to no good so they give him a wide berth.
00:33:48 Actually, he is frightening them to a point downwind where the lionesses are lying in wait with their cubs because it is the lionesses that usually do the killing for a pride, not the males.
00:33:59 Males will condescend to help but they leave the dirty work up to the ladies, pretty much as in the case of human beings.
00:34:06 There is not a tree for miles around and it's 110 degrees in the shade.
00:34:13 (music)
00:34:28 I wish that old man would hurry up and bring home the bacon.
00:34:32 So he accommodates and shifts into second.
00:34:40 Now he shifts into high and this ostrich decides this is no place for him.
00:34:47 And these two hardebeest say, "Boy, let's get out of here. This is no place for us."
00:35:11 In less than an hour, there is nothing left but skin and bones. Lions know what it is to go hungry.
00:35:17 Sometimes they do without meat for four or five days. So when they have a kill, they make the most of it while it's available.
00:35:24 They literally gorge themselves, leaving nothing behind if they can possibly help it.
00:35:34 Now I headed north and on the way I crossed an improvised log bridge.
00:35:39 The unsettling thing about these bridges is that you never know what load they're built to withstand until you get to the other side.
00:35:46 Then it might be too late.
00:35:49 On the way I saw one of the most fabulous sights in all of Africa.
00:35:54 Kalambo Falls, the highest waterfall on the continent, twice as high as Victoria, a 720-foot drop.
00:36:01 It's situated way down at the southern tip of Lake Tanzania on the Tanzania-Zambia border.
00:36:17 This waterfall is so high, the entire river atomizes before it strikes bottom.
00:36:23 So it's a perfectly silent waterfall. There's no thunder here whatsoever.
00:36:28 Its name Kalambo means greatest of the great in the local vernacular.
00:36:48 Zebras have few pleasures in life, but this is one of them.
00:36:58 On the way I discovered that I had several broken spring blades and I took time out to apply homemade steel clamps.
00:37:05 During the years that this safari lasted, I had 19 broken spring blades and 15 flat tires.
00:37:11 I brought this truck to Africa on a freighter and sold it in Cape Town a few years later.
00:37:15 It is now owned by a man in the suburbs who uses it for selling vegetables.
00:37:25 The natives really were a great help. I don't know what I would have done without them.
00:37:54 I made a base camp here and one day as I returned from a hunt, I heard a very strange sound.
00:38:05 Two young leopards.
00:38:12 I took a quick look around for mother leopard because she would be very displeased if she knew I was going to adopt her cubs.
00:38:19 They were about three weeks old and weighed two pounds a piece. I called them Sputnik and Mutnik.
00:38:30 As far as I know, mother leopard never did follow me back to camp. At least I never saw her.
00:38:37 They were so tiny, they just didn't know what fear was. They are now full grown and they live in the zoo in Rochester, New York.
00:38:50 I had some dehydrated milk already prepared for my baby antelope and of course I always carry baby bottles with me when I'm on safari.
00:38:57 They're one of the most useful items of equipment.
00:39:15 Mother leopard must have been away a long, long time.
00:39:19 I fed them up on calcium gluconate, cod liver oil, vitamins, milk and meat and they doubled their weight in a month.
00:39:26 They're easy to raise and they make wonderful pets.
00:39:37 One day as they were playing at my feet, one of my natives shouted.
00:39:45 And there he was, a black mamba, the fastest and deadliest snake in Africa.
00:39:52 I ran for my snake stick because these snakes are highly sought after by zoos in America and I'm going to try to capture him alive.
00:39:59 The poison of a mamba acts very much like the poison of a cobra, paralyzing the nerve centers of the body, but it acts much more quickly than cobra venom.
00:40:09 I had no serum for the bite of a mamba, so I had to be very careful how I handled it.
00:40:21 Mambas have the characteristic of traveling with their heads held high above the ground, which makes it very difficult to pin them down.
00:40:36 When a mamba is angry, he flattens his neck.
00:40:48 There, now I have his head pinned down.
00:40:54 And now it's all over but to pick him up and pop him into a sack and send him by air to America.
00:41:00 He is perfectly uninjured and in excellent condition and he measured exactly eight feet long.
00:41:08 Mambas are long, thin, graceful snakes and they have real poise.
00:41:18 But life on safari has its more prosaic moments. For example, sometimes you have to hang up your pajamas.
00:41:26 And there are camp pets that require attention from time to time.
00:41:31 Natives come to me constantly looking for medical care, like this Maasai tribesman who has a bad eye infection.
00:41:38 These tribal natives look upon all Europeans camped in remote bush country as doctors.
00:41:44 They believe we all have magical powers and every day I have at least three or four natives coming to me looking for medical care.
00:41:56 I've given him some penicillin capsules and a cup of water. But if you remember, these Maasai drink about as much water as a Frenchman.
00:42:03 So I had a devil of a time getting him to swallow these capsules.
00:42:18 Notice how reluctant he is about the whole thing.
00:42:23 I hope he doesn't think much of that drink.
00:42:31 I asked this fine looking tribesman to come back the next morning for some more penicillin.
00:42:36 His trouble was cleared up in one week.
00:42:44 There are lots of chores to take care of around camp. My baby Reedbot needed her bottle every four or five hours.
00:42:59 And Trudy whooped and hollered like a little girl looking for attention.
00:43:04 And I had to take time out occasionally for a bath for myself. And out here there was such a water shortage that I had to bathe in dishwater and save the water after the bath.
00:43:16 Meanwhile, Sputnik and Mutnik fought over last night's kudu bone.
00:43:25 Leopards grow very fast and in just seven months these leopards grew to be a real armful. But chimps don't grow nearly as fast as leopards and every time I took these beasts out of the compound, Trudy ran for the truck.
00:43:43 She wanted no part of these animals anymore.
00:43:48 Old Sputnik loved to play rough house and you just couldn't be too rough with him. You could drop him and kick him and step on him right up to the point of breaking his ribs and he'd come back for more. He loved it.
00:43:59 But the thing he loved the best was to be laid on his back and tickled.
00:44:16 Sputnik had a passion for going for the back of my neck. After I'd played rough house with him, the back of my neck was scratched and bleeding, but of course it was all in fun.
00:44:38 Sputnik weighed about 75 pounds at this point.
00:44:47 Boy, I wish he'd leave the back of my neck alone.
00:45:03 Sputnik's favorite playmate was Jackie, a dog that belonged to a professional hunter in Livingston. And although they were about the same size and weight, you can see that nature intended them for entirely different functions by the difference in the size of their paws.
00:45:18 These two fellas were fast friends. They really loved each other.
00:45:27 These are two lions in the Springs Game Reserve in the Transvaal. I included these pictures to show that alongside of Sputnik and Mutnik, these two fellas had absolutely no manners whatsoever. They are not my lions, I'm just visiting them.
00:45:48 Each time I played with these beasts, it cost me a shirt, a pair of pants, and a bit of hide.
00:46:08 There's the beginning of the end of my shirt.
00:46:24 One day, a little boy came running to my camp and told me that a native in the nearby village had been bitten by a cobra a few hours before.
00:46:36 I grabbed my hypodermic syringe and serum and I followed him.
00:46:56 But I was too late.
00:47:09 I heard a native woman shout "noha," which in the Selozi language means snake.
00:47:17 It was an Egyptian cobra. I couldn't find a stick long enough to pin him down with, so I'll use a twig and capture him by distracting his attention with the kerchief while I grab his jaws from behind with the other hand.
00:47:30 He is a very deadly snake and I've got to be certain of my aim.
00:47:35 This is my helper.
00:48:04 This is the snake the American Museum of Natural History was looking for.
00:48:23 I believe that Egyptian cobras from this district are a new subspecies, so I sent him off to the museum by air express.
00:48:39 A couple of months later, I pitched my camp in a village of bushmen and recorded their strange language for a professor of anthropology in America.
00:48:48 I asked this bushman to tell me how he collected honey in the forest and I took it down on my tape recorder.
00:48:59 And then I played it back to him.
00:49:10 He refused to believe that that was his own voice. When it was all over, he told me that the little man in the black box said exactly the same thing the same way he did.
00:49:24 After recording his voice for posterity, I gave him some stainless steel mirrors and inexpensive knives. Then I had a chat with the induna, or local chief.
00:49:35 He had a sad story to tell me. He said that a lion had killed their hunting dogs. This was a real catastrophe for them because they depended upon their dogs to help them get fresh meat.
00:49:45 He asked me if I would shoot the lion. I promised I would look for him the next day and shoot him if possible.
00:49:55 I started out the next morning with my two best Bantu trackers from the carcass of one of the dogs, which showed lots of fresh lion tracks.
00:50:03 Judging by the size of the tracks, he was a very large lion indeed, and judging by the freshness, he was very close. We knew we would come upon him in a matter of minutes.
00:50:21 [gunshot]
00:50:39 >> The lion must have wounded him badly. In Diowana, Banduki Piga Simba, which in Swahili means "Yes, Bwana, the gun did strike the lion."
00:50:49 [music]
00:51:09 [music]
00:51:29 [music]
00:51:49 [music]
00:52:04 >> After me, George.
00:52:07 [gunshot]
00:52:18 >> The third shot went through his spine and he died just as he struck me. He was a full-grown male that weighed about 450 pounds.
00:52:26 I asked my native to go to the nearest village and bring back a lot of others to help carry this beast back to the camp for skinning.
00:52:37 That African who was waving his arms in the foreground was accidentally shot and killed the next day by another native with the same rifle that shot that lion.
00:52:46 It is a good object lesson in the fact that you can never be too careful in the handling of firearms.
00:52:51 [music]
00:53:19 >> Then I headed for Fort Portal, Uganda, where I had been invited by the government to witness the rare event of exploration in modern times.
00:53:29 There is a huge marketplace here for natives. Fort Portal is the traditional jumping-off point for expeditions up the Mountains of the Moon, otherwise known as the Rwenzori Range.
00:53:39 And it was here that I met with the chief mapper for Uganda. He explained that the government is sending an expedition to the top of the Mountains of the Moon to map the upper reaches of the Nyamagosani River,
00:53:50 which has never been seen or mapped above the 7,000-foot level before. He explained that the river valley is constantly shrouded in clouds, and aerial photos have shown nothing of it because of the solid cloud coverage.
00:54:03 According to the government, no one to their knowledge has ever set foot in that river valley above the 7,000-foot level before.
00:54:11 Three weeks later, we started out at the north end of Lake Edward with 50 African porters. The first order of business was a negotiation over wages, and this consumed exactly two hours.
00:54:22 [chatter]
00:54:32 After compromising on a wage, we got together the food for the porters. We had 150 pounds of dried hippo meat, 600 pounds of peanuts, 1,200 pounds of cassava flour, and a live goat and sheep to provide fresh meat.
00:54:48 We doled out blankets because where we're going, the altitude is high and the temperature is low. Ruanzori is higher than any of the Alps in Europe. The summit is at 16,800 feet above sea level, and there's ice at the top year-round.
00:55:03 Headloads were weighed out at 50 pounds apiece. We have a 50-mile walk ahead of us because we're crossing the range in the long direction from south to north.
00:55:12 [singing]
00:55:24 Now starts a long, hard three-week climb, which cost us the life of one man before it was finished.
00:55:33 Cheetah wandered in off the plains to the foothills of Ruanzori, and it was here that we saw more than a dozen different kinds of lizards.
00:55:44 The streams were numbingly cold because they were the runoff from glaciers.
00:55:49 [music]
00:56:00 We saw lots of game in the rainforest on the approach.
00:56:07 Even a few pythons.
00:56:12 Soon we left far below us the villages from which our Bakonjo tribesmen came.
00:56:18 We picked these Bakonjo because they live in the foothills and are accustomed to carrying heavy loads up steep slopes. They are tough, wiry Africans.
00:56:29 The camps that we saw along the way were talking to each other in Chimpanese.
00:56:36 We chopped firewood at the end of the seventh day at an elevation of about 7,000 feet.
00:56:43 Some of us camped in a clearing on the right.
00:56:47 [singing]
00:56:52 And some on the left.
00:56:58 One of our men caught a tree hyrax in a snare, and they carved it up for supper that night.
00:57:03 [singing]
00:57:18 It was here that we saw the typical creeping, crawling creatures so characteristic of this part of Africa,
00:57:24 including the safari ant, the most insidious insect in all of Africa, bar none.
00:57:30 At the end of the eighth day, our natives collected moss for mattresses.
00:57:37 Then they broke out their cassava flour, which is made by grinding the roots of the manioc tree.
00:57:41 This is their staple diet. They mix it with water, stir it over a fire, and roll it into little balls and pop it into their mouths.
00:57:49 And it tastes terrible.
00:57:54 [singing]
00:58:03 But they love it.
00:58:07 They also had mutton for the evening meal.
00:58:13 The feed didn't go much for the cassava flour, so we broke out some tin goods.
00:58:22 The man on the left is the head of the Department of Lands and Surveys for the Uganda government.
00:58:38 And this is a British mountain climber who was invited to guide us across the ice fields.
00:58:43 He's had considerable experience climbing the Himalayas of Tibet.
00:58:47 And this seedy-looking character is yours truly.
00:58:54 After a satisfying meal, the boys fashion pipes from long-stemmed jungle plants.
00:59:10 And then the clouds rolled in. Ruanzori is almost constantly shrouded in clouds.
00:59:21 In a few minutes, the visibility dropped to a few yards and it was cold and clammy.
00:59:26 This is typical Ruanzori weather.
00:59:42 Next morning, we got up early.
00:59:46 We took sightings on the elevations of nearby peaks and found in many instances the latest government charts were in error.
00:59:56 And now the temperature dropped close to the freezing point.
01:00:02 There is the valley through which the government suspects the Nyamagosani River flows.
01:00:07 They're not sure because it has never been seen above the 7,000-foot level before, and we are much higher than that now.
01:00:13 As usual, it is shrouded in heavy mist.
01:00:17 And there is the source of that river at 13,500 feet above sea level.
01:00:21 This is the first time it has ever been seen or filmed.
01:00:26 The river had an eerie appearance because it was so heavily shrouded in mist.
01:00:30 We wanted to map the upper reaches of this river, but we were defeated by logistics
01:00:34 because we had a seven-day march to a point where an advance party had cashed away food for the porters at a forward base
01:00:40 and had only a seven-day supply of porter food remaining,
01:00:44 which meant that we had to start out the very next day if we were to keep from running out of food.
01:00:49 This happened because our porters were eating at a higher rate than we had calculated on.
01:00:59 The river flowed through a forest which was festooned with hanging moss.
01:01:14 We saw a placid pool at the 12,000-foot level.
01:01:18 We checked our charts for the best approach to the rock divide which separates us from the snow peaks,
01:01:23 which is where the advance party had cashed away the food.
01:01:26 And now starts the hardest, coldest part of the climb.
01:01:37 It rained for 17 days out of the three weeks, which made the rocks doubly slippery and treacherous.
01:01:47 All of our gear was constantly soaking because of the incessant rain
01:01:51 and because the sun never shone long enough for us to dry it out.
01:01:55 When the temperature dropped below freezing, we found we often had ice in the tent in the mornings.
01:02:00 One of the men in the advance party died of pneumonia four days after they crossed the tree line.
01:02:05 He was a 31-year-old Briton.
01:02:18 This is the first time in my life that I had ever climbed a really big mountain, and it will probably be the last.
01:02:29 We saw a lake which was discovered two years previously, but which remained unnamed.
01:02:34 It is the policy of the Uganda government to name new geographical features after local names.
01:02:39 Our guide said he calls it Kachopi.
01:02:42 Henceforth, on all government charts, this will be known as Lake Kachopi.
01:02:48 This is the top of the rock divide which separates us from the snow peaks.
01:03:11 And there at the foot of this glacier are two tiny huts.
01:03:15 In one of these, the advance party cashed away food and left behind one of their men,
01:03:20 who's been awaiting our arrival for one week.
01:03:30 Needless to say, he was very pleased to see us.
01:03:35 He is a young Oxford graduate who is now in the government service in Tanzania.
01:03:42 He said that he had taken sightings on the elevation and azimuths of nearby peaks
01:03:46 and found many errors in the latest government charts just as we had.
01:03:50 It's not hard to realize when you consider that Rwenzori was discovered less than 100 years ago,
01:03:55 and a good deal of the upper reaches still remain incompletely manned.
01:04:05 After a warm meal in his hut, we started out across the ice fields,
01:04:08 which, believe it or not, are right on the equator.
01:04:12 There is ice up here all year round.
01:04:14 We are at the top of Stanley Mountain, at the very summit of the Mountains of the Moon,
01:04:18 with Uganda on our left and the Congo on our right.
01:04:26 These glaciers are actually rivers of ice.
01:04:41 Our progress here dropped to less than one half mile per day,
01:04:44 not only because of the rarefied air, but because of the steepness of some of the glaciers that we had to cross.
01:04:51 There were huge crevasses, which were about 200 feet deep, covered by a thin crust of ice,
01:04:56 and we had to be very careful how we walked across these areas not to fall through.
01:05:01 These are the very first drops of the White Nile from a glacier melting at the top of Rwenzori.
01:05:06 These drops joined together with the drops from other glaciers to form tiny rivulets,
01:05:11 which raced down the rocky faces.
01:05:13 These rivulets joined together to form little streams that run through the vegetation a few thousand feet below,
01:05:19 and the streams combined to form a real river, which ultimately becomes the mighty Nile of Egypt.
01:05:30 At this point, the entire volume of the Nile surges through a narrow cleft of rock only 19 feet wide as it races toward Lake Albert.
01:05:39 There is tremendous thunder and power in this tiny little chasm.
01:05:47 So it is here on the roof of Africa that the Nile is born nearly 4,000 miles from its mouth in the Mediterranean.
01:05:57 From rivers of ice to mountains of fire, less than 100 miles from Rwenzori, a volcano was in full eruption.
01:06:05 I asked the owner of a light plane if he would fly me over it.
01:06:08 He said he would be pleased to as he'd seen the smoke from the eruption a few days before
01:06:12 and was just as curious to see it at close range as I was.
01:06:16 This volcano was born from a perfectly flat forest when a fissure suddenly opened up in the ground and molten lava flew skyward.
01:06:23 It was one of the rare instances in recorded times that a volcano was born from a perfectly flat surface.
01:06:44 We saw great destruction to the forest below us as a result of the lava flows.
01:06:50 A river of molten lava flowed for 16 miles through the forest causing the destruction of thousands of acres of woodland.
01:06:57 Those patches of white are steam resulting from the rain that's falling now, vaporizing when it strikes the hot lava.
01:07:06 [Sound of helicopter]
01:07:34 We felt intense heat inside the cockpit on the side facing the eruption.
01:08:01 This is how the sun looked through the column of steam coming out of the crater.
01:08:06 Back down on the ground I hired four Congolese to carry my photo and camping gear and we went on a foot safari to get a closer look.
01:08:14 The acid fallout from the crater killed all the vegetation for a radius of 20 miles.
01:08:19 The trees are completely denuded of their leaves from the acid fallout.
01:08:26 The lava fields were very, very hot and we had to step lively.
01:08:42 It was raining and when the rain struck the hot lava it vaporized instantly, cutting our visibility down to a few yards.
01:08:49 At times we didn't know whether we were walking toward the volcano or away from it.
01:08:53 The only way we could tell was by homing in on the tremendous roar and sometimes this was very deceptive.
01:09:03 We had to call to each other constantly to keep from being separated and in spite of that one of my natives was lost for more than an hour.
01:09:14 When the rain stopped the visibility cleared and we found this kingfisher which apparently died from the intense gases coming out of the crater.
01:09:22 Now we were walking across scoriaceous lava, that is huge blocks of very jagged lava which is sharp as glass and you must be very careful how you walk across it not to let the calves of your legs rub against it or it would cut them to ribbons.
01:09:46 When we were within half a mile of the eruption we were walking on about 14 inches of porous black ash which crunched audibly as we stepped across it.
01:09:55 Some of this light black ash was being carried more than 20 miles away by the winds aloft.
01:10:02 Molten lava flowed around tree trunks and the intense heat consumed the lower part of the trunk, leaving gaping holes and you had to be very careful not to step in one of these.
01:10:15 The temperature of molten lava is about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit or about the same as molten steel.
01:10:28 I threw a rock in this river of molten lava and it bounced and floated because it was the same density as the river itself.
01:10:45 There were huge boulders floating in the river, boulders as large as automobiles.
01:11:13 This lava is coming from about 30 miles below the earth's surface.
01:11:24 This river is 100 feet wide and it is flowing through the west branch of the Great Rift Valley in the eastern part of the Congo in Kivu province.
01:11:34 My natives were deathly afraid of this volcano, not only for obvious reasons but because they were so steeped in superstition, they thought this was their fire god and they thought that if they got too close he would recognize their faces.
01:11:47 So I had to pay them a bonus to get them up this close.
01:12:08 In spite of the bonus, they moaned and groaned and groused like a bunch of G.I.s the whole trip.
01:12:14 You never heard so many tales of woe from so few men before in your life.
01:12:20 In spots, hydrogen gas seeped to the surface and burned and when hydrogen burns it forms water vapor and this is one of the rare examples of newborn water on the face of the earth.
01:12:40 [Helicopter]
01:12:54 [Helicopter]
01:13:18 [Helicopter]
01:13:34 This volcano erupted continuously for five months and then after causing destruction to thousands of acres of woodland, the eruption slackened.
01:13:48 And then I could look right down into the throat and see the boiling, seething lake of molten lava at the very bottom.
01:13:55 I came to Africa in a quest for high adventure and now I was leaving it with the feeling that I had found it indeed and more than a fair share for one man.
01:14:06 [Music]