Who has not dreamed of in childhood to be an explorer and with practicing the profession of white hunter? At least, in my generation was common, when children played in organizing exploratory expeditions and hunting items in search of big game, usually, course, in an imaginary Africa that we dreamed about desolate fields Navalcarnero, the place where I spent my summers. My childhood idol, between browsers, Allan Quatermain was, the protagonist of the novel by Rider Haggard "King Solomon's Mines", that unforgettably starred in films Stewart Granger. But it was a fictional character and, to grow, vanished from my admiration. Then I found a real substitute. Livingstone seemed a little meapilas, Burton a cocky, Stanley Speke something silly and selfish and cruel type. Reviewing the biography of them and a few other, Suddenly I noticed the quiet of a Scottish figure far less known than the previous: Joseph Thomson. When you read about it, his image was growing before me and today is the most admired African explorer.
My childhood idol, between browsers, Allan Quatermain was, the protagonist of the novel by Rider Haggard 'King Solomon's Mines’
Thomson crossed Eastern Africa 1883, through the warlike country of the Masai, between the Indian coast and Lake Victoria, unlike other browsers, as Stanley Burton, in its budget did not include almost no money on gunmen, but interpreters. And without serious setbacks, without always fighting and negotiating with local tribes step, was the first white man who managed to make that journey on foot. When he reached the shores of Victoria, donned a kilt and played a "jig" with bagpipes.
At thirty-seven years, go after other African territories, ill with malaria and died in London. Rescued his last words here: "I am doomed to be a bum. If I had the strength to put my boots and walk one hundred meters, I would go back to Africa ".
With the white hunters something similar happened to me. As a child he admired Gregory Peck in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and Clark Gable in "Mogambo", Who knows if it hovered around the haunting Ava Gardner. But growing, I found a real character. And so I found Frederick Selous, English aristocrat, when he was a child, renounced his inheritance and took off to Africa for hunting. There was a butcher, other, and considered the game as part of natural process, which requires certain rules were very strict sports. Africa ran from the tip of Cape Town to the plains of Tanzanian park that now bears his name. He died there during World War I., near the river Beho Beho, achieved in the face by a German sniper shot.
Two years ago, I visited his grave, near the place where he fell. A single gravestone covers the grave. It is a place frequented by lions, animals that had always admired Selous. During his lifetime, lion caught numerous specimens, a feline who once wrote: "It has two essential requirements for earthly happiness: good appetite and no scruples ".
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