The following extracts may be of assistance to the
adventurer or just good reading. We will change the advice on a regular
basis.
"It is customary in these cases, when approaching human habitations in a car, to depress the button of the electric horn and to keep it depressed until the entire population is assembled to greet you, and to answer any inquiries you may wish to make. It struck me at first as discourteous, but I found that this was merely the prejudice of ignorance, and that the kindly peasantry would be hurt by any omission." Orde Wingate. Libyan Desert. 83.287.
"Aboriginals in this area are not found in large numbers, and, as a rule, wander in small bands up to half a dozen. Our experience has been that if left alone or made to appreciate during brief periods of acquaintance the privacy of a white man's camp, they give no trouble and are not antagonistic. The only instance of friction was near Sladen Waters in the Rawlinson Range, when on the night of 26 October 1932 two rushed into camp about 8 p.m. and were in the act of spearing O'Grady and me, when our camel boys saw them and gave such howls of terror that they were themselves apparently frightened and deterred from their intention."
Tevry. Central Australia. 84505
"Such terms as 'hostile natives, 'savages,' which I have seen in print should not be applied to the natives. Handled in the right way and kept out of one's camp they are certainly a help, not a danger or menace to travellers. Our planes were always left some 200 yards from the camp at Ilbpilla, in the cabin were emergency rations and other goods; but although there were some thirty natives camped in the locality nothing was ever stolen."
Mackay. Central Australia. 84513
"Unexpected hostility was encountered at a series of hamlets known as Karakaiya, but calm was restored when it was found that the natives did not interfere with the patrol as long as it kept out of the gardens."
Chinnery. Central New Guinea. 84405.
"I now made a practice of building a parapet round the camp. This gave the men confidence at night and was useful for keeping the Dankali out during the day. It is the custom for the traveller in these parts to take hostages from the tribe in whose territory he is encamped, only freeing the last hostage when he can induce some one to take his place. In practice of course this system is not always applicable. The chieftain, or balabat, who is with you stands up as darkness falls and cries out the traditional warning, which removes from the camp all responsibility should they shoot any one approaching during the hours of darkness." Thesiger. Danakil. 854.
Save disappointment by realizing early that hours of moving, halting and camping depend more on the camel men or transport drivers than on you. Fall in with local custom as far as possible, though you can generally decide which day to move and which to halt. Make precise plans between the guide and the leader of the baggage train on chosen halts and camping grounds, and give the leader of any detached party full knowledge of intentions.
"Along caravan routes the choice has already been made centuries ago and it is difficult to make the guide camp far from his regular places, which are fixed by necessities of water and fodder. One can, with tact, arrange for the midday halt to be made where one pleases by seeing that the day's fodder is carried from the last night's camping ground. Persians have a natural love for picnics and the beauties of scenery, and can be induced to settle to rest in lonely places more easily than Arabs." Freya Stark.
"Where it is not easily possible to get a single man across a torrent a point must be found where the torrent curves sharply, so that the first man with a rope tied to him can be lowered down the torrent to the opposite bank. Having got a man across, a rope was fixed between large boulders. A strong V-shaped juniper root was next found. This was placed inverted over the rope and from it suspended loops of rope in which was placed the load or man. This contrivance was then pulled across the stream, the juniper offering but little frictional resistance. It was in fact a primitive form of the rope and breeches buoy by means of which shipwrecked mariners are rescued."
Smythe. Gauhwal. 793
Follow traditional practice in leaving records on mountain peaks or in polar regions, and in the treatment of records left by others. Consider desirability of leaving marks and note of plans to guide a party following, or marks to guide one's own return; give special thought to marking dumps and caches of stores.
"Fearing that we might never be able to find our way without native help back from Tatarii to the highest inhabited village (Nokowula), we marked our route with a multitude of flags, which had been specially prepared for this purpose before we left England. We also daubed tree trunks and rocks with white paint specially carried with us for the same purpose. This gave us a great sense of security when we were left alone."
Baker. New Hebrides. 85.216.
"While sledging to the centre of the West Ice the route was marked at each quarter of a mile by flags alternating red and black. Some of the poles were dug into the snow to a depth of not more than a foot, but despite the fact that 8 feet of pole was showing above the surface, many of them were completely buried by the beginning of the following summer. In case a party should overrun the station during bad weather, two lines of flags were later set out from it at 450 to the route, red to the north and black to the west. They were little more than 100 yards apart, but so frequent was mist and blizzard that they ought to have been much closer. Once Croft and Wright, while searching for the station in bad weather, came so close that they actually saw the light from the observer's small pocket torch as he took the meteorological readings. Nevertheless they overran the station and it was five days before they finally found it."
Glen. North East Land. 90.207.
"I noticed that in many places on the Kufra route there were lines of camel droppings that appeared to be of uncertain age. From their numbers however I concluded that they recorded the journeyings of at the least a dozen years. This suggested to me the idea of making blobs of camel droppings at prominent points in the march. My first idea had been to take date-palm branches, like Colonel De Lancey Forth, in his march south from Siwa, but apart from the fact that they are liable to be overthrown, the number available at Mungar was small, even had we denuded the solitary palm there; a sacrilegious act I was loath to commit. My plan worked well enough, but the difficulty was to induce the Arabs to carry a sufficient quantity of droppings." Wingate. Libyan Desert. 83.291.
"We camped (Camp 6) on a wide whaleback in the same open wavy country. A note giving the position (lat. 260 28' 30" long. 260 16' 23") was left in a bottle on a cairn of petrol tins weighted with sand."
Bagnold. Libyan Desert. 7823
Test and record the qualities of guides, especially their powers of keeping direction. Some Arabs in particular have an accurate sense of direction difficult to explain, and worth study and experiment: see Harding King, "Pioneer Desert Exploration," Geogr. Jour. 7754'
"Their sense of direction varied enormously. On one occasion in the Libyan Desert the men in my caravan consisted of three Sudanese camel drivers, a Berberine cook, and an Arab guide. The cook was quite unreliable, being sometimes over 60" in error. The two younger Sudanese were considerably better, though their errors occasionally exceeded to". The Arab however had a sense of direction that was almost uncanny. His error hardly ever exceeded 2", and my head camel driver was little, if at all, his inferior. The guide could not only tell the north, but was able to sight the rifle with almost equal accuracy, so far as I could check him, in the direction of any place that he had visited, even though it were hundreds of miles away in the Sudan and several years had elapsed since he had been to it. Moreover he had absolute confidence in his own powers. When first he saw me using a compass he said that, though he had often heard of these 'machines,' he had never before seen one. He asked me to use it to point out the north, and then altered the direction in which I had laid the rifle to point to what he considered to be the right one. It then suddenly occurred to me that I had omitted to allow for the variation, which was about 4". On that particular occasion he laid the rifle correctly, literally to a degree. His sense of direction was so extraordinarily keen that he once confided to me, though with some diffidence, that he was not quite sure that the Pole Star itself always showed true north, as it seemed to him to lie sometimes too much to the east or west."
Harding King. 77542
"In Equatoria it is almost impossible to find out how far it is to anywhere. The answer is always in hours. But we learned great astuteness in turning hours into miles. The method is to have a look at your informant's legs: if they are long an hour means 4 miles; however short they are it is never less than two and a half. The sultan was a very big man, and he told us it was seven hours from his rest-house to the Shari ferry which would take us across to Fort Lamy. The distance by our speedometer worked out at 27 miles."
Tweedy. Central Africa. 759
"Guides were readily available at every village, and the only suspicion of hostility encountered was when a carrier limped up with a bleeding foot which had been pierced by a sharpened bamboo sliver, placed obliquely in a forbidden bypath. He got medical treatment, but no sympathy. He had paid for his curiosity and disobedience of orders against wandering into village precincts which did not concern him."
A. J. Marshall. New Guinea. 89.494.
Never camp in or nearly on a level with the bed of a dry river, which may come down in flood without warning; and always camp on the far side of the bed, or a flood may delay the march. In long grass a large area must be cleared to avoid danger from fire.
In mountains with heavy snowfields above, give particular attention to avalanche danger. In 1936 a hut built by the Ski Club of India at Khillanmarg (10,000 feet) in a place carefully chosen and believed safe was overwhelmed by an avalanche from Aphanvat mountain (13,600 feet). A great wind took off the roof of the hut and filled it with snow, smothering three British officers and the chowkidar instantly. The snow had flowed like water at least 20 feet deep, down a slope of 1 in 6 for 1000 yards from the foot of the mountain.
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